The Truth About 7 Big Yoga Claims

Claim 4: Yoga Will Help You Lose Weight
False. And true. The lithe appearance of the instructors and regulars at your average yoga class would suggest the practice turns you into a veritable calorie furnace. But one of the more surprising findings detailed in The Science of Yoga is that yoga actually decreases your metabolism. Broad recognizes that yoga may help people lose weight but that they do so despite the acute physiological effects of a yoga session.

“Yoga helps you lose weight because it changes how you think,” Kristoffer says. “When I first started practicing yoga, I was young, but I stopped partying so much because I wanted to feel good in [yoga] class. It makes you want to take care of your body and I hear that from my students all the time.”

Claim 5: Yoga Makes You More Flexible
True. This might seem like an obvious benefit of an activity non-devotees equate with “stretching.” But the active, engaged flexibility work done in yoga is a far cry from the casual reach for the toes one might do before a treadmill run. A 2010 study published in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine found that active stretching (where the muscle opposite the one being stretched is contracted, as is often the case in yoga poses) resulted in lasting, improved range of motion, while passive stretchers actually decreased their range of motion.

“People need strong, flexible muscles, but most of us have weak, tight muscles. Yoga helps you release muscular tension and start getting stronger,” says Chrissy Carter, a New York-based yoga instructor.

Claim 6: Yoga Can Make You Look and Feel Younger
True. Yoga shows promise not only in slowing down the aging process (by increasing DNA-protecting telomerase), but also in helping older adults deal with some of the most common age-related health woes.

Loren Fishman, M.D., yogi, and author of Yoga for Osteoporosis, is conducting a study to confirm his belief that yoga helps build stronger bones (stay tuned for that). Yoga may also help prevent fractures (often deadly for seniors) by improving balance and reducing the fear of falling. Yoga has also been shown to be an effective therapy for musculoskeletal pain and rheumatoid arthritis.