Becoming an Evidence Informed Yin Yoga Teacher or Student: Part Two

Ready to level up your Yin Yoga teaching or practice? We're back with part two of our enlightening series, and this time, we're demystifying the process of reading research. In this solo episode,  I'll guide you to improve your research literacy, ensuring you can critically evaluate studies and make sure that the research you read is relevant to you or your students. We will also explore ways to ensure that the research you are reading is credible. To demonstrate how and why, we will look at an acclaimed study from a few years back that claimed that just 12 minutes of daily Yoga can reverse osteoporosis. The study was bogus but the damage is done. Many teachers and students have fallen into the trap of crappy research. I'll show you how to know if what you are reading is actually reputable!

This series is a guided journey to becoming an evidence-informed Yin Yoga teacher or student.  Consider this series your essential guide.

Become an evidence informed Yin teacher or student, enroll in my Yin Yoga Teacher Training Module I: https://yoga.mandyryle.com/yin-teacher-training-module-i/

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Yin Yoga Podcast. I'm your host, mandy Ryle. Today we are moving on to part two of our series Becoming an Evidence-Informed Yin Yoga Teacher or Student. I have to say that this has actually been really fun for me to put this series together, and it's also been actually quite educational for me, because to have to explain something that you do all the time to other people, you have to really make it very simple, and so that's what I've tried to do here is make this as accessible as possible, and so it's been very edifying for me to really consider my own process of how I find, evaluate and use evidence. So in the first episode of this series, we talked about the reasons why I think Yin Yoga is a perfect canvas for applying an evidence-informed approach. I explained to you how you could find evidence and how you could maybe access evidence that is not open access, and then I also talked to you about some of the most important types of studies that you'll be using as a Yin Yoga student or a teacher, as well as some examples and use cases for each of those. So if you have not listened to episode one in this series yet, I think that you'll be best going back listening to that first, and then coming to this one.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Today I am going to help you to do two things that are so, so important. The first thing is I'm going to help you to understand the different components of a typical research paper, and we'll go through these one by one and I'll kind of help you to understand how you're going to use each of these sections, as well as some time saving tips for how you might mix and match your reading of these sections so that you can get through the research a little bit quicker, because it can be very time consuming. And the other thing that I'm going to help you with today is learning how to evaluate research to ensure that it is credible. Unfortunately, we have a huge problem with misinformation and, just quite honestly, there's some bad science out there, and in the yoga world we are not immune to this. In fact, the yoga community has sort of been taken in by several high profile studies in these last many years, and we'll actually look at one of those together so that we can kind of break down how we can be a little bit more critically minded to ensure that the research that we're looking at is actually reputable. So you might be thinking here at the beginning of your evidence informed practice journey that it would just be so much simpler if someone would just hand pick a number of studies on fascia and connective tissue science, if someone would review this data for you and then also teach you how to apply this data either to your practice or your teaching. Well, this resource actually does exist. It is the first module of my in yoga teacher training, which is an awesome resource for anybody who is interested in learning about how to influence connective tissues, how to train them better and also just to be on the right side of the evidence. This training is completely self paced and if you are a yoga teacher, I do offer yoga Alliance continuing education credits. One more thing about this great resource is that there is a payment plan, so it is super, super accessible to just about everybody. Just in case you're interested in learning more about the first module of my in yoga teacher training, I will leave a link in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 4:31

Welcome to the second installment in this short series how to become an evidence informed in teacher or student. So if you have not yet listened to the first installment, I do recommend that you do that first, because it's really going to lay the groundwork for what we're going to talk about today. My goal is to present this information starting from a very high level, top level view and then gradually getting a little bit more granular. So by the time we get to actually looking at individual studies in future episodes, you'll already have a really strong baseline of competency. So starting with that episode is going to give you those big, broad strokes of beginning to apply research to your practice and to your teaching. In that episode we discussed why yen is a particularly wonderful canvas for applying evidence, informed practice, and then I also introduced you to the three types of research that I think are most relevant for us yensters, and I also kind of gave you some use case how you would use each of those individual types of research. And so the next logical step is to learn how to read the research and also how to know if the research that you're reading is actually credible, which is super important. It's so important for us yoga teachers to critically evaluate the quality of studies, and I'm going to teach you how to do all of that, because learning how to distinguish between well designed studies and less reliable sources can help teachers to make informed decisions about incorporating evidence, informed practices, into their teaching.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Okay, so let's just address the elephant in the room. Reading scientific research is a little bit challenging, which is probably why more people don't do it. At the end of the last episode I just introduced a little bit of information about how having some research literacy could really impact adults who are suffering from chronic pain and also our population suffering from chronic pain. Unfortunately, most of us don't learn how to read research, and so it's kind of my mission to at least help us in the Yin Yoga community to get a little bit better at deciphering what the data actually means and finding the data and applying it where it can be the most useful to us. So I'll let you know that research papers generally follow a standard structure.

