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On the other hand, addressing aspects of spiritual wellbeing, a study by McCabe and colleagues found significant improvements in pain intensity, physical function, mood, and cognitive function.22

In 2015, Koenig23 published a systematic and thorough review of quantitative research in which he studied findings from over 3000 studies of the effects of religion and spirituality on mental health, health behaviors, and physical health. All 3000 were positively affected by spirituality and religion. It will be exciting to see the results of a new and as yet unpublished study conducted by Duke University in the US examining the effects of religiosity on the length of telomeres (related to the process of wear and tear of the body).

Emerging research confirms the connection between spirituality and lives, our physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing and functioning. Yet spirituality continues to be so closely related to religiosity that it is often used synonymously. In our opinion, although religion and yoga both strive to lead humanity into spiritual transformation, there is a significant difference between the two. Religion demands faith as it is based on dogma passed down from “authority.” That is its starting point. On the other hand, yoga is entirely existential, experiential, and experimental. “Yoga is known through yoga. Yoga arises from yoga.”24 It has to be lived, experienced, and experimented with, with the helping hand of a teacher. Yoga depends on testing hypotheses in experience and in this sense it is scientific, even though the domains of that experience extend beyond the objectively measurable.