In June 2015, the science journal publisher Elsevier created an online special issue on the science of yoga: the clinical effects of yoga on mind and body.

It collected some of the latest research into the effects of yoga on anxiety and depression, pain, cardiovascular, autoimmune and immune conditions and on pregnancy – and the findings are fascinating.

The research showed that that yoga may provide broad ranging healthcare benefits for mind and body. It may be practiced to maintain health, reduce particular symptoms, commonly associated with skeletal pain, and assisting in pain relief and enhancing emotional wellbeing.

For example, in research looking at the effect of yoga on anxiety, Dr M Javnbakht and colleagues from the Psychiatry Department of Islamic Azad University in Iran showed that participating in a two-month yoga class can significantly reduce anxiety in women with anxiety disorders. In their paper published in Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, the researchers say this “suggests that yoga can be considered as a complementary therapy or an alternative method for medical therapy in the treatment of anxiety disorders.”

Another study, published in Complementary Therapies in Medicine, examined the effect of yoga on lower back pain. Dr Padmini Tekur and colleagues from the Division of Yoga & Life Sciences at the Swami Vivekananda Yoga Research Foundation (SVYASA) in India carried out a seven-day randomised control trial at a holistic health centre in Bangalore, India, with 80 patients who have chronic lower back pain. They assigned patients to one of two groups – yoga therapy and physical therapy. Their results showed that practicing yoga is more effective than physical therapy at reducing pain, anxiety and depression, and improving spinal mobility.

Yoga also reduces stress in pregnancy, according to research published in Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice. Svetlana Bershadsky and colleagues from the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine tested the effect of yoga on 51 pregnant women, looking at their levels of the stress hormone cortisol and their mood before and after a yoga session.Their results showed that practicing yoga while pregnant can reduce stress, improve mood and even reduce postpartum depression symptoms.

Look at the full special issue for more findings and links to read the full research papers.

Public health is in crisis, warns the NHS, because of obesity. One in four British adults is obese, according to a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation report in 2013, and the UK has the highest level of obesity in Western Europe, ahead of countries such as France, Germany, Spain and Sweden. As a result, the country’s health system is buckling under the pressure of obesity-related conditions including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and cancer, leading to needless deaths and disabilities from avoidable diseases.

Stress has also been described as an epidemic, with a 2010 survey by mental health charity Mind showing that more than 20% of workers phone in sick because of stress. And, according to a Department of Health report, mental ill health is the single largest cause of disability in the UK,with its wider economic costs in England estimated at £105.2 bn each year.

There is no doubt about the physical and mental benefits of yoga to the individual, not least in terms of increased fitness, reductions in stress and anxiety and general improvements in wellbeing.

And public health gains in equal measure, not only from specific benefits of regular yoga practice but because yoga generally promotes a healthy lifestyle of eating well and exercising regularly, which is music to the ears of health chiefs.

In February 2019, Duncan Selbie the Head of Public Health England, announced at a Yoga in Healthcare conference that he wanted yoga to be on the menu of options of "social prescribing" for every GP in the country. This follows on from NHS England saying that yoga should be available for NHS staff in every area of the country.

The core year-round aim of the Brighton Yoga Foundation is to bring yoga to people who do not usually have access to it. We run yoga community outreach work for a range of people who would not ordinarily be able to experience the benefits of yoga. Our annual yoga festival has been free or a "Pay What You Can Afford" model, making yoga accessible to all. We offer free yoga classes at the Festival and free "taster" sessions at other events on the city during the year.

Not everyone will go on to take up yoga long-term but by making it accessible to everyone we greatly increase the chances that some will become regular practitioners and advocates, potentially reducing the pressure on public health services from those people and others they may in turn attract, and generally spreading the message about healthier lifestyles.

We are the only organisation in England to do what we do and public health in and around Brighton & Hove can be the better for it.