Speaker 1: 7:31

So there will be sections in the paper like the abstract, the introduction, the methods, results, discussion, and then, of course, there's going to be references. Just knowing what to look for that each of these sections will be present as you read through the paper can already be helpful, because you're knowing what to expect. You're not searching around for it. So the best place to start is going to be the abstract. That's the first thing that you're going to read in that study and, by the way, the abstract is generally included when you find a paper that has not yet been made publicly available. Usually you can at least read the abstract, which can be really helpful, because the abstract is just to find out if the study is even examining something that is relevant to you. So, for example, if you're looking for some information about yin yoga for anxiety in aging populations, right, but the study you find in the abstract says that it is only including pregnant women, for example, that's probably not going to be granular enough for you to take some great conclusions, right? Aging populations versus pregnant women. And so you'll say you know what? This might be really good information, but this is not relevant to me right now. You save yourself some time. So the abstract is going to provide a concise summary of the study's objectives, the methods, the key results and the conclusions, and that will help you to determine if this is a paper that's worth your time.

Speaker 1: 9:21

The next section is going to be the introduction, and in some studies, the introduction can be quite long and, in my experience, if you're already really familiar with the topic, like yoga, for example, the introduction might go into like a whole lot of detail about what yoga is, which you might kind of want to skip through because you're sort of an expert in yoga, right? However, if you're not so familiar with the topic, the introduction can be extremely helpful, and let me kind of reveal to you a couple of use cases for me, how I might use, just simply, the introduction. Often in the introduction, you'll find relevant statistics about that particular topic, right? So if it is anxiety in aging populations, it might actually provide some numbers for you that you can use to help to educate not just yourself but also the people that you work with about why this is really even important to look at, right? So you could potentially find some great statistics in that introduction.

Speaker 1: 10:36

Another thing is that for those of us who are educators right, so I think all of us yin teachers in a sense are educators, and many of us have taken it even further doing, you know, different kinds of trainings, working with groups on specific issues, like you know, pelvic health, for example that introduction can help you to enhance your vocabulary because, as you know, if you talk for a living, like a lot of us yoga teachers, you're always looking for more and better language to help your students to understand concepts which can sometimes be very difficult. And then, of course, if you've spent any amount of time working with individuals, you know that one explanation might work great for one client but another may need a whole different toolkit of terminology, and so that introduction can really help to enhance your vocabulary around the subject matter. So the introduction is going to outline the research question. It's going to provide the context and review the relevant literature so other studies that have already come out kind of in the same vein and in that introduction you're going to want to pay special attention to the rationale for the study and, in particular, the gap it aims to fill in existing knowledge, because, again, that could help you to determine if this is even really something that you need to be spending your time on.

Speaker 1: 12:20

Okay, the next section is arguably the more difficult section, and there are times in the methods when you don't necessarily need to dive all the way into those weeds, because it can get a little weedy and difficult to navigate. Because the method section is really going to describe how the study was conducted and if it is a systematic review, it's going to talk about how the researchers chose the specific studies that they decided to put into that big pooled review of studies. Sometimes that information is really helpful, especially if you really want to make sure the data is relevant to you, and sometimes it's just a little bit too much. You just need to know the basics. So you're also going to find out about the statistical analyses and you can check in this section for details about the sample size, what tools they use for data collection and also maybe any potential biases.

