Taking a 90-minute hatha yoga class twice a week for eight weeks steadily lowered symptoms of depression in all 20 men and women with mild to moderate forms of clinical depression that participated in a recent University of California, San Francisco, study. Another 18 depressed adults attending an attention control class for the same period of time, afterwards had somewhat lower depression scores overall, but less than half the improvement, plus they showed greater mood fluctuation.

This article appears in the May 2018 issue of Natural Awakenings.