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There are many health benefits of yoga from improving erections to overcoming premature ejaculation. Yoga also improves overall health including sexual health such as men who have prostate cancer. Now, we’re going to explore some yoga brain health benefits.
Of course, there are other known and effective ways to boost brain health such as drinking coffee and regular exercise. Certainly, yoga has many positive impacts on the brain. And, that’s what we’re going to explore.
Known Yoga Brain Health Benefits
A lot of yoga practitioner says that upon stepping out of a yoga class, they feel better from head to toe. Yoga relaxes the muscles, achieve a sense of vitality and mental clarity.
Today, modern medicine and science are starting to embrace the positive benefits of yoga overall health in both mind and body. As a matter of fact, some doctors are now prescribing yoga as part of treatments1 for eating disorders, anxiety, depression, and insomnia.
Even inmates experience a boost in mood and decrease anxiety with yoga2.
Our findings provide support for the idea that yoga is effective in improving psychological well-being among inmates and may form a part of effective rehabilitation programs.
31. Reduces Stress
Probably, one of the most significant yoga brain health benefits is its ability to reduce stress. Managing and keeping stress level at bay is essential as it can cause many unhealthy consequences both mental and physical.
In one study3, the researchers find that practicing yoga has the following benefits including;
- Enhance muscular strength and body flexibility
- Promote and improve respiratory and cardiovascular function
- Help in recovery from and treatment of addiction
- Reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain
- Improve sleep patterns
- Enhance overall well-being and quality of life.
Notice that reduces stress is one of the many health benefits of yoga practice. In turn, this leads to mood improvements and mood regulation.
Additionally, one study4 find that yoga decreases inflammation in the body. Inflammation is often cause by chronic stress, which eventually wrecking havoc to the body.
22. Makes You Calm and Alert
Just like meditation, yoga also involves deep breathing5. One known benefit of deep breathing is that it works on the brain’s hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA).
The HPA controls the body’s sympathetic nervous system, or the body’s fight or flight response. It also controls the parasympathetic nervous system, which signals the body to relax.
Achieving a balance between these two nervous systems in the body cultivates not only calmness but also alertness.
13. Keeps The Brain Young
Clearly, a regular yoga practice does not only provides benefit to the physical body but also mentally. One study6 finds that older adults with ages over 55 years old who have mild cognitive impairment experience improvement in memory.
The participants spent 12-weeks practicing either memory training or kundalini yoga. Those who do kundalini yoga have executive function boost.
The Kundalini Yoga group showed short- and long-term improvements in executive functioning as compared to Memory Enhancement Training, and broader effects on depressed mood and resilience.
Additionally, there are studies7 that find that meditation causes certain changes to the brain. Particularly, the volume increases in the brain regions responsible for attention, awareness and self-related thinking.
Altogether, our findings seem to add further support to the hypothesis that meditation is brain-protective and associated with a reduced age-related tissue decline.
Conclusion
Although we’re talking about yoga’s health benefits to the brain, we can’t discount and neglect meditation. Most(if not all) yogis or yoga practitioners also practice regular meditation.
These two ancient practices are inseparable; when you do meditation, you’re inclined to do yoga, too and vice versa.