Speaker 1: 13:20

So I want to kind of go back to the first episode of this little series. You might remember that I mentioned a study that found that interoception focus plus movement focused yoga could improve sustained attention and mood. What this particular study found was that movement focus yoga could help to improve mood as well as interoception focused yoga, but that when you combine interoception focus with movement focus, that improved sustained attention. So here's where the methods would be extremely useful to have right Now. I also mentioned that this paper is not yet publicly available, so we have no way of knowing unless we really dig in. What were the methods that they used to determine if someone's attention was better? What were the methods that they used to determine how the mood had been improved? And then even better, in the method section. For those of us who actually teach yoga and interoception would be to find out what were the interventions that they actually used. What was it that they did to improve interoception. So that's where the methods could be extremely useful.

Speaker 1: 15:08

So sometimes you'll get that study and you will be like, yes, I have this whole paper in my hands and it'll say something like practiced interoceptive focus yoga two times a week for eight weeks and that's all you get. I hate this, right? Just side note, I hate this and sometimes it'll give like the full details about what that practice looked like and that is so helpful. So, for example, in a study about hatha yoga for knee osteoarthritis, the complete practice that was used was described in detail, not just for the intervention group, but also for the control group. I love that and that was really, really important, as the intervention group and the control group both did therapeutic exercises, but the yoga group also did asana and breathing exercises, which were explained in detail in the method section, as well as yoga, nidra, chanting and meditation. So I just mentioned a lot of things, which, in my opinion, unfortunately waters down the conclusions we can actually take from this paper, right, because it's not like they just added asana to the therapeutic exercises or just added chanting Instead. They added all of these different things under the umbrella of yoga, but we don't really know which one of them really made the difference. Right, and I'll explain that a little bit too what the actual results of this study were, even though we don't really know what the data variable was that it caused the improvement. So just that information is helpful, though, right, like in that method section, you can be like whoa, they put way too much into this and so therefore, I really need to take the conclusions with a grain of salt. That's the other thing that the methods can do for you is sort of let you know how useful is this information to me and my students and clients.

Speaker 1: 17:22

So the next section that's going to be present in your research is the results section. So you'll want to examine the results section to understand basically what the study found, like what they came up with. So in this section you're going to find a lot of tables, figures, statistical analyses that present the data. I mentioned in the previous episode that this is where I get a little bit stuck. My brain and eyes tend to swim when I see numbers, but you know, a really nice handy chart that sort of breaks it down can really be invaluable. One thing to be cautious about, though, with the results section, is not to draw conclusions solely based on isolated data points. Really, a skilled researcher and research team will be considering the overall trends and patterns to actually determine if the effect was large enough to be relevant or statistically significant. They'll say so.

Speaker 1: 18:29

I'm going to go back to that knee osteoarthritis study. The group that did yoga, not just the therapeutic exercises saw significantly better results. They had reduced walking pain and greater range of motion. They also had less inflammation and swelling in the knee. Again, that's great, but we're not going to be taking this study as the holy grail, because we don't actually know what helped. The fact that they included so much information means that it's not the most reputable study, unfortunately. So this is kind of an example of needing to corroborate that evidence with other studies. We'll talk about that in a second.

Speaker 1: 19:17

Okay, now, this next section is my favorite. So this is going to be the discussion. The discussion is usually more narrative for people who just like to read. This is where you're going to find the stuff that you enjoy the most. So in the discussion section. The authors interpret the results, they discuss the implications of the results and relate them to the research question. And this is where you kind of get to think about, based on what you read in the results, the authors reasoning and whether they overstated or maybe generalized their findings a little bit. And again, that's a red flag If you see that unfortunately, you have to take what you learned from that research with a grain of salt.

Speaker 1: 20:12

So here's my tip here for these sections is that when you are just starting out, read the abstract and then skip right to the discussion. This will help you immensely to contextualize the paper, because you'll already kind of know what happened. It'll start to kind of peak a little bit of curiosity. They're going to make these conclusions and you're going to go oh, but how do they know that? And so then you can kind of start to dig into the results and you can dig into the methods and you will start to develop a picture of the research which is more relevant and customized to you and to your interests. So you'll start with the abstract, you'll skip right to the discussion and then from there see what in the discussion kind of got your interest, and then maybe you'll go back all the way to the introduction, maybe you'll just check into the methods, maybe you'll just look for some charts to see where and how that data came to be. We've zoomed through this, right, I'm making it seem so easy and it can be. It can, let's say, you get to that discussion and you're like, oh okay, that's kind of what I needed to know. And, by the way, I got to get going here.

