Yoga and your brain
Yoga isn’t just another form of exercise and its benefits go beyond the ability to perform pretzel postures.
Our brains are primarily made up of two types of tissues: white and grey matter, about 60% white and 40% grey. Although both play important roles in healthy cognitive functioning, each brain tissue type has a different function:
Grey matter consists of brain cells or neurons and is responsible for many of your brain’s functions, including learning skills and memory. It’s also responsible for interpreting the senses of sight, hearing, smell and touch and affects muscle control and self-awareness.
White matter is the connections that extend from your brain cells and connects different sections of your brain. It allows your brain to co-ordinate your thoughts, as well as your movements.
Yoga Increases Grey Matter Density
Recent research has shown that yoga increases grey matter volume in the hippocampus and pre-frontal cortex. This gives better…
Focus and concentration
Emotional and impulse control
Decision making
Reward and consequence evaluation and more willingness to delay gratification
Awareness of your senses
Self-awareness
Yoga Increases Information Processing
Yoga also increases the folds in your brain. The surface of the brain is made up of wrinkles that play an essential role in your ability to think. These wrinkles, or cortical folds, contain your brain cells and are there to increase the surface area of your brain so that it can squeeze itself inside your head.
The meditation aspect of yoga increases the number of folds in your brain. According to a study done by UCLA researchers, MRI brain scans showed that long-term meditators (20+ years) had more folds in their brain’s cortex. Since your cerebral cortex is responsible for things like language, reasoning, perception, information processing, memory and voluntary movement, the increase in fold allows for better functioning and faster information processing.
Yoga Reduces Stress and Anxiety
One of the primary benefits of yoga is a sense of post-practice bliss.
During yoga, your brain releases all sorts of chemicals that not only help you relax, but also lower your stress and anxiety levels including, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. Each of which helps you calm down, feel relaxed and more content.
Yoga also softens your stress response. During a yoga session, your frontal lobe and parietal lobe slow down and so you de-stress. Goodbye racing thoughts and over-stimulation of the senses.
Yoga also helps reduce stress by lowering your body’s cortisol and adrenaline levels, two critical stress hormones.
Stress is in itself is a good thing. It allows us to respond to emergencies or focus better. However, if you have a hectic lifestyle and are constantly stressed, it can become harmful to your health. This is because stress hormones trigger more sugar to be released into your bloodstream, raise blood pressure and produce inflammation.
Yoga helps to reverse these effects by reducing cortisol levels. In addition a study found that 12 minutes of daily yoga helps lower the inflammation response.
Yoga and Anxiety
Anxiety is closely related to stress, but they aren’t the same thing. Stress is the response your body produces due to a threat. Anxiety can be a result of stress, as well as a myriad of other factors. Common symptoms include constant worrying, panic attacks, compulsions, startling easily, a sense of fear or doom, difficulties sleeping. Here’s where yoga comes in.
While yoga increases grey matter is some areas of the brain, it has the opposite effect on the amygdala. The amygdala is commonly thought of as a neural system for processing fearful and threatening stimuli, including detection of threat and activation of appropriate fear-related behaviours in response. This is why you get nervous or afraid when you feel an impending threat or problem.
Thanks to yoga, the reduction of grey matter in your amygdala means that there is less activity in this part of your brain. As such, you’re better at handling fear and your emotions, and you’re more able to relax.