The problem with health claims in yoga

A discussion of biomedical miracle claims, ethics, safety, and inclusion in yoga.

Welcome to today’s discussion on the problem with health claims in yoga.

Have you ever heard someone say that a specific yoga pose could cure an ailment or that practicing yoga itself has miraculous, evidence-defying benefits?

While yoga has many wonderful health benefits, not all claims about it are grounded in science. In this video, we’ll unpack the ethics and safety concerns around these claims, exploring why it’s essential for yoga teachers and practitioners to approach health claims with integrity, awareness, and inclusivity.

If you’re a yoga teacher or enthusiast looking to deepen your practice with an informed perspective, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in!

Watch the video below or read the transcript notes and find some trusted resources below.

The problem with health claims in yoga

Today’s discussion focuses on the problem with health claims in yoga and how we might approach these with ethics, safety, and inclusion in mind.

As you may have noticed in your studies, the yoga world is unfortunately saturated with claims of both the healing power of yoga in general as well as pose or technique-specific miracle health benefits.

This has certainly been amplified by social media and the internet, and more recently the use of AI, but when we are talking about our practice, modern postural yoga, these claims have been a constant throughout the evolution of the practice.

Unfortunately, most of these claims have no evidence base (or even a reasonable mechanism), are not necessarily even part of the ancient or traditional teachings of yoga, and – very importantly – can be harmful to our students.

So, this week we’ll talk about the tricky subject of miracle health claims and hopefully if not today, in our next discussion we’ll also talk about the many evidence-based benefits of yoga!

Before we begin, I keep saying this is a tricky discussion, and it is because we all come to yoga with different beliefs, and we might adopt new beliefs along the way.

So, I just want to flag that we might disagree on some of the topics discussed today, and that’s okay. Let’s just open a dialog and I hope that I can give you some ideas to get curious about, think critically about, and that it helps to improve your yoga studies, practice, and teaching.

What prompted this discussion?

This discussion has been inspired by a few exchanges I’ve had over the past few weeks with folks who are working on their yoga teacher training coursework about contraindications and the benefits of different yoga practices and mostly finding it really confusing.

I agree. It’s a really tricky subject because we want to keep ourselves and our students safe in practice, but it’s really hard to navigate all the information on the internet about the risks and benefits of yoga.

How do we know what’s evidence-based, what’s ‘traditional teaching’, and what’s made-up yoga propaganda? It’s tough for us to know!

As well, I also want to acknowledge that there’s still lots that science still can’t tell us about the benefits of yoga, and perhaps never can – I mean who’s developing an MRI to see our chakras and nadis?

So, in the meantime we’ll have to rely on genuine teachings, our own personal and shared experiences, and providing sensible and respectful information to our students.

My own cringey past

In my own yoga journey, I believed in and shared a lot of these biomedical miracle claims, and I look back and cringe! Some were pretty harmless, but some did harm people – particularly vulnerable people who felt shamed, like they were being told that they were ‘doing yoga wrong’ because they weren’t healing from their health conditions through yoga. I have to live with the harm I’ve done, and just aim to keep learning and do less harm in the future.

And, I have to admit there’s still a part of me that wants to believe that people have so much respect for yoga that they wouldn’t just make things up for clicks or dollars. But, like, grow up Heather!

Part of my ‘growing up’ in yoga has been learning to switch on my critical thinking. For some reason, I always left that outside of the room with my shoes when I was studying yoga. I just took on board everything my teachers told me, everything I read in books. There was a lot of gold in that teaching, of course, but also a lot of junk. Learning to mine for the gold and throw out the junk is a skill I’m still developing.

These days when I’m learning something new, I try to apply some simple strategies which I’ll speak about in a moment, and I rely on teachers who have the training and skills to understand yoga research and explain it to non-academics like me.

Can’t just have my beliefs about yoga, even if they aren’t ‘scientific’?

Of course! You can believe anything you like. And, if you are like me, you’ll be curious and explore lots of different ideas throughout your yoga journey.
What we cant’ do as yoga teachers is impose our beliefs on others, or demand that they make it part of their own yoga practice or belief system.

