Webinar Forum: Yoga - The Clinical Bottom Line

Natural Standard is offering a series of upcoming complimentary webinars on integrative medicine. Natural Standard remain impartial and offers these educational webinars as an informational public service. All webinars are recorded and archived at www.naturalstandard.com. 

This month, Natural Standard Associate Editor Regina Windsor, MPH, offers a presentation entitled, Yoga: The Clinical Bottom Line. Using the Natural Standard Grading Scale™ as a guide, Windsor discusses the available evidence concerning the therapeutic effectiveness of yoga in a variety of conditions.

Complimentary access is available until July 31, 2009. To listen to the webinar, please visit www1.gotomeeting.com/register/118961840. (Requires Windows Media Player).

Natural Standard values the opinions and views of its readers and welcomes feedback and questions about the latest webinar. Individuals are invited to leave comments below and/or e-mail questions@naturalstandard.com.

Comments

[I love yoga]

Awesome webinar. I've been practicing yoga forever, and it's had fantastic effects on my health. I'm glad to see that there's a resource like this that draws evidence-based conclusions about the safety and effectiveness of such therapies.

[Billy]

I’ve practiced yoga a few times as part of athletic training programs. I found that it helped increase my flexibility and strengthen my muscles. I had no idea that not only does it have so many other effects on the body, past these immediate ones, but that there was so much evidence to support it as well.

[jamie]

It is so helpful to have all of this evidence of yoga's health benefits in one place. Grading the strength of evidence for each effect -- such as high blood pressure, or fatigue, for example -- is really helpful for consumers to sort out what is solid and what needs further study.

From here, I would love to learn more about which types of yoga produce these various effects, or whether researchers speculate that any form of yoga would deliver these benefits. It would also be great to learn from future research about the quantity and length over time of practice needed to make these gains in health. I will stay tuned to learn more as the research continues!

[Jessy]

This webinar really helps me understand yoga better in terms of disease states because evidence of effectiveness for conditions are organized based on grades. Although I have not practiced yoga for about 8 months, I felt the benefits of yoga (the basic one). after I did it, I felt my muscle stretch and felt more flexibility.

I was wondering is there any evidence out there to support yoga as an anti-aging therapy? I have been wondering about this for quite some time: Do headstands help reduce the number of white hairs?

[Saundra]

According to the NS monograph, Kundalini yoga has been shown to change cardiovascular physiology and biochemistry by reducing both systolic and diastolic blood pressure and improving heart rate. I don’t know if this time frame is true for all of yoga’s effects, but one month of yoga has been shown to increase thyroid activity in a randomized controlled trial. Some of the other studies reported that it took 3 months to see other effects from yoga such as weight loss.

[Vera]

This webinar on yoga is very helpful for individuals to determine whether yoga would be beneficial. The evidence provided in this webinar help put its use into prospective, and I will keep it in mind as an add-on therapy to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

[Rachel]

I attended a yoga class for the first time just recently. I could definitely feel positive benefits after doing just one class. Going into the class, I felt very tired and fatigued, but afterward I felt more relaxed and energized. My muscles felt more relaxed as well. It's great to see that there is scientific evidence for yoga out there, along with grading. I personally would like to find more information about yoga's role in helping fatigue, since I suffer from this myself. Based on my yoga experience, and especially in light of the evidence for it, it is a practice I hope to continue.

[Raymond]

Yoga is amazing. It really forces you to stretch and also makes the muscle stronger. It may also benefit people in the long term and may reduce the risk of diseases. I know someone who has practiced yoga for more than 7 years. She's 53 years old this year, but she looks young, flexible, and she can also do a headstand without any help from the wall. It's so amazing.

[Michelle]

It really is quite amazing. It’s a great blend of physical and a sort of meditational exercise. Practicing it not only improves your physical well-being, but also your mental well-being.

[Adele]

NS has also previously reported on yoga's many beneficial effects. In October 2005, NS described a study where seniors experienced improved quality of life with hatha yoga, and in March 2008, NS described another study involving senior women who had decreased their body fat percentage, blood pressure and sleep disturbances with silver yoga. I guess I'm going to have to try this!

[K.T.]

I definitely agree with everyone else in that yoga is a great workout for the body! I attended my first yoga class a couple months back and although it was interesting, I thought the class was difficult to follow at times because it was very physically intense. Is there a particular style of yoga that is better for beginners and still provides these great health benefits?

[ariel]

The physiological and psychological benefits of yoga are multitudinous. Natural Standard has offered an excellent opportunity to explore these benefits through their webinar.

[Thompson]

I agree with Ariel. Natural Standard is the best place to look for interesting webinars, articles and new information about everything in the world that you've wondered about for so long. I love how the yoga webinar is organized in such a way that I know which types receive grades A, B, C, etc.

[Raye]

I experienced the same thing, K.T. I also took my first yoga class recently and found it to be physically challenging! Some of the positions were difficult to emulate, and I had sore muscles the day after the class. I was expecting it to be a little easier than it was. I guess I will just have to keep practicing at a slower pace until I'm able to do them.