The Science of Yoga

Ranjit Singh, the maharajah of the Punjab. The interment lasts forty days and becomes a legendary wonder.
1849
Thoreau tells a friend that he considers himself a yogi—the first known instance of a Westerner making that claim.
1851
N. C. Paul authors A Treatise on the Yoga Philosophy , considered the first scientific study of yoga. It seeks to explain how yogis maintain what the Indian doctor calls states of “human hibernation” and looks to yoga breathing for clues to metabolic slowdowns.
1859
Darwin authors On the Origin of Species.
1896
Scientists study two yogis at the Millennial Exposition in Budapest who appear to go into deathlike trances.
1918
Carl Jung treats a female client in the throes of kundalini arousal—a rush of body energy that runs from her perineum, to her uterus, to the crown of her head. His fascination with the state, central to advanced yoga, marks the beginning of Western debate on whether it results in madness or enlightenment.
1922
Gandhi is arrested for sedition during his campaignof noncooperation with the British.
1924
Jagannath G. Gune founds an ashram south of Bombay and embarks on a major experimental study of yoga as part of a comprehensive effort to improve its image.
1926
Gune reports that the Headstand and Shoulder Stand promote blood circulation but not high pressure, casting the poses as a gentle means of physical renewal.
1927
Gune advises Gandhi on how to treat high blood pressure.
1929
Edmund Jacobson, a Chicago physician, authors Progressive Relaxation. It describes how easing the muscles can treat everything from headaches to depression, echoing the techniques of yoga.
1931
Gune publishes Asanas , the term for yoga postures. The book omits any reference to supernatural feats or Tantric rites and instead focuses on health and fitness.
1932
Kovoor T. Behanan, a Yale psychologist, arrives at Gune’s ashram to study yoga.
1932
Scientists split the atom.
1933
The maharajah of Mysore in southern India hires Tirumalai Krishnamacharya to run the palace yoga studio. In time, his students become yoga’s most influential gurus.
1934
The Mysore palace sends Krishnamacharya to study Gune’s methods.
1937
Behanan of Yale reports on experiments in yogic breathing that produce “a retardation of mental functions.”
1938
Jung calls kundalini a “deliberately induced psychotic state” that can result in “real psychosis.”
1945
The first atom bomb explodes.
1946
Yogananda in Autobiography of a Yogi tells of mystic supermen who can read minds, see through walls, and bring the deadback to life.
1947
India becomes an independent state.
1953
Indra Devi authors Forever Young, Forever Healthy —the first yoga book to widely popularize the objective of ultimate health.
1957
Basu Kumar Bagchi, a scientist at the University of Michigan and onetime confidant of Yogananda, reports that yogis can achieve “an extreme slowing” of such life basics as respiration and heart rate.
1961
Bagchi reports that advanced yogis can slow but not stop their hearts—a finding that contradicts ages of miraculous claims.
1962
Scientists at Gune’s ashram find that yogis in an airtight pit can withstand live burial for hours rather than weeks.
1965
B. K. S. Iyengar authors Light on Yoga , which becomes a global bestseller. It features the language of medicine and promotes yoga as aligned with science.
1969
Astronauts land on the moon.
1970
In a laboratory, Swami Rama demonstrates mental control over blood flowing through his palm, warming and cooling different sides.
1972
W. Ritchie Russell, a British scientist and physician, warns that pronounced bending of the neck in yoga can result in strokes and crippling disabilities.
1973
Scientists report the first of what turn out to be a number of gruesome yoga strokes.
1974
Scientists at Benares Hindu University find that yoga prompts rises in testosterone—the first evidence from a clinical laboratory that yoga can enhance sexuality.
1975
Herbert Benson, a physician at Harvard, reports that meditators can lower their respiratory rate, heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen consumption. He calls the relaxedstate hypometabolism .
1976
Lee Sannella, a San Francisco psychiatrist, authors a book on kundalini arousal and concludes from case studies that it promotes spiritual uplift rather than psychosis.
1976
Sannella opens the Kundalini Crisis Clinic.
1977
Voyager 1 blasts off for Jupiter and Saturn.
1978
Scientists at Stanford University report that people in