Is the Yoga World Ready? An Academic Perspective

As a long time academic researcher and teacher, and an Iyengar Yoga practitioner for more than ten years, I have been intrigued by the ongoing discussions about Yoga therapy, about what it is and where it is going, and how, or whether, it can be integrated into the healthcare system. My interest in research on Yoga and its clinical potential started with curiosity (sometimes bewilderment) about Yoga teachers' explanations of poses and the claims sometimes made about the effects of certain Yoga practices on bodily organs and systems, such as endocrine glands, the cardiovascular system, the immune system, and mental states. What were these claims based on? Did they make sense in terms of what was already well known in physiology, physical medicine, psychology, and other basic sciences? Or, if such knowledge did not exit, how could we put claims to a test?