Yoga is an ancient mind/body practice that originated on the Indian subcontinent that promotes overall health and well-being and whose ultimate goal is the achievement of a unitive experience of consciousness. Today yoga is very popular also in the general Western public and there are numerous schools or types of yoga with distinct priorities in terms of spiritual and physical practices. Despite several clinical studies and systematic reviews on the effects of yoga, the issue of whether yoga should be recommended as a clinically relevant primary or adjunctive intervention still requires scientific validation.

With respect to specific indications and disorders, several studies report positive effects in favor of yoga interventions, while other studies on the same topic are less conclusive. This effect may depend on different cohorts (age, gender, health status, etc.), variable diagnoses and study entry criteria, different yoga styles, different intensities, frequencies and durations of yoga interventions, attrition effects, and so on. Moreover, as a relatively new field of research most of the research trials are preliminary in nature with typically small sample sizes, moderate methodological quality, and often inadequate control groups, and thus the general findings may be more or less inconclusive.

For this special issue, we invite investigators to submit original research articles and systematic reviews/meta-analyses on the clinical effects of yoga intervention programs. The special issue will start with a summarizing overview on various reviews on the clinical effects of yoga interventions on physical and mental health.

We are particularly interested in high-quality articles related to traditional and therefore complex yoga interventions. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Clinical studies with active control groups focusing on either physical or mental health
• Evaluation of the relative contributions of the different facets of yoga practice (i.e., yoga postures, breathing techniques, mental concentration/relaxation, etc.) to therapeutic outcome
• Optimal duration/intensity of yoga intervention programs
• Sustainability of yoga effects
• Underlying mechanisms contributing to therapeutic efficacy
• Evaluation of yoga in the support of self-competence and self-efficacy in patients with chronic disorders
• Yoga lifestyle and health behavior changes

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/ecam/yoga/ according to the following timetable: