That means if you're prone to hypertension, that lowers. yoga has this remarkable quality to relax you, to de-stress you. "There's been study after study after study that says you do not get your heart pumping in the way you do in aerobic sports like running, swimming and spinning," he says. Scientific studies have shown that yogis have more spinal flexibility and show some improvement in cardiovascular health markers.
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Well, it's changing a lot - and some of that stuff is making the poses gentler and in some ways better for you."Īnd some yoga poses can be extremely beneficial, he says. Most people think of yoga as thousands of years old and perfect. Dozens of groups are out there refining poses, doing smart things. "They use blankets with the shoulder stand to decrease the angle, so your neck isn't flexed at 90 degrees. " are using props to ease the poses," he says. But that's improved, he says, and there are dozens of groups working to make the practice of yoga safer - and better.
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I try to start tying myself in knots like and it doesn't work."īroad says that until recently, many yoga teachers were in denial about the potential downsides of yoga. "It just doesn't work, especially if you have an inexperienced teacher, a teacher who may be gifted a teacher who may be genetically predisposed to flexibility and may think that everybody should be that flexible," he says.
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Part of the reason we get injuries, he says, is that we sit in offices all day and aren't used to the knot-tying poses. It's a wide range, but generally you're not just talking about torn muscles - you're talking about joint problems in one way or another." "You have dislocations and tears, ligaments and all kinds of nasty stuff. "It's mostly complex joints where people have problems," he says. More commonly, people hurt their lower backs, shoulders, knees and necks. Those extreme injuries are rare, says Broad. and you're unlucky, you can tear the lining of the arteries, you can have clots, and you get up from that pose or you're in the middle of a pose - and those clots move into the brain, and you've got brain damage. You're rotating your neck around 90 degrees, and it turns out that there are delicate arteries that run through your neck called vertebral arteries. "The shoulder stand, the plow, those kind of things. "There are that really bend your neck a lot," he says. Using the latest scientific research, Broad explains the benefits of yoga, while debunking the myths surrounding it and explaining why certain yoga moves can even be quite dangerous. No matter how poorly you do it or how stressed you are, you're going to get this guaranteed de-stressing, relaxing, anti-civilization effect of yoga - which is wonderful."īroad's new book, The Science of Yoga, investigates both the risks and rewards of yoga. And that's the thing that most yogis swear by. "It's an excellent means of stress management. "I can't imagine doing job without it," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.
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Broad started doing yoga as a freshman in college in 1970 and has been practicing ever since. William Broad, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer for The New York Times, is one of them. Twenty million people practice yoga in the United States. Five people on a beach stand in the warrior pose.