Hindawi Publishing Corporation Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2015, Article ID 428427, 13 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/428427 Review Article The Effects of Bikram Yoga on Health: Critical Review and Clinical Trial Recommendations Zoe L. Hewett,1 Birinder S. Cheema,1,2 Kate L. Pumpa,3 and Caroline A. Smith2 1 SchoolofScienceandHealth,WesternSydneyUniversity,CampbelltownCampus,Campbelltown,NSW2560,Australia 2The National Institute of Complementary Medicine, Western Sydney University, Campbelltown Campus, Campbelltown,NSW2560,Australia 3University of Canberra Research Institute for Sport and Exercise, University of Canberra, Bruce, ACT 2617, Australia Correspondence should be addressed to Zoe L. Hewett;
[email protected] Received 30 July 2015; Revised 8 September 2015; Accepted 9 September 2015 Academic Editor: Hirofumi Tanaka Copyright © 2015 Zoe L. Hewett et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Bikram yoga is a style of hatha yoga involving a standarized series of asanas performed to an instructional dialogue in a heated ∘ environment (40.6 C, 40% humidity). Several studies evaluating the effect of Bikram yoga on health-related outcomes have been published over the past decade. However, to date, there are no comprehensive reviews of this research and there remains a lack of large-scale, robustly-designed randomised controlled trials (RCT) of Bikram yoga training. The purpose of this review is to contextualise and summarise trials that have evaluated the effects of Bikram yoga on health and to provide recommendations for future research.