In regular yoga practitioners, a single yoga session increased positive emotions (engagement, tranquility, revitalization) and decreased exhaustion. All measured psychological resources—mindfulness, body consciousness, self-transcendence, social connectedness, and spiritual peace—also increased and closely tracked the improved emotions. Different types of yoga sessions were associated with changes in different psychological resources. The findings suggest yoga influences multiple psychological mechanisms that enhance emotional well-being, and that specific yoga components may be optimized to target particular mechanisms like mindfulness or spirituality.
An analysis of a randomized trial of 203 veterans with PTSD found that Transcendental Meditation (TM) was more cost-effective than Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy or health education (HE). TM cost $1,504 for 12 sessions, while PE cost $2,822 and HE cost $492. TM was non-inferior to PE for improving PTSD symptoms, and both TM and PE outperformed HE. Clinically significant improvement occurred in 61% of the TM group, 42% of the PE group, and 32% of the HE group. Higher healthcare costs for non-responders offset the lower intervention cost of HE, making TM the dominant strategy over both alternatives over a 5-year horizon.
Yoga interventions vary across multiple dimensions that may influence health outcomes through different mechanisms, yet most studies fail to adequately describe these components. To address this, the Essential Properties of Yoga Questionnaire (EPYQ) was developed to characterize interventions. Reliability and validity data from the final phases of the project identified fourteen key dimensions: acceptance/compassion, bandhas, body awareness, breathwork, instructor mention of health benefits, individual attention, meditation and mindfulness, mental and emotional awareness, physicality, active postures, restorative postures, social aspects, spirituality, and yoga philosophy. The EPYQ demonstrated good internal consistency and test-retest reliability, and evidence supports its validity. Currently, trained objective raters should score interventions to avoid bias, but alternative approaches may be developed. The measure enables linking specific yoga dimensions to health outcomes and optimizing intervention design.