Particularly when we are aiming to make our classes accessible and inclusive, insisting that our spiritual or esoteric or wellness beliefs are truth can be alienating and can end up excluding people – including people of faith, people with disabilities, and people living with illness.

What we say might not be what our students hear

It’s great to have a passion for yoga, of course, but we do need to consider what our statements about the benefits of yoga, or the spiritual elements of yoga might be saying to people about their health and their very beingness.

To stay with the example of the chakras, consider when you are talking to your students about the chakras and their meaning, and how ‘energy imbalances’ might show up, what might they be hearing?

If you talk about the Swadhisthana or the sacral center being about sexuality and birth and creation – do you have a student hearing that they can’t conceive because their energy is ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’?

If you talk about heart opening poses and healing your heart, do you have a student who is hearing that they had a heart attack because they aren’t loving enough, or didn’t open up to love enough?

If you talk about illness being a reflection of our spiritual journey, do you have a student fighting cancer who is hearing that they are sick because they are unevolved?

When we talk about these esoteric health claims, I think we have to be sure that students understand that these are interesting concepts for reflection and self-knowledge but aren’t necessarily reflected in or reflective of our physical health or illness, our ability or disability, and certainly aren’t a measure of our morality or virtue or spirituality. So called ‘pure’ or ‘evolved’ people get cancer! Every yoga master that’s ever lived has also died.

So, I think we just have to be thoughtful that we’re not communicating these esoteric ideas in a way that’s causing shame or that’s victim blaming people for being unwell or causing people to become fearful over having ‘unbalanced energy’.

Good intentions and all…

Much of this kind of belief I think comes from good intentions but perhaps a place of privilege. When we have enjoyed good health, it’s easy to feel like it’s because of what we, individually, are doing in our lives, and not a complex interaction of our genetics and lifestyle choices, as well as the many impacts of the social determinants of health.

In a way, this is ‘Just World Fallacy’ thinking. This is a kind of logical fallacy that makes us think, ‘well, I’m in good health or having good outcomes because I’m a good and spiritual person. If someone is unwell, or disabled, or experiencing chronic illness, it’s because they are making the wrong choices or their chakras are unaligned.’

I want to talk more about both of those things in another discussion, because it’s a big subject, but for now let’s talk about some of the challenges in understanding yoga science, the benefits of yoga, how we might communicate with our students about the health benefits and contraindications in yoga.

Unrealistic health claims:

Unrealistic health claims are something that we see a lot in yoga, but not just yoga – these kinds of ideas are everywhere these days!

Unrealistic health claims, biomedical miracles, and (wildly) flawed ideas about contraindications are common in the yoga community and the wellness world in general. There are a lot of yoga teachers and influencers and media organizations promoting yoga as a magic bullet cure-all for health conditions, which can be misleading and put people at risk.

As teachers we need to be aware of the dangers of overpromising health benefits through yoga. As well, we need to temper our students’ expectations about how yoga might support their health and wellbeing. If students are coming to your class looking for yoga to be a magic bullet cure for all that ails us, how can we temper those unrealistic expectations?

I think that talking openly about the reality of a regular yoga practice is a useful project. Speaking to your students about what a yoga life feels like on a day-to-day basis, like, sometimes we have a sweet practice and sometimes we have a sour practice. Sometimes everything flows, and sometimes everything feels clunky, or you get bored, or restless. Sometimes yoga helps us with our anxiety or migraines or back pain. Sometimes it doesn’t. The essence of the practice of yoga is that we keep going.

The Sutras talk about having a practice that is firmly rooted when it is maintained consistently and over a long period – there are no magic bullets here! So, I think it’s useful to consider how you can speak to your students about how they can benefit from yoga, and what kind of commitment is required to reap those benefits.

Impact on trust and credibility:

We know that yoga can be part of improving our health and wellbeing, but we do need to exercise caution so that we aren’t passing along misinformation that promises cures, and that we aren’t talking about setting aside professional medical treatment in favor of yoga.

