Warrior: Can Yoga Change Your Brain?
Do you practice yoga? I am a complete beginner but during my time in isolation, I have taken myself to the mat and honestly, I am feeling much better for it. I used to always think yoga was just for flexible people who like to contort their bodies into the oddest positions imaginable. But following my 2 weeks of practice, I realise it is much more about the connection between the body, the mind and the breath. After each session I have completed, my mood has felt lighter and my mind clearer. So to see if my anecdotal evidence had any scientific legs to stand on, I took a downward-facing dog dive into the literature on how yoga effects your brain.
What is yoga and has it been shown to improve health?
Yoga is an ancient form of exercise believed to have been first practiced over 5000 years ago and incorporates movement through set poses with rhythmical breathing and meditation. Although it first came about as a religious practice, the art form became more mainstream due to its ability to provide exercise and meditation in a single sitting. Post-cobra and savasana, the effects yoga has is reported to go far beyond the physical impacts back bends and leg stretches provide and neuroscientists have tried to investigate the real impacts yoga practice has on your cranium. Association studies, which look at how practicing yoga vs not impacts populations, have reported beneficial effects of yoga practice in individuals with cardiovascular dysfunction and diabetes, as well as improvements in mental health conditions like depression and stress. These collective positive correlates between integrating yoga into your general life and improved mental health have driven studies on seeing if or how this form of physical activity could be altering your brain.
How might sustained yoga practice impact your brain?
Due to yogas adaptability to each individuals limitations and strengths, the exercise can be performed at most ages. And if yoga has a true scientific impact on your brain, you would assume that the longer you practice yoga, the larger, or more obvious, these changes would be. When looking at the brains of experienced yoga practitioners, one study reported an increase in the thickness of the cortex in females over the age of 60 with over 8 years of experience vs not – even when matched for the majority of other activities these people practiced. Cortical thinning normally increases with age and can be associated with disorders like dementia, so this study suggests yoga could be preventative for brain volume loss. Another study reported people who had practiced yoga for over 3 years had a larger left hippocampus, a region of the brain vital for memory, compared to healthy non-experience yogis. This result was replicated in another cohort of experienced yoga practitioners, and this study also found increased volume in other brain regions involved in emotion (limbic system) and higher human functioning (like attention and decision making). Collectively, the studies support the idea that sustained practice of yoga can increase brain volume (and therefore potentially function – although not tested in these studies!) of specific brain regions.
How long does it take for yoga practice to affect the brain?
So if you have never practiced yoga before and pick up a mat tomorrow, how long could it for your new found hobby to potentially change your brain? Some studies have looked at how the brain changes following short-term practice and one found that in healthy adults regularly practicing yoga for around 6 months had an increase in hippocampal volume compared to the beginning of the study. But as this report did not include a ’non-yoga’ control group, it is much harder to conclude that yoga was the main influencer in this structural change. Another study reported that practicing yoga and other sports over 10 weeks increased the volume of several brain regions, but the yogi group had a significant increase in the right hippocampus not found in the control sport-partaking group. But the study reported the volume of the hippocampus at baseline in the yoga group was smaller to start with, with the authors suggesting this could be down to more stressed people taking up yoga and stress has a potential relationship with reduced hippocampal volume Therefore so far, the current scientific literature on how quickly you could expect to experience a brain gain from practicing your chaturanga is murky.
Signing off
The benefit of yoga on your brain over long-term practice does look like there could be positive structural changes to your cranium, even if the short term data is a little bit less clear. If you have ever thought of taking to the mat in the past but never gotten round to it, give it a go. Your brain could be benefitting much more than you think!
Namaste,
Julia xoxox (@Julia.ravey.science)
I wrote this whole piece based on this awesome review!
