Copyright: © 2013 Fischer-White TG, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Yoga is at the forefront of complementary and supportive mind and body therapies. It is receiving widespread attention from scientists, funding agencies, the media, and the public as a means of health promotion and disease prevention. Colleges and a few K-12 schools now include yoga study and practice as a part of standard curricula. Also, widespread use is reflected in the 2012 “Yoga in America” survey, which estimates that 20.4 million people in the U.S. currently practice yoga [1]. This increasing public awareness, along with the demand for information on the safety and efficacy of yoga and the unfolding scientific evidence of its potential efficacy in a number of chronic diseases, are among the driving forces behind the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) identifying yoga as one of the mind and body interventions considered a high priority topic for research funding [2]. The heightened interest by NCCAM makes this a critical time for those interested in yoga research and yoga therapy research (yoga/yoga therapy research) to think more critically about the need for standards and methodological guidelines for studies using yoga as an intervention.
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T. Taylor (2013) studied this question.