Newly published research suggests there is. What’s more, this delightful dynamic helps explain the well-documented link between joy, appreciation, and good health.

“Positive emotion, positive social connections, and physical health influence one another in a self-sustaining, upward-spiral dynamic,” concludes a research team led by psychologist Bethany Kok of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. It found upbeat emotions inspired by a meditative practice led to greater feelings of connectedness with others, which positively impacted “a biological resource that has been linked to numerous health benefits.”

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Newly published research from Norway suggests that a comprehensive yoga program rapidly produces internal changes on a genetic level. The results help explain the well-documented health benefits of this ancient practice.

“These data suggest that previously reported (therapeutic) effects of yoga practices have an integral physiological component at the molecular level, which is initiated immediately during practice,” writes a research team led by Fahri Saatcioglu of the University of Oslo. The team’s study is published in the online journal PLOS ONE.

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Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, a right-wing Christian think tank that has been classified as a hate group, has flipped out over a “wacky” new initiative being tested in U.S. military training programs. No, it’s not the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” — it’s yoga and meditation classes.

A new Mind Fitness Training program being tested in the U.S. military has integrated yoga, breathing classes and meditation alongside other more traditional training regimes to keep soldiers calm and mentally fit and to reduce depression and use of alcohol and drugs. To Perkins, however, this new initiative is a stand-in for one’s personal relationship with God.

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Dear Cary,

I just realized that I have been reading this column on and off since I was in high school! I even wrote a letter to that other guy (the one from the radio) about my first broken heart but he didn't respond. It's OK. I got over it. Maybe you'll answer this one and help me get over my issues. Or maybe not, and I'll get over them anyway. Either way!

Anyway, I am a still-young-but-not-as-young-as-I-used-to-be adult woman in a serious relationship with a truly wonderful man. I am not exaggerating, he is wonderful. He is an actual genius. He is very successful in work but committed first to making the world a better place. He treats his mother and all his friends wonderfully. He is also really charming and hot-to-trot. He's a catch. I love him.

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A Huffington Post rep told me that the makeup artists are paid by the makeup company Fresh. "Off the Mat," the "evangelical" yoga organization, handled the yoga instructors and masseuses, who are all volunteers.

In addition, Huffington Post donated $40,000 to Off the Mat, so not paying the masseuses wasn't a cost-saving measure. To my mind that makes it worse, frankly -- $40,000 to some group dedicated to healing the world through stretching, nothing for people doing actual work at HuffPo's Oasis.

Here's Off the Mat's mission statement:

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He whispered back: “You farted in class?”

I whacked him on the arm – “No!” -- and then, a safe distance from our classmates, I explained with a smile: “My third eye opened.”

He tilted his head at me in the universal expression of “Girl, you crazy.”

It wasn’t so much what I had said, but that I of all people had said it. I’m a skeptic -- philosophically agnostic and politically atheist, if that makes sense – and constitutionally offended by anti-science hocus-pocus. I almost refused to go to this yoga studio when I saw a poster for an astrology workshop in the waiting room. Any time a dubious idea arises in conversation with friends -- whether it’s about ghost sightings or the benefits of a juice cleanse -- I always ask questions about “scientific proof” or “confirmation bias.”

My boyfriend recently told me regarding my methodological approach to things: “Sometimes, the way you think … it’s like a robot.” Once, he even referred to me as “the Magic Killer.”

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I haven't yet read Broad's book, "The Science of Yoga" (subtitle: "The Risks and the Rewards"), but word in the yoga press is that it's actually far more nuanced than the alarmist framing of the magazine article. But that story, with its terrifying stories of strokes and spinal surgeries, will have the biggest audience, so it's worth spending a moment on what, to my mind, it left out.

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I had enrolled in a naked yoga class on impulse. My husband was gone for two months that summer, and in my solitude, I began a spiritual exploration of sorts, signing up for Buddhist book groups, taking long, contemplative walks, and reading a good deal of Eckhart Tolle. I was in a normal, fully clothed yoga class when I struck up a conversation with the woman I'd been paired with for partner poses. She was incredibly flexible.

