Oka, Takakazu, Lkhagvasuren, Battuvshin · BioPsychoSocial medicine · 2025 · DOI
This small study looked at whether a gentle yoga practice done while lying down could help ME/CFS patients who experience dizziness or fast heartbeats when standing up (a condition called POTS). Ten women with ME/CFS practiced this special yoga for 12 weeks, and the researchers measured their blood pressure and heart rate before and after standing. The two patients who had POTS at the start showed improvement and had normal responses after the yoga practice.
POTS affects a subset of ME/CFS patients and contributes significantly to disability and symptom burden. This study suggests a potential non-pharmacological intervention that may help normalize cardiovascular responses to postural changes, which could reduce symptom severity and improve daily functioning for affected patients. Larger controlled trials could establish recumbent isometric yoga as an evidence-based adjunctive treatment option.
This pilot study does not prove that recumbent isometric yoga is an effective POTS treatment, as it lacked a control group and included only two POTS cases. The small sample size and lack of randomization limit generalizability, and the findings may reflect placebo effects or natural variation in POTS symptoms rather than specific yoga benefits. Causation cannot be established from this observational design.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Oka, Takakazu & Lkhagvasuren, Battuvshin (2025). Effects of recumbent isometric yoga on the orthostatic cardiovascular response of patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.. BioPsychoSocial medicine. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13030-025-00336-w
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-oka-2025-effects-recumbent-2,
author = {Oka, Takakazu and Lkhagvasuren, Battuvshin},
title = {Effects of recumbent isometric yoga on the orthostatic cardiovascular response of patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.},
journal = {BioPsychoSocial medicine},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.1186/s13030-025-00336-w},
note = {PubMed: 40890788},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/oka-2025-effects-recumbent-2},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/oka-2025-effects-recumbent-2
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