Published May 11, 2011 | FOX News

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/10/trend-doctors-prescribing-yoga-meditation/

Doctors may be more accepting of certain complementary and alternative medicine therapies, such as yoga, meditation and deep breathing, than they have been in the past, a new study suggests.

The results show about 3 percent of Americans use such mind-body therapies because of a referral from a physician.

Evidence is growing to support the use of mind-body therapies as a clinical treatment, said study researcher Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, of Harvard Medical School. "Still, we didn't expect to see provider referral rates that were quite so high."

In 2007, 38 percent of Americans used complementary and alternative medicine (referred to by researchers as CAM). Mind-body therapies, which include things like yoga and tai chi, are a type of CAM. Use of CAM in the United States has increased since 2002, with mind-body therapies comprising 75 percent of the rise, the researchers say.