Making exaggerated health claims can damage the credibility of yoga as a practice and of the teachers who spread these claims. As yoga teachers it’s important that we focus on building trust with our students by being honest about what yoga can and cannot do.

Yoga as a complement, not a substitute:

Yes, yoga can support physical and mental health, but it should be seen as complementary to medical treatment, not a replacement for professional care.

When your students want to talk to you about their medical concerns, refer them back to their health team for guidance, and talk about how, as long as yoga is not contrary to their advice, how yoga might support their health journey.

Yoga is a powerful and beneficial practice that can support us in our health journey, but it’s not the primary factor in our health management, particularly if we are living with an illness, injury, or disability.

Ethical teaching practices:

Yoga is grounded in our 10 ethical precepts of the Yamas and Niyamas – which start with Non-Harming and Truthfulness. Consider how our ethical responsibility as yoga teachers supports us in avoiding perpetuating false or exaggerated health claims. When in doubt, can we return to our Yamas and Niyamas to guide us in clear communication about the limits of yoga’s benefits?

Legal and risk management considerations:

Making unverified biomedical claims could lead to injury or illness or other harmful outcomes for your students, and, for the teacher who shares misinformation, this could have legal consequences. Teachers do need to be cautious and mindful about health-related statements to protect their students from harm and protect themselves from liability.

Encouraging evidence-based practices:

What we can prioritize is sharing the scientifically supported benefits of yoga (e.g., stress reduction, flexibility, body awareness) while maintaining transparency about what is unproven or yet to be proven. Consider how you might stay up to date on evidence-based yoga, and how might you talk to your students about the benefits of yoga.

Impact on vulnerable populations:

Understand that sharing biomedical miracle claims can harm vulnerable populations, such as those with chronic illness, by giving them false hope or leading them away from necessary medical treatment.

As well, how do our discussions of biomedical miracles discourage people with disabilities and health issues from beginning yoga, or maintaining a practice – if yoga didn’t cure me, what did I do wrong?

Critical thinking in the yoga community:

We are inundated by information all day, every day, and it can be hard to distill what’s true and what’s not. Especially when it meets our existing confirmation bias (yoga is awesome!)

Practicing critical thinking and questioning sensationalized health claims is something that takes effort.

How can we, as yoga teachers, promote a culture of curiosity and discernment within our communities?

How do we balance enthusiasm for sharing yoga’s benefits with a measured approach to this constant flow of information and misinformation?

What are my strategies for critical thinking in yoga?

Over the past few years, I have found a few strategies that are helpful when I’m studying or researching yoga as a non-academic yoga teacher – I hope you find these helpful:

What’s the source?

Does this source have a history of sharing evidence-based or balanced information, or do they have a history of posting misinformation or junk science?

Do they have an education in what they are talking about, or just a passion for sharing captivating memes about hot button topics for clicks?

What’s the mechanism?

If someone says you shouldn’t do inversions during menstruation, what’s the mechanism of harm?

If someone says that Shoulderstand balances your thyroid, what’s the mechanism of healing, and could it also be balanced by snoozing with your chin on your chest on the bus?

Does this apply to diverse populations, or only ‘well and wealthy’ people?

Often people talk about how yoga improves posture, or yoga helps reduce headaches or help them sleep better – and, for many, yoga can have these benefits. But are they universal and are they accessible? Does yoga ‘cure’ anything? Could yoga alone heal a lifetime of a migraine condition or an autoimmune condition, or chronic pain or a structural postural condition? Probably not. If the benefit you are touting isn’t universal, at least couch it in ‘may help’ or ‘may contribute’.

What can we say about yoga’s health benefits?

Does this mean you can’t be experimenting and sharing cool ideas in your classes? Not at all. Just be judicious with the practices, and respectful of what we know and what we don’t know.

How might you introduce ideas into your classes? You are excited about something you’ve learned and want to explore it in your teaching,

“Here’s this traditional practice in yoga. We don’t know everything about it, yoga research hasn’t gotten around to it yet, but here are some of the ways we might benefit.”

