“A new study by scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) has concluded that yoga may be helpful for low back pain”, according to a University of Maryland release.

“We found that the practice of yoga was linked to pain relief and improvement in function,” said the study’s lead author Dr. L. Susan Wieland. “For some patients suffering from chronic non-specific low back pain, yoga may be worth considering as a form of treatment,” release added quoting Wieland.

Wieland and her co-authors of this study, titled “Yoga treatment for chronic non-specific low back pain”, reviewed 12 studies looking at yoga for low back pain. Most of the trials, which included over 1,000 participants, used Iyengar, Hatha, or Viniyoga forms of the practice. The research team also included scientists from the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom and the University Hospital of Cologne in Germany.

Meanwhile, Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, called this UMSOM lead study looking into possible usage of yoga for back pain “a step in the positive direction”. Zed urged all major world universities to explore various benefits yoga offered.

Yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, was a mental and physical discipline, for everybody to share and benefit from, whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization, Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, noted.

Rajan Zed further said that yoga, although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all. According to Patanjali who codified it in Yoga Sutra, yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical.

According to US National Institutes of Health, yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress. According to a “2016 Yoga in America Study”, about 37 million Americans (which included many celebrities) now practice yoga; and yoga is strongly correlated with having a positive self image. Yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche, Zed added.