Yoga Research Symposium: geeky yogi goes to a conference
Plus some thoughts on using behavioural science to make some research more actionable
I interrupt the usual monthly summary of published research for a special edition of the mind–body adventure, reporting straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Last week I had the joy and privilege of attending the inaugural Yoga Research Network symposium, hosted by Westminster University here in London. Which was super-exciting because, as you probably know by now, I’m a big geek who loves to hear about research and I hadn’t had the opportunity to go to a conference in a few years, let alone a yoga research conference!
I’ve put together some highlights from the presentations (I sadly had to miss the panel discussion and didn’t get the chance to look at the posters properly), as well as my own thoughts. This ended up being a longer-than-expected post, so here are some key take-home messages:
Yoga for children could provide a huge number of benefits, not just in mental health but also in focus and behaviour, and is definitely worth investing in some real-world research
There is something really interesting being uncovered about the effects of learning to coordinate mind and breath (and how that might affect the brain too)
There’s a lot of work on bringing yoga to more groups of people; personally (and yes, I am biased) I think this should have a behavioural science lens to it so that it can help to design actual programmes to test and see if they bring more of these groups to the practice (if you are a researcher reading this and need some help, then please do get in touch!)
There wasn’t a huge amount on yoga for particular conditions, although some benefits were reported in chronic low-back pain, breathlessness and mental health; personalisation and tailoring is something to bear in mind, which I believe is what yoga therapy is about
Heather Mason (of the Minded Institute) is hoping that more research will lead to yoga being included more and more in healthcare systems – and I agree, and wish I could do more to support this (contact her if you have that kind of influence, eg on NICE guidelines changes)
I’m excited to see appetite for yoga research, and also a transformation of so many yoga teachers to science geeks! Now I just need to figure out how I want to be involved beyond this newsletter.
Yoga for specific age groups
Lesley Ward presented her work on gentle years yoga, an intervention for the over 65s, in this case with at least two other chronic conditions (co-morbidities). After 12 weeks, participants showed no changes in health-related quality of life versus the control group; this means that statistically speaking, yoga wasn’t better than doing nothing (control) at improving participants’ perception of the impact of their health condition on their quality of life. However, when looking a little deeper, through interviewing a small number of participants, Lesley’s team uncovered that participants felt that yoga offered them mental focus and clarity, through the coordination of breath and movement. This did make me wonder whether the findings were linked to a potential change in brain structure and cognitive function, which has been reported in the past. More information on Lesley Ward’s study here, although it doesn’t include the qualitative (interview) work. Note that this was a really decent-sized study (454 participants), which is amazing to see!
On a similar vein, Nick Kearney presented work on Teen Yoga – and although they haven’t been able to publish this, I was impressed with the findings. Their work has uncovered improvements in wellbeing, including reduction in stress and anxiety, and better sleep. The findings that really stood out were a huge reduction to referrals to mental health services for young people and a reduction in behavioural incidents, both relating to a second piece of work at a special educational needs school. If you want to bring yoga to schools, get in touch with them to get the data and use as evidence for your case. Here’s some more on the mental health research project.
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Yoga access for specific groups
Now, we talk about bringing more diversity to the yoga class (ie beyond the middle-class white female majority), so it was great to see talks on this very topic. Sally Brown talked about her PhD work on yoga for people with marginalised identities (included people of colour, disabled and LGBTQA+). Some of the key barriers include the obvious like cost and location/availability, but also components of identity, including a sense of alienation and a social norm of whiteness and ablism.
Tina Cartwright followed on with research on yoga participation among men – this was really up my street as they used a behavioural science model to define barriers (which included a lack of awareness of yoga’s benefits, a lack of spaces for men and beliefs about yoga being ‘feminine’). The reason I like this kind of thinking is because it gives us a better framework for designing interventions for change, which is jargon for it helps us be very specific about what the barriers are and how to remove them. (for example, this could be a campaign that focuses on the health benefits of yoga for men specifically, with male spokespeople and role models, tackling the lack of awareness of health benefits and beliefs about yoga being ‘feminine’). I am really looking forward to seeing what comes next here, including looking at different subgroups of men (because some men clearly do attend yoga, especially what is thought of as ‘stronger’ classes like Rocket, which in my experience are pretty evenly male and female).
Finally, Lucy Doyle talked about her work on yoga for healthcare staff wellbeing – a population that has received a lot of attention in yoga research (possibly because they are under so much stress, especially in recent years). Her work so far has identified three predictors of participation: belief that it will improve health, belief that it will lead to social connections and an intention/motivation to try it. In the behavioural science world, these are the things that we want to leverage when we design an intervention, ie the things we want to use to convince people to try yoga. Barriers include a lack of physical ability, cost and easy access, and various beliefs that relate to the appropriateness of yoga in the workplace (eg a perception that work should be separate from leisure activities); these are things that we want to remove. I think her findings would apply to wider work populations, so great for our understanding of designing workplace yoga programmes.
Yoga for health
Kate Binnie gave us a whirlwind tour of her work on breathlessness, and using mind–body practices to support patients who experience this. The main take-home message for me was very familiar, which is that personalisation is really important – there is no ‘one size fits all’ recipe. For instance, as anyone with trauma-informed teaching will know, breathing exercises can sometimes be triggering for people and will not necessarily help. I would have loved to hear more about this work, so perhaps one for me to go back to and maybe contact her separately. Nadyne McKie is also carrying out work on this in the context of long-Covid.
Spoorthi Poojari presented her work on yoga for chronic back pain, a small pilot randomised controlled trial (aka the best kind of study design), where yoga was found to lead to a reduction in pain intensity and inflammation.
Finally, the keynote talk was by the rather famous Sat Bir Khalsa, who did an overview of the research on yoga and mental health. I have written about this topic before (and will likely write a longer piece separately on this to do it proper justice, but as a flavour, areas included anxiety, PTSD and chronic stress.
Ok, that’s everything, if you got to the end then thank you for geeking out with me!
But before we go…
Workshops
Join me an Melanie Cooper for the final instalment of your yoga and the immune system workshops, where we’ll be talking about everyone’s favourite topic to avoid: ageing! Find out how the immune system and ageing are linked, and where yoga fits in on Saturday December 7th at 2pm.
Online offerings
Yoga nidra for wellbeing: science and practice
Three talks to get your science fix and three lovely and relaxing yoga nidra practices
5 days of pranayama: science and practice
An introduction to five slow breathing practices, and the science to support introducing them to your life
Plus a growing library of tracks for you to enjoy (including many free ones), online yin and online yoga nidra once a week, all on Insight Timer. Follow me to get direct updates when I publish a track and when I book a live class.
Until next time!