“We find yoga to be very beneficial, but it’s not without risks. Be listening to your body and breath, and exercise some caution, particularly if you have health conditions etc.”

“Here’s a theory we see in yoga, and we don’t know everything about it yet, but it might have these benefits. Because it’s a therapeutic technique, you might exercise some caution if you have…anxiety, breathing issues, a history of trauma or whatever.”

What’s the goal?

My goal in this discussion is to have a balanced conversation that respects the power of yoga while addressing the potential harms of unverified claims, particularly for vulnerable populations. I think as teachers we need to balance our enthusiasm for sharing the many benefits of yoga with an awareness of misinformation, or harmful stereotypes that might shame or blame people.

Yoga has a long history of beneficial practices, and also a long history of racism, classism, ableism, fatphobia, and disregard for the needs of vulnerable people. These are things we can be changing together!

I understand that, for some, this sounds like I’m trying to temper your enthusiasm for yoga and, honestly, I kind of am.

Just because your teacher or a yoga website claims something, doesn’t make it true. Just because something worked for you and your body doesn’t mean it will work for others. As teachers, part of our role is to get out of our own bodies, our own experiences, and our own belief systems, and start to see how our teaching meets our students.

Accessibility in yoga includes have inclusive discussions that doesn’t leave anyone out or make anyone feel less ‘yogic’ for not having the same positive experiences that you may have had, or for not been healed by yoga.

If you’d like to have a deeper understanding of the challenges related to biomedical miracle claims in yoga, I’ve got a few useful resources for you below which I hope you find helpful:

Trusted Evidence-Based Yoga Resources

First, for a broad overview of the state of research on the benefits of yoga, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) provides an evidence-based overview of how yoga can benefit specific health conditions such as chronic pain, arthritis, and mental health. It emphasizes that while yoga has been shown to offer improvements for various conditions, claims about miraculous healing should be approached with caution, especially in light of the limited and mixed-quality evidence from clinical trials. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/providers/digest/yoga-for-health-science

• Yoga Alliance https://www.yogaalliance.org/…/scientific_research_on_yoga
• Yoga Australia https://www.yogaaustralia.org.au/about-us/research-studies/
• Pain Science https://www.painscience.com/
• For the academically minded: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
• A subscription research library: https://www.yogaresearchandbeyond.com/
• And, a good general overview: https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/yoga-what-you-need-to-know

Podcasts

I love podcasts for learning new ideas every week, having my existing knowledge challenged, and hearing a variety of voices in yoga. A few of my favorites from over the years that address health claims in yoga are:

• The Mentor Sessions for Yoga Teachers Podcast www.francescacervero.com
• Accessible Yoga – all things accessibility, social justice, and yoga + activism https://www.accessibleyogaschool.com/podcast
• Conspirituality Podcast – addressing the junction between conspiracy and wellness https://conspirituality.net/
• Jules Mitchell/Science of Stretching – exploring biomechanics in yoga and stretching https://www.julesmitchell.com/podcasts/
• Maintenance Phase – debunking myths around diet, weight, and wellness http://maintenancephase.com/

I hope that these resources will give you a more nuanced perspective on the issue, and that together we can continue to explore how we can navigate the promises and limitations of yoga.

I hope that in our next discussion we can talk about the benefits of yoga – those that are evidence-based, and those that we are experiencing in our own lives.

Note: just as I was completing the edits for this video and article I started reading Carl Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, where Sagan says, “skepticism does not sell well”.

I have to agree! In yoga, charisma and confidence sell, even when they are selling harmful misinformation and dubious health claims. I love that we are seeing more yogis and educators speaking about a science-based approach to yoga, which serves to make yoga more accessible, inclusive, and honors our ethics of truthfulness and non-harming.

I’m only a chapter in, but highly recommend this book as an adjunct to thinking about health claims in yoga!

Explore more of our video discussion on our YouTube channel  

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