The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards by William J. Broad

(Simon & Schuster, $26)

Online outrage isn’t something one typically associates with dedicated yogis, said Kim Painter in USA Today. Yet that’s the response Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer—and dedicated yoga practitioner—William J. Broad received last month when The New York Times published an excerpt from his new book, highlighting potential injury risks associated with certain poses. Such risks, says Broad in his informative new look at the science and history of yoga, are widely overlooked because of yoga’s reputation as healing activity. But Broad is no basher of the practice. On the whole, The Science of Yoga is a highly balanced account. “Science has yet to show what, if anything, yoga pants do,” but it has opened a window into yoga’s vast benefits.

Broad’s section on injuries is still likely to get the most attention, said Connie Stewart in the Los Angeles Times. There are some frightening stories involving collapsed lungs and damage to sciatic nerves. One woman attempting a pose called the wheel—“essentially making the body arc like a croquet wicket”—placed her head to the floor, bent backward at the neck, and suffered a stroke. But Broad also reports that such injuries are rare. As for yoga’s proven benefits, Broad notes that it has been shown to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and to elevate levels of the neurotransmitters that stave off depression. Yogic breathing can even boost sexual arousal.

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One thing yoga can’t do is help you lose weight, said Annie Murphy Paul in The New York Times. Citing various studies, Broad shows that—at least in its non-aerobic forms—yoga can lower metabolism rather than speed it up. He also traces yoga’s long history, from its origins in India thousands of years ago to the emergence of a “yoga industrial complex” that has created a market of 20 million Americans eager to buy mats, magazines, and the promise of both spiritual awakening and shapely butts. Though Broad’s journey to total yoga enlightenment is “long and meandering,” it’s at least “true to yoga’s own winding path.”