How is your Chaturanga Dandasana form? How long can you hold a tree pose?
These are questions that more and more Americans can answer with confidence, according to an analysis of survey results released this week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of 2022, nearly 17% of adults age 18 and older (around one out of every six people) had practiced yoga in the 12 -month period before they were surveyed.
“Yoga is a complementary health approach used to promote physical and mental well-being,” said the CDC. “The popularity of complementary health approaches has increased in the past 20 years, with the largest increases in the practice of yoga. Practicing yoga can enhance quality of life and help improve mental health outcomes. It is also an approach for pain management.”
According to the government of India, “the practice of Yoga is believed to have started with the very dawn of civilization,” and it pre-dates most organized religion. It described yoga as “a spiritual discipline based on an extremely subtle science, which focuses on bringing harmony between mind and body,” that has been studied for thousands of years.
“The word ‘Yoga’ is derived from the Sanskrit root ‘Yuj’, meaning ‘to join’ or ‘to yoke’ or ‘to unite’. As per Yogic scriptures the practice of Yoga leads to the union of individual consciousness with that of the Universal Consciousness, indicating a perfect harmony between the mind and body, Man & Nature,” said the government website.
There are many different forms and schools of yoga.
“Although classical yoga also includes other elements, yoga as practiced in the United States typically emphasizes physical postures (asanas), breathing techniques (pranayama), and meditation (dyana),” explained the National Center for Complimentary and Integrative Health (NCCIH).
Yoga has been becoming more popular in the U.S. for years. In 2016, Harvard Health Publishing wrote that a “survey conducted by Yoga Alliance and Yoga Journal reports that the number of Americans doing yoga has grown by over 50% in the last four years to over 36 million as of 2016, up from 20.4 million in 2012.”
Women were twice as likely to practice yoga than men, according to the recent survey results. Most of those who practiced it (80%) did so to improve overall health, more than 57% practiced meditation as part of their yoga routine, with women again more likely to include mediation. Close to 30% used yoga to manage pain.
“The purpose of yoga is to build strength, awareness and harmony in both the mind and body,” said Natalie Nevins, a board-certified osteopathic family physician and certified Kundalini Yoga instructor in Hollywood, California quoted by the American Osteopathic Association.
Research has shown that health benefits associated with yoga include stress relief, osteoarthritis relief, relief of neck pain, relief of lower back pain and help with migraine and tension headaches. Yoga may help people lose weight, help them quit smoking and relieve menopause symptoms. Additionally, yoga has been shown to help people manage anxiety, depression, substance use disorders and the challenges of chronic diseases.
“Studies have suggested possible benefits of yoga for several aspects of wellness, including stress management, mental/emotional health, promoting healthy eating/activity habits, sleep, and balance,” said the NCCIH.
Last October, Dr. Maren Nyer, director of Yoga Studies at the Depression Clinical and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, shared research on Bikram yoga and depression with Audacy station WCBS Radio in New York City this year.
“What we did see is that compared to a waitlist control, the heated yoga group, their depressive symptoms reduced significantly over eight weeks,” she said.
This March, Dr. Sophie Kjaervik spoke with Audacy station KCBS Radio in San Francisco about how yoga can also help people deal with anger.
“I wanted to debunk the myth that venting anger is good for you because of all the rage groups that are popping up all over the world. And I wanted to show a simple and efficient method for actually reducing anger,” she said.
Kjaervik and her team found that “activities that decrease arousal, such as meditation, mindfulness or relaxation and even yoga considerably decreases anger,” compared to other activities such as jogging or cycling.