"Wow, what do you do for a living?" I said.

"I'm actually a yoga teacher myself."

"Oh, like hatha? Vinyasa?" I asked, eager to show off how yoga smart I was.

"Not exactly …" she said. "Naked yoga."

I blinked. She repeated it for me.

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What they probably won't know is that the unnamed guru is a hugely controversial figure who has disappeared from public view amid allegations of manipulation, financial misconduct and intimidation. And as that guru's organization, the Siddha Yoga Dham of America (SYDA), has come under fire, her own guru (yes, gurus also have gurus), the "old lion," has been accused of sexual abuse, molestation and sexual intercourse with minor girls.

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One afternoon in New York, I found myself on a street corner in midtown, licking salt off a slightly burned soft pretzel. I gazed about in a wondering daze, transfixed by the LCD nightmare. Time seemed to stop for me just then, as though I were Dr. Manhattan from "Watchmen," only without the continually erect blue penis. Suddenly, I knew that everything in Times Square -- the breeze-blown fliers for some outlier porn shop, the vaguely contraband luggage stores, the endlessly replicated advertisements for TV shows that never had a prayer, even the tourists from Nebraska -- was part of a larger cosmic reality whose boundaries we can't begin to perceive. The power of the universe, I realized, is transcendent, infinite, all-knowing, beautiful beyond measure. I quaked at the awesome kindness of its eternal might.

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But how, exactly, did yoga become so firmly entrenched in American culture? While its explosion is certainly a product of the last few decades, it still comes as a surprise -- given its massive popularity -- to find that not so long ago, yoga was considered dangerous, possibly evil, and certainly a threat to the chastity and delicate nature of American women. Yoga as home-wrecker? That's a new one.

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Inside a heavily curtained fourth-floor dance studio is a male-only class specializing in "Hot Nude Yoga," a form of sensualized tantric yoga practiced nude.

A few classes are coed, but male-only gatherings tend to be more popular and have become a mini-phenomenon in the gay community, with studios in Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. A studioless group in Chicago practices in the apartment of a nude yoga enthusiast.

Fans say the nudity aids in deepening their yoga practice while building a close -- and emphatically nonsexual -- community. "A lot of people, especially living in New York, don't get the opportunity to connect with people in an intimate way," said Aaron Star, who started the naked yoga movement.

And while participants do occasionally report a frisson of excitement, Star and the practice's aficionados make one thing clear: This is about physical fitness.

"This is about yoga and appreciating your body," said John Cottrell, 40, who teaches naked yoga classes in Salt Lake City twice a month. He calls them a safe, nonthreatening space "to help men especially look at themselves in a different way.

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Today in the Times dining section, Julia Moskin tackles the latter -- and attends what might be the world's most annoying-sounding yoga class in Manhattan:

Calling his mission “yoga for the Everyman,” Mr. Romanelli, 36, plays Grateful Dead songs during class, wears sweat pants rather than spandex, and has already experimented with offering chocolate truffles after chaturanga instruction. “It’s a way of getting people in the door,” he said in an interview.

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To be specific, I was distracted by the moisture he was producing. No sooner had we started sun salutations than the man began to sweat, energetically and abundantly. By the time the class was halfway through, drops of perspiration rolled off his nose with the regularity of a leaking faucet, and a puddle had formed on the floor in front of his mat. Instead of wiping off his face with a towel, he removed his shirt. Now sweat began to drip from a new spot: his nipples.

I, too, was disgusting. Perspiration comes easily to me; I like to say I have a gift. So I was caught off-guard when, after a lovely series of hip openers, the instructor asked us to pair up with a partner. First, I was confused. (A partner? For what?) Then indignant. (I hate group work.) Then anxious. (What if no one wants to be my partner?) By the time I had worked through my emotional process, everyone else was paired up. The young man was mine.