Speaker 1: 21:41

It's possible that that discussion could tide you over for some time and then maybe in the future, when you're looking for something that is a little more conclusive, you're needing to provide a little bit more context. If you are working specifically with a client or you're working with a training group, you know where to find that data. Now you can dig in when you need it, right, so you don't have to pour through all of that data the first time you open up that study. I have a Google Drive folder with gazillions of studies that I have saved over the years and I always put like a really descriptive name when I save it. And that way, when I'm looking specifically for something regarding the sacroiliac joint, I have a whole folder about research regarding the sacroiliac joint. Right, I have it quick and at my fingertips and I can delve into the data as much or as little as I need.

Speaker 1: 22:39

So the next thing, after you have evaluated that discussion, is to check for the citations and the references. The citations and references can help you to identify related research. So let's say you read that article about the SIJ, but then you get to the citations and you see four other studies which have names which are kind of interesting to you. Now you have a great way to find them Just click on the citation. It's hyperlinked generally. So the next two sections that are usually in research are really going to be mostly oriented toward disclosing any conflicts or biases and also any sources of funding.

Speaker 1: 23:32

So let's use this to kind of springboard our discussion about how to make sure that the paper that you're reading is actually reputable. This is not straightforward and I think that alone is information that really empowers you to know that, even though XYZ may be present, that doesn't necessarily mean that the study is credible, that there may be other things that you need to look for that we've already discussed in this episode. So the first thing you could do is to try to find papers that have been published in well-known peer-reviewed journals. That doesn't necessarily mean that the study is credible, but it's like a pretty good sign because those publications like, for example, the Harvard Medical Review they have a strong interest in being credible. So you can feel relatively assured that they've done their due diligence to avoid future potential embarrassment right. Something about this study could be really embarrassing, not just for the researchers but also for the publication.

Speaker 1: 24:43

Another thing that you'll want to look at is at the very end of this study, most of the studies will have a disclosure about their funding source. So if a study is examining the effectiveness of a product for example, I remember some breathing apparatus you blow into this thing and it provides resistance and it's supposed to increase diaphragmatic strength. And I was looking up information about breathing practices and I came across this research right, and of course, the research found that this apparatus, this product, was highly effective at improving diaphragmatic strength. But then the only issue was that the study was actually funded by the manufacturer of that particular product. You may also find at the end of this study that the researchers will disclose any potential biases. So maybe they work for an organization that has a product like this. Or I ran across one study where one of the researchers actually owned a company that taught people how to teach breathing techniques and they were a trainer of that breathing technique. So just make sure to look for those biases, because one of the goals of becoming evidence informed is that we are no longer parroting disinformation, that we are on the good side, the truth side.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Sometimes, unfortunately, we can find that even studies which are highly flawed may end up being highly acclaimed in the media, which can be really confusing. And even in the yoga world we've seen some really shady studies that got this kind of treatment in the media. The one that is top of mind is a study called 12 minute daily yoga regimen reverses osteoporotic bone loss. But really any study which is associated with Dr Lauren Fishman is probably going to be pretty shady. So, even though you might initially be drawn in by all of this great media attention that this study got, one way to really immediately know if a study is probably not worth your time is if the results are just so incredible. The effect size is just insanely un-plausible.

Speaker 1: 27:24

So in this study, significant improvements in bone mineral density with just 12 minutes a day of asana practice. And of course it shows this in this handy dandy chart. The full text article actually provides the asana which are included in the program as well, so it looks kind of reputable. You're like, oh okay, I see it, there's a chart and it makes it look really good. But even when you look at these asana that are included in the program, none of them, according to the best evidence on bone health, even remotely meet the criteria for providing adaptive stress to bones sufficient to improve bone mineral density. So this is why just one study is never enough. You're just going to keep reading research for the rest of your life, because then you can look at that and you already have this body of knowledge that's on board with you. It's now implicit Understanding that bone mineral density with regard to movement can only be improved through heavy heavy resistance training or impact training like plyometrics or running, and there's nothing in this page of asana that even comes close none of that in this study. So if the results look too good to be true, or they've disclosed some of the methods but they're sort of like sparse, that's a really good sign. It's not worth your time.

