Four days of Yoga that surprised Harvard

I came across a study this year that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about, partly because it’s fascinating and partly because I think it says something about the classes we all turn up to, or teach, every week without giving them much thought. (For anyone who likes the detail, the references are at the bottom.)

I came across a study this year that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about, partly because it’s fascinating and partly because I think it says something about the classes we all turn up to, or teach, every week without giving them much thought. (For anyone who likes the detail, the references are at the bottom.)

A team of researchers in India and at Harvard followed a group of men 🙋🏽‍♂️ going through opioid withdrawal in hospital. Everyone got the usual medication, and half of them also did some gentle yoga.

The hardest part of the withdrawal, the first stretch where people feel at their worst and are most likely to give up, lasted around nine days for the medication-only group. For the yoga group, it lasted only five days. The yoga group were also less anxious, fell asleep more easily and felt less pain.

What I find most fascinating is how ordinary or normal the yoga was. There was nothing fancy (like warrior 3 into half moon and back again 🫣), or complicated. Just steady, slow and "mindful" postures, slow conscious breathing and guided relaxation. And only ten times over two weeks and always in a group.

When reading these studies I always ask what the study means by Yoga? 🤷🏾‍♂️ Was it the the style?, poses, the breathing, or simply having a teacher turn up and treat these men like people? The answer is probably a bit of everything. Part of the improvement came from their nervous systems shifting out of “fight or flight” and into “rest and recover”, which is exactly what slow breathing is good at. But that only explained part of it. The rest was probably better sleep, less anxiety and the things nobody measured, like being in a room with other people, being guided, and having somewhere to put your attention for 45 minutes.

One detail I loved is that during the breathing practice, their stress levels actually went up for a moment, because slowing your breath takes real effort when your body is in chaos. Afterwards they settled, and by the end of the two weeks they were calmer at rest than when they started. That’s training: a small challenge, then recovery, repeated until the body remembers its own way back to calm. Back to how it should be in the absence of a real stressor.

It’s only fair to say it was a small study, all men, all in hospital, and the yoga was added to their medication rather than replacing it, so it needs repeating before anyone rewrites the rulebook.

But here’s why I’m sharing this. If you come to class just once a week, please don’t think it isn’t doing anything. Every time you slow your breath, challenge yourself a little and then let yourself recover, your nervous system 🧠 gets another lesson in finding its way back to calm, whether you feel it that day or not. And if you are a teacher and only teach one class a week, maybe to five or six people in your conservatory, don’t think your efforts don’t count. When you guide someone into a slower more conscious breath, you’re working on their vagus nerve, the main cable of that rest-and-recover system. And what happens in the vagus doesn’t stay in the vagus. It travels to their heart, their gut and their sleep.

That’s the power of yoga we rarely get to see. In modern times, especially in the West, we tend to judge our practice by what we can see in the mirror: the difference it makes to our muscles, our triceps and all those things. And that’s all valuable don't me wrong. But every now and again, I’d love you to think about the deeper physiology 🧠. Think about everything that makes us who we are and drives how we express ourselves, how we think and how we feel. How you’re going to respond to your children today, or to our partner when we get home. Or how you’re going to manage yourself when the day doesn’t go to plan. All of that is driven by physiology 🧠, the stuff we can’t necessarily see, and yoga works on that far more than it does on the physical side we can see 🤯.

So don’t judge your practice purely by the effect you feel it’s having on your body, your hamstrings or any other muscle. If you trust the process, trust the science and create a little discipline around it, even one class a week can start to change your physiology in ways no mirror will ever show you.

In the book theYoga Sutras, the author Patanjali’s only real instruction for posture was that it should be steady and comfortable. The longer I teach, the more I suspect he wasn’t talking about the body at all.

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Zahir Akram

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References 1. Goutham S, Bhargav H, Holla B, Mahadevan J, Nagendra RP, Jasti N, Narasimha VL, Mehta UM, Varambally S, Venkatasubramanian G, Chand P, Gangadhar BN, Hill KP, Keshavan M, Murthy P. Yoga for Opioid Withdrawal and Autonomic Regulation: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online 7 January 2026. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2843424 Free full text (PubMed Central): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12780978/ (Study design, 59 participants, 30 yoga and 29 control, ten 45-minute sessions over 14 days, median recovery of 5 vs 9 days, improvements in heart rate variability, anxiety, sleep and pain.) 2. Powell A. Yoga can help cut severe, initial opioid-withdrawal period in half, study finds. Harvard Gazette, 24 February 2026. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/02/yoga-can-help-cut-severe-initial-opioid-withdrawal-period-in-half-study-finds/ (Group sessions, the specific practices used, and comments from the Harvard researchers.) 3. Yoga accelerates opioid withdrawal recovery. Healio, 23 January 2026. https://www.healio.com/news/psychiatry/20260123/yoga-accelerates-opioid-withdrawal-recovery (Parasympathetic activity accounting for 23% of the effect.) 4. Jha S. Drug withdrawal takes 9 days, yoga brings it down to 5: NIMHANS study. The South First, 16 February 2026. https://thesouthfirst.com/health/drug-withdrawal-takes-9-days-yoga-brings-it-down-to-5-nimhans-study/ (Stress markers rising briefly during breathing practice, then improving at rest by day 15.) 5. Gratzer D. Reading of the Week: Yoga for Opioid Withdrawal? The New JAMA Psych Paper. 29 January 2026. https://davidgratzer.com/reading-of-the-week/reading-of-the-week-yoga-for-opioid-withdrawal-the-new-jama-psych-paper-also-maois-history-and-ai-associated-psychosis/ (Average age of 25.6, and the study's limitations: small sample and no active control group.)