Your brain on yoga is on a whole new level and here why it helps

Yoga is one of the most underrated forms of exercise around. Many gymgoers and runners will avoid Yoga because it’s not sufficiently high-intensity or offer the same muscle-building benefits they get from their resistance training. Boy, are they missing out!

Yoga improves mobility and reduces joint stiffness. It helps to increase circulation, detoxifies your body, and builds muscular endurance. It also improves organ function, boosts your metabolism, enhances sleep quality, and aids in digestion.

But one of the most underrecognized benefits of Yoga is its ability to increase cognitive function. As one study recently discovered, Yoga is one of the best things you can do to have a faster, better-functioning brain.

Researchers from the University of Waterloo collected 31 participants and subjected them to 25-minute sessions of Hatha Yoga practice, meditation, or quiet reading. Immediately after the sessions, the participants were asked to complete executive function tasks.

Note: The term “Executive Function” refers to mental skills like planning, organizing, remembering things, paying attention, starting on tasks, and prioritizing—essentially the skills that help you to process and act on information you receive.

Both the Yoga practice and meditation helped to improve executive function performance. After the Yoga sessions, the participants were better able to carry out goal-oriented behavior, controlled knee-jerk emotional responses, and form better habitual thinking patterns and actions.

How does Yoga make your brain work better? According to the lead researcher, “Hatha yoga and mindfulness meditation both focus the brain’s conscious processing power on a limited number of targets like breathing and posing and also reduce processing of nonessential information. These two functions might have some positive carryover effect in the near- term following the session, such that people are able to focus more easily on what they choose to attend to in everyday life.”

But it wasn’t just the brain that benefitted from the Yoga sessions. The researchers found that the participants had more energy after Yoga, more so than after meditation. The lead researcher speculated, saying, “There are a number of theories about why physical exercises like yoga improve energy levels and cognitive test performance. These include the release of endorphins, increased blood flow to the brain, and reduced focus on ruminative thoughts. Though,” he added, “ultimately, it is still an open question.”

Whatever the cause, it’s enough to know that Yoga is an amazing brain booster. Not only will it help to improve your cognitive abilities, but it will boost mental and physical energy. That alone makes it worth the effort!

This study looked at Hatha Yoga—a form of Yoga that involves physical poses, meditation, and breathing exercises. Surprisingly, one of the researchers made the true source of the benefits clear, saying, “Although the meditative aspect might be even more important than the physical posing for improving executive functions, there are additional benefits to Hatha yoga including improvements in flexibility and strength. These benefits may make Hatha yoga superior to meditation alone, in terms of overall health benefits.”

That combination of physical movement and meditation techniques can do wonders for your brain. Time to get out that Yoga mat and get in the flow!

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Resources:

Kimberley Luu, Peter A. Hall. Examining the Acute Effects of Hatha Yoga and Mindfulness Meditation on Executive Function and Mood. Mindfulness, 2016; 8 (4): 873 DOI: 10.1007/s12671-016-0661-2

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