Medical editorial: What longevity science and yoga therapy have in common

Longevity science has spent a decade mapping the cellular mechanisms of ageing. A new article by Heather Mason, with a foreword by our Founder Dr Sangeeta Mittal, sets out why yoga therapy engages those mechanisms in a way few other practices do.

Most conversations about healthy ageing eventually arrive at the same list. Move more, sleep better, manage your stress. Useful advice, but it rarely explains why – what those things are actually doing inside the body, and why some interventions seem to work far better than others.

Over the past decade, geroscience has begun to answer that question with real precision. Researchers have identified the specific cellular processes that drive ageing — the shortening of telomeres, the accumulation of errors in how our genes are read, the slow chronic inflammation now known as "inflammaging", and the build-up of damaged proteins our cells can no longer clear. These are the hallmarks of ageing, and, crucially, they are not fixed. They respond to how we live.

The article examines what this research means for yoga therapy and it makes an argument we think is worth reading carefully.