Yoga is an ancient tradition that extends back many thousands of years and when one reads through the ancient texts, it’s commonplace to find many claimed benefits of practice, some of them bizarre, many of them without explanation as to how these benefits come about. If we ask the all-mighty Google to tell us why yoga is good for us, we will find hundreds of websites telling us what asana will improve our sleep or sex life, which ones will fend off depression, fix our undiagnosed knee injury, or firm up our buns for bikini season. If we look closely though, we’ll find the majority of these sites are referencing one or two of these ancient texts and stating them as if they were medical facts. It’s important to remember that with no access to the medical technologies available to us today, ancient yogis used systems of observations decorated and lined with intricate layers of the religious, spiritual, and social customs of thousands of years of Indian history, fine-tuning a system of integrated health care that acknowledges the need for balance between mind, body and spirit.
It’s helpful to remember that clinical research focused on yoga-based practice is all very new and that most of what is known about the benefits of yoga, comes almost entirely through a long history of experience which has been passed down and expanded upon from teacher to student, era to era, for nearly 6000 years. As science has shown us time and time again, experience may be far different than the physical stimulus and sensation. However, this does not negate the fact that the description of the sensation can often lead to the understanding
of its reality.
There is no denying that yoga has positive impacts in many areas of our health and wellness, and the nature of the relationship between practice and effect is a slow-moving and long-lasting process. It is important to remember that regardless of the explanation, our practice is ours to experience and it is through this inward journey that we find the many possibilities of healing in yoga. Modern clinical evidence is now enhancing this process as it starts to shed new light on the reality of these ancient practices allowing us to more clearly determine what are observable effects and what is inaccurate.
To be ‘evidence-informed’ means we endeavour to keep up to date with the current clinical research regarding the actual evidence being produced collaboratively around the world in an effort to establish yoga as a recognized and respected form of therapy. Through the lenses of physiology, neuroscience, biomechanics, psychology, fluid dynamics, and more, we can fine-tune our understanding of the nature of yoga and of its application as a healing tool. New evidence is being enthusiastically uncovered every day, and it is our commitment and great pleasure to continue to learn, grow, and share new information as it becomes available with our yoga community!
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