Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, PhD has been fully engaged in basic and clinical research on the efficacy of yoga and meditation practices in improving physical and psychological health since 2001. He has practiced a yoga lifestyle since 1972 and is a certified instructor in Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. He is the Director of Yoga Research for the Yoga Alliance and the Kundalini Research Institute, Research Associate at the Benson Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, Research Affiliate of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He has conducted clinical research trials evaluating yoga interventions for insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic stress, and anxiety disorders and in both public school and occupational settings. Dr. Khalsa works with the International Association of Yoga Therapists to promote research on yoga and yoga therapy as the chair of the scientific program committee for the annual Symposium on Yoga Research and as editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy. He is medical editor of the Harvard Medical School Special Report An Introduction to Yoga and chief editor of the medical textbook The Principles and Practice of Yoga in Health Care.
Dr Lorenzo Cohen is Professor and Director of the Integrative Medicine Program at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Distinguished Clinical Professor, Fudan University Cancer Hospital, Shanghai, China.
Dr Cohen conducts research examining the biobehavioral effects of integrative medicine practices aimed at reducing the negative aspects of cancer treatment and improving quality of life including studies of meditation, Tibetan yoga, Patanjali-based yoga, Tai chi/Qigong, and other strategies such as stress management, emotional writing, neurofeedback, and acupuncture. He is interested in examining different types of complementary programs that can be easily incorporated into conventional treatment to decrease the psychophysiological consequences associated with treatment and improve outcomes.
The grandson of the late Vanda Scaravelli, author of Awakening the Spine and yoga teacher of many, Dr Cohen is especially interested in researching the effects of yoga, meditation, and other mind-body practices. Dr Cohen is also conducting research to demonstrate that lifestyle changes can influence cancer outcomes. Ongoing studies are examining lifestyle changes in the areas of diet/nutrition, physical activity, and stress management/social network to change the risk of developing cancer and influencing outcomes in those with cancer.
Timothy McCall, MD is a board-certified internist, and the author of two books, including Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing (Bantam). He practiced medicine for more than 10 years in the Boston area before devoting himself full-time to investigating and teaching yoga therapy. He is the founder/director of Yoga As Medicine seminars and teacher trainings and the co-director, alongside his wife Eliana, of the Simply Yoga Institute, a yoga therapy center in Summit, New Jersey.
Timothy has traveled extensively, studying with many of the world's leading yoga teachers and yoga therapists including BKS Iyengar, TKV Desikachar, Patricia Walden and Donald Moyer. He has practiced yoga and meditation from various traditions for over 20 years and Tantra for more than a decade. Since 2005, he has studied with a traditional Ayurvedic doctor, Chandukutty Vaidyar in Kerala, India.
McCall's articles have appeared in dozens of publications, including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, the Los Angeles Times and the Nation. In 2004-2005, he was a scholar-in-residence at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, MA. Since 2002, he has been the medical editor of Yoga Journal. He lectures and teaches yoga therapy seminars worldwide.
Shirley Telles has a degree in conventional medicine (MBBS) and a MPhil and PhD in Neurophysiology. Both MPhil and PhD theses were on the effects of yoga practice. Dr. Telles received a Fulbright fellowship in 1998 and in 2001 an award from the Templeton Foundation for creative ideas in neurobiology. In 2007 she received an Indian Council of Medical Research Center for Advanced Research to study meditation's effects through autonomic variables, evoked and event related potentials, polysomnography and fMRI. Dr Telles has been the director of Patanjali Research Foundation, Haridwar, India; www.patanjaliresearchfoundation.com since 2007. Dr. Telles has over 198 research papers cited in bibliographic databases and authored 7 books. She is an enthusiastic practitioner of yoga.
