Pain Doesn’t Have to Be Your Normal

The evidence for yoga therapy in chronic pain is strong, and now formally recognised at professional and government levels.

The International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT), the global peak body for yoga therapy, published a dedicated White Paper on yoga therapy and pain (Pearson et al., International Journal of Yoga Therapy, 2020). It states that yoga therapy can make a meaningful contribution to solving the overlapping public health crises of chronic pain, opioid misuse and mental health disorders, describing it as a patient-centred intervention that addresses body and mind and focuses on overall wellbeing and quality of life.

The research is particularly strong for:
– Arthritis and joint pain: An 8-year clinical trial at Johns Hopkins University (Moonaz et al., 2015) cited by IAYT, found that yoga improved arthritis pain by 40%, alongside improvements in physical fitness, psychological functioning and quality of life
– Chronic lower back pain: Multiple systematic reviews confirm yoga reduces pain intensity and improves function, with one 2023 RCT finding yoga therapy significantly outperformed usual care at both 1 and 3 months
– Tension headaches: A systematic review and meta-analysis (Anheyer et al.) found statistically significant improvements in headache frequency, duration and pain intensity
– Fibromyalgia and widespread pain: Yoga consistently improves mood, sleep and pain tolerance

A 2023 paper in Frontiers in Pain Research (Chopra et al.) explored yoga as a mind-body system for pain, identifying its capacity to address both the physical sensations and the neurological sensitisation that keeps chronic pain patterns alive long after the original injury.

In 2024, the Australian Government’s NHMRC Natural Therapies Review included yoga in its evidence evaluation, acknowledging its role as a complementary approach for chronic pain conditions.