The 100th Anniversary Of A Yoga Research Journal
And The Rockstar Wellness Practitioner You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Jagannatha Ganesa Gune was 37 years old and living in Vadodara in the Indian state of Gujarat when he decided that there had to be a scientific basis for the yoga disciplines that he practiced. Being college-educated and a strict rationalist, Gune set out to conduct scientific experiments with the help of some of his students in a laboratory at the state hospital there.
The scientific study of yoga became Gune’s life’s work and, in 1924, he founded the Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center in Lonavala, Maharashtra. To spread the results of the Center’s scientific inquiry, he published the Yoga-Mīmāmsā [1] research journal in October, 1924.
This October, in the year 2024, 100 years later, Yoga-Mīmāmsā is still being published, and we see the fruits of Gune’s labors in the active scientific study of yoga all over the world. Today, yoga, along with disciplines it encompasses, like meditation and breathwork (pranayama), are all part of mainstream wellness discussions as well as active scientific inquiry.
West Meets East
In 1924, outside of India, yoga was largely considered a mystical philosophical practice if it was considered at all. It took pioneers willing to deal with the extreme racist and classist attitudes of the time to change the public’s perception [3].
By publishing Yoga-Mīmāmsā in English, and sending copies abroad, Gune (known commonly as Swami Kuvalayananda) was able to greatly expand interest in yoga research. In order to reach non-scientific consumers, early issues of Yoga-Mīmāmsā contained a “scientific” section, a “semi-scientific” section, and a “popular” section. The popular section often described yoga postures in detail while the semi-scientific section might have a breakdown of some part of human anatomy. Gune noted that many people would request copies so that they could use the yoga posture details for their own practice since few instructional guides existed at the time and certainly none with so many details and photos. By 1930, his research center had published books on asana and pranayama.
Physical Culture Critique
To his credit, Gune was not afraid of critiquing popular health trends of the time. In volume 3, issues 1 and 2 (circa 1928), Gune addressed the then-famous German bodybuilder Max Sick (known as Maxick) whose book Muscle Control, published in 1910, was, perhaps, the bible of men’s physical fitness [2] in the West for the first half of the 20th century. Gune was impressed that Maxick, at least, attempted to be analytical about his techniques.
But Maxick’s methods, which today we’d recognize as simply bodybuilding with attention to various muscular isolations, did not convince Gune that there was much value proposition other than making major muscle groups stronger. Gune recognized that Maxick was promoting the activity of muscle building without attention to other aspects of physiological health, namely the “nervous, glandular, and respiratory” systems. Gune wrote:
“ In their enthusiasm for muscle building, they [Maxick] have neglected the claims of the other most important systems working in the human body….there is still little evidence to show that the Western physical culturist is in a mood to assign the legitimate places to the other systems of human bodily mechanism.”
In Gune’s estimation, the yogic system — including some Ayurvedic techniques — was much more thorough than just bodybuilding, and that the key difference was attention to the central nervous system.
“…the Western physical culturists have not paid due attention even to the real source of muscular power — we mean the nerves….What we want to suggest is that their systems are suffering from some serious disadvantages from which the Yogic system is entirely free and that the Yogic system can stand comparison with them very favourably.”
An Enduring Legacy
One could argue that merely by studying yoga through a scientific lens, Gune succeeded in transforming it from a hermetical exposition shrouded in sensational claims into an everyday practice.
The medical anthropologist, Joseph Alter, wrote of Gune [4]:
“[He] felt that mystical, secretive, and arcane interpretations of Yoga obscured the truth rather than revealed it. This was not at all to say that Gune sought to “secularize” and purely objectify Yoga or define its truth value in terms of science. Rather he wanted to reveal the basic Universal Truth manifest in Yoga by demystifying it through science. Thus, in his view, there had to be explanations for how and why yogic power could be achieved, and the idea that these powers were magical was to him anathema.”
Throughout his nearly 40 years of work, Gune’s scientific research revealed that yogic techniques have substantial impact on human physiology. One hundred years later, yoga is thriving and there are many ongoing scientific studies. There are also now at least three scientific journals dedicated to yoga research, and at least four others with significant yoga-related content [5]. The journey continues.
[1] The name of the journal, Yoga-Mīmāmsā, changed slightly between volume 5 and 6. It was originally named Yoga-Mīmānsā. Mīmāmsā means “investigation” or “discussion”. The journal was not published between 1934 and 1956. The January, 1934 issue (Vol 5, Number 1) was the last issue until publishing began again in June, 1956 (Vol 6, Number 1).
[2] Throughout much of the 20th century, muscle-building was considered a healthy activity for men, but cultural norms of the time emphasized slenderness for women. Muscular women were often considered unfeminine or “unnatural.” Women’s body-building competitions did not start until the 1970’s.
[3] Gune was not the only person in India attempting to promote yoga to a global audience in the early 20th century. Shri Yogendra also conducted some scientific research on yoga, but he is better known as the founder of the concept of a yoga studio. He created the Yoga Institute in 1918 near Mumbai and also The Yoga Institute of America in Harriman, New York. Yogendra also published a journal named, simply, YOGA starting in 1933 (it was later renamed to Yoga & Total Health).
[4] Alter, Joseph S.. 2004. Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy (pp. 82–83). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
[5] Besides Yoga-Mīmāmsā, there is also the International Journal of Yoga and the Journal of Yoga & Physiotherapy. Journals with significant yoga content include the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine,
Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Complementary Therapies in Medicine, and BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies.