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Like most smokers, I'd considered quitting many times, set arbitrary dates for cessation, pondered patch-gum-Wellbutrin methodology, and never brought any plan to fruition. My choice to stop this fall took me by surprise; I hadn't planned it, and while the process was excruciating, the moment of decision was as simple as going to bed one night and realizing that "it" -- my life as a smoker, which I had really, really loved -- was over. Also unexpected is that so far, I have not backslid, though I'm not hubristic enough to pretend that this won't get harder with the return of warm weather and outdoor dining to Brooklyn, N.Y.

But what has truly floored me is what has happened to my body since I shocked it by taking away its daily feed of nicotine and tar.

This is not going to be a piece about how as soon as I put down the cancer sticks, my heart began pounding stronger, bringing rosy color to my suddenly smooth cheeks, or how my hair grew lustrous and I began tasting food better and my lungs expanded to gulp in billows of fresh air, like a princess awakened from her carcinogenic coffin after the evil Camel's spell was lifted. That's the tale I'd been told by many smug people who urged me to quit over the years. This is about what actually happened.

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I thought at first he said "medication," but I already got my T.B. test, so the nurse doesn't need me for anything. I look around confused and then my Salvadoran celly blurts out bossily, "Joga. It's joga time."

What? Oh, yoga. In jail. Of course. Why not?

A moment later "Hawaii," my other celly, asks mindfully, "Is it gonna be bitches?"

Good question, Hawaii. Is it gonna be bitches indeed. We'll have to investigate.

Hawaii and I shuffle through the pod up to the classroom in our county-issue orange pajamas and flip-flops. Upon opening the door, however, we realize that instead of bitches, we've got two of the gayest, whitest, squarest hippies in America on our hands. In sweat pants. But it's too late. We've entered the "calm zone."

Nothing left to do now but sit cross-legged on the floor with our fellow inmates and listen to the spiritual musings of our sweat-panted man Jerry and his friend, the Michael Bolton of yoga. But it's cool.

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The quirkier aspects of this gown, above and beyond its resemblance to a formal bathing suit, are these: It is machine washable and designed to be stuffed into a tiny bag (hence the name of the item: "Evening Dress in a Bag"). This might be considered cruel and unusual punishment of formalwear by most standards, but Trish Donnally, the editorial director for ZoZa, explains that the item is designed to be kept in the glove compartment of one's SUV for the many impromptu moments when one finds that one suddenly needs to attend a black-tie event. And when the party is over, one can just toss the dress in one's washing machine (regular cycle).

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My room had a sloped ceiling and doors that swelled in their frames. The walls were a shrieking orange, mustard curtains offset the rain-streaked windows and a tangerine bird of paradise crooked its beak from a clay pot on the sill. The air was pungent with perfume, which I eventually traced to a single lilac wilting in a water glass next to my bed.

I flopped down beside it, weary from the bumpy ascent from the San Josi airport by jeep, lurching over boulders slick with mud. As the road, overgrown with jungle debris, had narrowed, my driver Enrique had cursed the plantation owner who'd refused to pave it.

"Course why should he fix a road for his coffee pickers who will never travel beyond the boundary of this plantation?" he'd shrugged.

When our journey had ended in front of an iron gate rimmed with barbed wire, Enrique had smiled at my surprise.

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I knew I was going down when the smallest logistical decisions began to take on huge significance: Should I pick up my son from preschool before or after I go to the grocery store? Should I pump my left breast after feeding the baby on the right, or should I pump the right before feeding the baby on the left? Or pump a bit on both, then feed him the rest?

I was absolutely convinced that each question had a right answer and a wrong one. My days were full of hundreds of mommy pop quizzes. All day and most of the night I was cramming, trying to figure out how to make my life manageable. Happy, I figured, would have to come after manageable.

When I had my relatively brief windows of baby sitter-bought time to write, it was hard -- nigh impossible -- to stop the whirring, the list-making, the trying to figure out the right answers to myriad domestic dilemmas. This mind-set, which I call "tasking," is not the most conducive to creative writing. In fact, I felt sure that tasking was killing the tiny bit of creativity my sleep-deprived brain might still be capable of, but I couldn't stop it, couldn't stop trying to figure out the answers that would lead to control.

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