Twice a year I intend to do a brief literature survey of all the behind-the-paywall research that’s been published about yoga in the previous 6 months, and bring you just some of the most interesting and curious results. This survey was undertaken at the start of February 2024. Free subscribers can read the first half, and paid subscribers can read the full text with references.
There have been, again, a lot of small-scale scientific studies into ‘does yoga help with this condition?’ Most of them are pebbles added to the heap of understanding, but among the 7000 published papers on this topic in 6 months, are some interesting trends. There are a few more meta studies of a decent quality, and a lot more investigations into ever smaller slices of patient demographics and conditions. A host of studies now consider the effectiveness of online yoga specifically, catching up with post-pandemic trends. And pleasingly, at least one researcher has discovered Goat Yoga:
“This interpretative phenomenological analysis of experiences of “Goat Yoga” focused on its influence on participants’ joy and shift in perspective. Four core themes were: Fun, Inducing Calm, Shifting Focus, and Removing Barriers. The findings suggest that “Goat Yoga” is beneficial as complementary therapy for depression and anxiety, especially for treatment-resistant conditions, but further research is needed to determine relevance across various populations.” (Berbel and Praetorius, 2023)
The digitalisation of yoga continues apace, with a spate of articles confidently claiming that yoga teachers themselves can be replaced by AI. Whether this is a glimpse into an unsettling future, the dawn of a great new age in the practice, or mere snake oil and glitter, remains to be seen.
“With the growing, fast-paced life and work from home, it has become difficult for people to invest time in the gymnasium for exercises. Instead, they like to do assisted exercises at home where pose recognition techniques play the most vital role.” (Ashraf et al, 2023)
Li, Jianwei et al (2023) have gathered a 3D dataset of over 117 yoga poses. Upadhyay et al (2023) claims their model meanwhile “will help humans practice yoga with the help of a clever, inexpensive, and impressive virtual yoga trainer.” And finally, Ekambaram and Ponnusamy (2024) are developing software to detect ‘correct’ posture in a range of exercise modalities, even as many yoga teachers are moving beyond alignment-based pedagogies into student-centred teaching models.
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