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In her fieldwork through 2013–2017, Nizard gathered the accounts of 56 long-term yoga practitioners of mixed religions (including some agnostics) from France, India, and Switzerland. She found no significant difference between cultural identities in the practitioners’ understanding of yoga, but she did find significant differences in their relation to the spirituality of yoga, although all participated in the same practices. So even we, as professionals, cannot agree on what yoga is offering us.

An interesting study from Smith and colleagues36 looked at the different effects of an asana-only yoga class and more comprehensive yoga practice (including ethical and spiritual components). Eighty-one students over the age of 18 at one university in the US participated in the study, and over time participants in both studies showed a decrease in depression and stress and an increase in a sense of hopefulness compared with the control group. However, only the comprehensive yoga group experienced a decrease in anxiety-related symptoms and decreased salivary cortisol from the beginning to the end of the study.