“Role of Yoga for Patients with Type II Diabetes” and Lack of Methodological Rigour in Yoga Research

If you have a copy of “Light on Yoga” by Iyengar, in it you will find a whole index of asana and pranayama suggestions for a wide range of ailments. For example, if you are suffering from diabetes, Iyengar suggests that you do inversions, seated and standing forward folds, backbends, and twists (Yes, that’s right! All kinds of yoga poses)*. The point is that traditional notion assumes yoga practice is healing for “obvious” reasons. Exciting as it may sound, I would say that unless such claims are supported by solid scientific evidence, they should be taken with a large dose of scepticism.

Is One Yoga Style Better Than Another?

This is a recent study by Cramer et al. (2016) that compared whether different yoga styles varied in their positive results reported by the participants.  Cramer et al. reviewed and analysed the results of 306 randomised control trials (RCTs).