About 1 in 6 adults in the U.S. practices yoga, data shows

Nearly 1 in 6 U.S. adults participated in the age-old practice of yoga in the past year, new government data shows.

As Americans increasingly turn to alternative or complementary health care approaches, “the biggest increase is increasing [have been] in the practice of yoga,” said researchers Nazik Elgaddal and Julie Weeks. They work at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), which is part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Their new report is based on 2022 data from the ongoing National Health Interview Survey.

According to the data, yoga remains more popular among women (23.3% reporting use in the past year) than men (10.3%).

It is also more popular among young people (18 to 44 years old), with 21.3% in that age group saying they practice yoga, than middle-aged people (14.1%) or people 65 or older (8%).

The wealthy also practice yoga more often than the less wealthy. Overall, 23% of people in the highest income bracket of the survey said they practiced yoga, compared to 10.4% of those at the lowest income level.

As for why Americans engage in the age-old Indian practice, about 80% of Americans say so yoga practitioners cited “the restoration of overall health,” the CDC team found. This was especially true for people aged 45 to 64.

Meditation is often performed in combination with yoga: Just over 57% of all practitioners said they meditated as part of yoga practice. The data showed that lower-income people were more likely to practice meditation and yoga together than affluent people.

Pain relief was another reason cited by many yoga practitioners, with about 29% saying they practiced yoga to “treat or manage pain,” the survey found.

Again, people with lower incomes who practiced yoga were more likely to say they used the practice to ease pain, compared to people with higher incomes.

The findings were published on June 12 as a NCHS Data Summary.

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