Read The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards for Free Online Page A

miraculous for a focus on material well-being. In essence, they turned yoga on its head by elevating the physical over the spiritual, helping create the secular discipline now practiced around the globe.
    The first chapter details this upheaval. The tale is important not only for revealing the origins of the health agenda but for introducing main characters and themes. For instance, it turns out that a number of yoga miracles—if demonstrably untrue—nonetheless involve major alterations of physiology that can produce a wealth of real benefits. They can lift moods. They can fight heart disease. The newest research indicates that they may even slow the body’s biological clock.
    Not that science has all the answers.
    To the contrary, the investigation of the discipline began in response to an astonishing spectcenter1e nearly two centuries ago that still poses a number of fundamental questions today.
    The science of yoga does more than reveal secrets. It can also shed light on real mysteries.

I
HEALTH
     
    R anjit Singh was an ugly little man who liked to surround himself with beautiful women. In childhood, smallpox had taken his left eye and pitted his face. He was unlettered. But Singh built an empire through force of character, uniting the warring tribes of western India. He became maharajah of the Punjab and amassed great wealth, including the Koh-i-Noor, at the time the world’s largest diamond. He could be generous. Though a Sikh, he gave a Hindu temple a ton of gold. Singh was a military genius and a humane despot. Most of all, he knew men.
    In 1837, Singh learned that a wandering yogi had approached the court to propose live burial as a demonstration of his spiritual powers. The king agreed to sponsor the entombment but undertook a number of precautions. The holy man would be interred in a small building near the palace. In preparation, Singh had three of its four doorways sealed with bricks and mortar, turning the open structure into something resembling a jail—or, less optimistically, a crypt.
    Military officers, as well as European doctors, watched as the yogi arranged himself into a sitting posture. It was most likely a Full Lotus, with legs crisscrossed and feet atop the thighs. One observer likened the pose to that of “a Hindoo idol.” Attendants then wrapped the yogi in white linen and placed him inside a wooden box. It rested in a shallow pit below the building’s floor. No dirt was applied because the yogi had expressed concern about ants attacking his body. The maharajah’s men did, however, secure the box with lock and key. They then padlocked the door at the building’s entrance and erected a mud wall to seal off the improvised cell from the outside world.
    The building was judged to have no hole that could admit air, and no passageway through which food could pass. Sentries kept watch day and night. A senior officerof the court came by periodically to check on security and report back to the maharajah.
    The interment lasted forty days and forty nights—a period that, from biblical times, has stood for completeness and unbroken cycles. Then the king rode up on an elephant, dismounted before his assembled court, and surveyed the results.
    The linen bag looked mildewed, as if it had lain undisturbed for a long time. The yogi’s legs and arms proved to be cold, stiff, and shriveled, his skin pale. No pulse could be detected.
    Then his eyes opened.
    The yogi’s body convulsed violently. His nostrils flared. A faint heartbeat could now be heard. After a few minutes, his eyes dilated. His color returned.
    Seeing the king nearby, the yogi asked in a low, barely audible voice, “Do you believe me now?”
    Yoga in centuries past was a mystic wonderland in which the practices differed from our own in ways that ranged from the mundane to the almost unimaginable. Take instruction. It was done in private rather than in classes. More important, relatively few women did yoga. That was understandable given