A 2024 systematic review and network meta-analysis published in the journal Sports, examining 44 randomised controlled trials, found that yoga produced the greatest cortisol reduction among all exercises studied. The researchers concluded that yoga works by modulating the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the body's core stress-response system. A separate 2024 meta-analysis in Depression and Anxiety, from University Hospital Tübingen, confirmed that yoga significantly outperforms inactive controls in reducing depressive symptoms. These peer-reviewed trials, published in respected journals, converge on the same conclusion: yoga is a potent physiological intervention, not merely a gentle pastime.
Yoga has become strangely familiar yet strangely misunderstood. This tension sits at the heart of yoga's modern identity crisis. On International Yoga Day, we spoke to experts and practitioners to understand what yoga actually means and why reducing it to a simple wellness trend misses the point entirely.
What the Instructors Say
Simran Bhana, a certified yoga instructor from Kaivalyadhama, does not shy away from the "soft wellness" label, but she uses it carefully. For her, yoga is a self-care tool that aims to reduce emotions related to stress and anxiety, and helps create an atmosphere of calm and inner peace. As a practice, it is gentle and soothing to the system.
That gentleness is actually part of the point. Bhana describes what happens when you hold a physical asana for 15 to 30 seconds—something that might look, from the outside, like simply standing still. "When you hold each asana for that duration, the physical posture transforms into meditation," she explains. "The body learns to stop, breathe, and accept both negative and positive feelings." That stillness creates a connection between the mind and body, and through that connection, mental calmness follows. With that calmness comes mental clarity.
She also points to what pranayama and meditation do to the physical body beyond the obvious: enhanced lung capacity, improved cardiovascular health, monitored blood pressure, reduced fatigue. Crucially, yoga regulates cortisol levels and the nervous system, activating what she calls the "rest and digest mode" of the parasympathetic system, which is why so many practitioners report finally sleeping properly after they start a regular practice. So yes, it is soft in the sense that it does not wreck your joints or spike your heart rate to dangerous levels. But soft does not mean shallow.
The Older Argument
Not everyone is comfortable with the wellness framing at all. Dr Abhishek Ghosh, Dean of the K J Somaiya Institute of Dharma Studies at Somaiya Vidyavihar University, makes a case that is worth hearing in full. "Yoga is not 'soft wellness' because that, by definition, is very transient and skin-deep," he says. "Rather, yoga is the subjective science of the evolution of consciousness, of which wellness is a very critical part and prerequisite."
He goes back to the Bhagavad Gita, specifically to the moment Krishna teaches yoga to Arjuna. "He is not teaching wellness necessarily," Dr Ghosh says, "even though there is enough wisdom for his wellness embedded in the overall teachings." What Krishna is actually teaching, he argues, is threefold: Karma Yoga, the yoga of becoming an instrument of divine will and doing one's activities for the sake of justice and duty; Jnana Yoga, the yoga of acquiring wisdom and putting it into practice in order to gain realisation; and Bhakti Yoga, which is to set one's heart in divine love as a means of experiencing divinity. His conclusion is pointed: "On this International Yoga Day, let us focus on the holistic and integrative definition of yoga, which is much broader than physical asanas or simply wellness."
Both Things Can Be True
Radhika Iyer Talati, founder of the RAA Foundation, holds a position somewhere in between. She is willing to call yoga a key element of soft wellness, but only on her terms. "It is a powerful practice that enhances holistic health by integrating multiple dimensions of physical and mental wellbeing," she says. Yoga encompasses aerobic, anaerobic, and isometric movements, while also improving flexibility, balance, mindfulness, and breath control. By combining asanas, pranayama, pratyahara, and dhyana (meditation), it promotes what she describes as a preventive, sustainable, and well-rounded approach to health. The ultimate goal of yoga, she is clear, is not just physical fitness but a stress-free, grounded, and healthier way of life.
Maybe the most honest answer to the original question is this: yoga is only as soft as you let it be. The mat is available as a gentle stretch, a stress break, a fifteen-minute pocket of calm in a difficult week. But the tradition it comes from is asking something far more demanding—a complete reorientation of how you live, think, and relate to other people. You can take the stretching and leave the philosophy. Millions do. But it is worth knowing what you are leaving behind.
