In an article recently published by the Wall Street Journal, a study led by NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine confirmed that yoga does indeed help alleviate lower back pain. However, the central fallacy within this article, entitled “Yoga May Help Low Back Pain, Mental Effects? Not So Much†lies in its oversimplification of yoga practice as stretching: “But the current study found both yoga and stretching were equally as effective, suggesting the benefits of yoga are attributable to the physical benefits of stretching and not to its mental components, “ the author writes.
What with the proliferation of power yoga, it’s easy to forget that yoga is in its true essence a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline. So much attention is placed upon the physical benefits of a vigorous yoga practice, however it is important to remember that meditation is a type of yoga practice in itself as well. While it is true that you may relieve lower back pain through yoga, to dismiss the mental benefits reaped as well is ultimately shortsighted.
Anxiety and fear, for example, may be ingrained in the body as chronic physical tension. Developing awareness of this through a regular yoga practice not only allows us to alleviate this pain but to identify its underlying source.
Strides have been made in trauma recovery as well through yoga. In Overcoming Trauma through Yoga: Reclaiming Your Body, David Emerson and Dr. Elizabeth Hopper show us how trauma-sensitive yoga can help individuals heal from post-traumatic stress disorders. To say that there are no mental benefits in yoga is myopic at best.
So keep on doing those sun salutations and tell me, why do you practice yoga?
Image by lululemon athletica on Flickr Courtesy of Creative Commons Licensing
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I practice yoga not just to “work up a sweat,” but to increase flexibility and to get in a few minutes of meditation. Hatha yoga is my favorite.
I practice because, as a bit of a nervous-type, it keeps me at ease, mentally and physically.
I once took a 4-month long class with a yoga instructor who was somehow behaved successfully as a spiritual adviser AND a boot camp drill sergeant while teaching us Vinyasa yoga. That experience pretty much captured all three aspects of yoga for me.