Searching for solid scientific data on what works and what doesn’t, Hartz and his associate Suzanne Bentler launched a study four years ago. They asked about 150 patients with chronic fatigue to list all of the interventions they were using for their fatigue—from the alternative to the conventional, including physical activity and pharmaceuticals. About two years later, the researchers contacted the study subjects again and asked how they were doing and whether their CFS had improved. When the researchers compiled their data recently, they found some unexpected results: Yoga appeared to help the CFS patients more than anything else. Hartz was shocked.

Hartz warns that these results are preliminary and further study is needed to verify the findings; in fact, his team hasn’t even finished fully analyzing the study data. And if yoga is indeed as helpful as the study suggests, Hartz won’t know without further research whether CFS patients benefit from yoga’s gentle physical activity, meditative component, or some other factor. Even with all of those caveats, however, Hartz’s research offers CFS sufferers an exciting possibility for effectively treating their ailment.

The article, however, did not do enough, in my opinion, to cover cases of people with CFS who have extremely stubborn, chronic forms of the illness. There are differing varieties of CFS – one is where people recover almost fully in about a year, another is where people suffer chronically for years with periods of relapse and remittance, and another where people degenerate over periods of years. The people cited in the article seemed to be of the first variety – two people who got CFS and recovered mostly after a year of rest and recovery.

This is not to say yoga is not helpful for those with severe cases of CFS. It has certainly been instrumental in helping me manage my CFS. But it is not a guaranteed cure – for me, it mostly helps keep the CFS at bay.

For those who have very severe CFS to the point where just getting up and walking can be strenuous, please check out Liz Franklin’s Yoga in Chairs DVDs. (I recently got certified in her Yoga in Chairs, which I’ll share more about in a future article!)