Speaker 1: 28:59

Another example is like I often run across studies that come from institutions in India with very extreme claims and a lot of these institutions that are conducting this research are institutions that provide yoga right. So in this case the BS detector is going to go up twice because there's a really high risk of bias, because the institution has a vested interest in making yoga look more effective. And then the other part is that very often the results are just way over the top. There's not to say that there aren't great studies coming out of Indian institutions as well, so we shouldn't just like blank it, throw these away. But I'm trying to arm you with tools so you can find the good ones, so that you can find the real strategies that can help you in your teaching and help your students and your clients. So, in general, there are three dimensions one can use to determine credibility, which we've already kind of discussed, but we'll break them down here the method and data transparency.

Speaker 1: 30:12

The analytic reproducibility and robustness and the effect replicability. So you know, a lot of times a study will come out which is showing something that is really awesome, and all of the methods, everything's on point, it's just perfect. And we all look at it and we say, okay, this is cool. Now let's see if somebody can replicate it. So the first couple of studies can be exciting and they can certainly trigger more interest and more research into that area, but we need to be a little bit conservative about how we take those results in the first couple of studies that are showing something really cool. So let's break it down a little bit. When you pick up a paper and you're going to give it a read, what you'll want to see is a clear statement of purpose in the abstract, which defines the study in detail, provides the statistical results, discusses any correlations and can be reproduced by other research teams. You will be particularly cautious of studies that may gross over generalizations and you'll want to make sure that the conclusion is reasonable and logical in the context of the findings, and that's another reason why, if you go all the way to the end to the discussion, sometimes you can see if there's anything that may make the study not worth your time.

Speaker 1: 31:51

Remember that reading and understanding scientific research is the skill that improves only with practice, just like your yoga practice. You probably were not as adept at it when you started as you are today. You have put in the time. You have learned intellectually, emotionally, anatomically, even down to a cellular level, right. The same thing happens with reading research. You'll become more adept at critically evaluating and extracting valuable insights from papers the more you read them.

Speaker 1: 32:33

As I shared at the beginning of this episode, I really have a passion for evidence-informed practice and I really do believe that evidence-informed practice is the future of yoga and yoga teaching. So I hope very much that this was helpful. If you're looking for more guidance on becoming an evidence-informed yin teacher, I really would recommend that you have a look at the module 1 of my yin yoga teacher training. My yin yoga teacher training is divided into two modules. Module 1 is online, completely self-paced, and it's mostly about the science of fascia and connective tissue and how we might apply that science to our practice or our teaching. In the second module, that one is actually in-person and that's going to be more the boots-on-the-ground nitty-gritty aspects of teaching the practice and using that evidence with our students. So if you're interested in learning all about connective tissue what it is, how it behaves, how we could train or influence it in yin and what that means for our teaching and especially our teaching language I really recommend that you have a look at that module 1. I'm going to add a link to the show notes in case you want to give it a gander.

Speaker 1: 34:03

I also want to let you know that in November, I'm going to be offering two live Q&A calls for those enrolled in module 1. This is not an option that I always offer. Usually, module 1 is completely self-guided. You have the course forever. You can consume the content at whatever speed that you may like, but I think to have access to me and other people who are learning alongside with you is incredibly valuable.

Speaker 1: 34:34

So that's why I'm offering those two calls. Those are included in the price for your module 1. So I highly recommend that you register this month. If you've been sitting on the fence, now is the best time to do it. I do offer a payment plan, so it is totally, totally doable. Okay, so in the next installment of this series on becoming an evidence-informed yin teacher or student, we are going to dive into some research that I think has been particularly influential to me as a yin teacher, and I can't wait to share some of that with you so you can kind of see how we use all of this stuff that we've been talking about in practice. So I hope to have you for the next installment.