Seven Scientifically Proven Benefits of Yoga
Yoga is an ancient practice that combines poses with breathing exercises that provide valuable benefits to people living a stressful modern lifestyle. Scientists have demonstrated many of the benefits of yoga in rigorous studies. It has long been known that yoga can improve your flexibility and make you stronger. More recently, scientist have confirmed that yoga improves your cardiovascular fitness too, improving heart health and lung capacity. Yoga can reduce stress and inflammation, and can even induce change at the cellular level. All of these benefits taken together may even promote longevity, adding extra healthy years to your life. Let’s take a look at seven scientifically proven benefits of yoga. How can yoga help you?
Increase Flexibility
Yoga practice is often regarded as an elaborate form of stretching. There is quite a bit more to it than that, but it certainly does involve stretching and it’s a great way to increase your flexibility.
You can easily observe increases in flexibility yourself. Just 15 minutes a day of yoga practice will probably yield clear flexibility improvements that will help with sports performance and could reduce chronic pain or discomfort for people suffering limited range of motion.
Whether you are young or old, studies show yoga will increase your flexibility. In one study, elderly people were split into groups that practiced yoga, did some other body weight exercise, or traditional calisthenics. The yoga group’s increase in flexibility was four times greater than the other groups. In another study, young college students who practiced yoga experienced much greater increases in flexibility than students who did not.
Increase Strength
While many people believe yoga is focused on stretching, many postures, particularly more advanced postures, require a great deal of strength. You certainly don’t need to lift weights to get strong. Competitive gymnasts rely primarily on bodyweight exercises for strength training, and pound for pound they are some of the strongest athletes around.
Yoga poses like “plank” build core and arm strength and poses like “chair” build leg strength. Plank looks like a push up stuck at the top, unmoving. Chair looks like you are sitting on an invisible chair. These poses are not hard to hit for a second, but holding them for a long time is a challenge and a workout. Studies on strength increase abound and the benefits are well demonstrated.
Improve Vital Capacity — Breath
Yoga is not just about contortionist poses. Breath control is a very important part of most yoga practices. Slow and deep is typical, but pranayama, yogic breathing, encompasses a wide variety of breath training routines, from short, sharp rapidly pulsing exhales to slowly alternating between breathing in one nostril and out the other with long breath holds in between. The cumulative effect is a great workout for your lungs and the diaphragm.
Studies show yoga increases “vital capacity,” the total functional volume of your lungs as well as elasticity — the force with which you can inhale and exhale. A single study suggests that yogic breathing can even improve lung function and reduce symptoms for moderate asthma sufferers.
Improve Heart Health
Some yoga poses and approaches to yoga help you relax and lower your heart rate, which is good for your heart health. Your most important muscle deserves a break! Other yoga poses may require some effort, which increases the heart rate, and they are designed to stimulate circulation. Typical effort levels are below the anaerobic range, where they body must create energy without oxygen. Effort levels are usually moderate enough to remain in the aerobic metabolism range. Anaerobic exercise can provide big benefits fast, but it can also stress the body. Aerobic exercise is a gentler way to get in shape and improve your heart health.
Studies show yoga has measurable benefits for cardiac fitness. One study showed participants over 40 who did yoga regularly had significantly lower blood pressure and lower pulse rates than people who did not do yoga. High blood pressure stresses the heart muscle and can lead to heart attacks and stroke. By lowering blood pressure, yoga reduces your risk of heart attack or stroke.
Decrease Stress
Yoga helps you focus your mind on your body and your breath. When you use your mind to slow and calm your breathing, it seems your body responds by slowing and calming your mind. Multiple clinical studies have shown that practicing yoga lowers levels of cortisol, one of the most important hormones associated with stress.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience published a study that demonstrated that yoga improves brain plasticity and reduces stress hormones. Researchers observed activity in the parasympathetic nervous system (known for its role in our “fight or flight mode”) without triggering production of cortisol and other stress hormones. Overall lower levels of cortisol suggest that turning the attention of your mind to your body creates a connection that helps your react to stressful situations with a calm body and a calm mind instead of just churning out stress hormones.
Reduce Inflammation
Inflammation is part of our normal immune response, and in some sense acute inflammation can be a good thing, but when the inflammation does not go away, it can harm us. Chronic inflammation is an increasingly common affliction that can contribute to heart disease, diabetes, and perhaps even cancer.
Several studies have shown yoga reduces inflammation. One such study compared a group of just over 200 participants some of whom practiced yoga regularly and some of whom who did not. After a round of moderate strenuous exercise, the yoga group showed lower levels of inflammation as measured by chemical markers.
Another study showed that 3 months of yoga practice lowered inflammatory chemicals in breast cancer survives who suffered from chronic fatigue.
Increase Longevity
Yoga can probably increase your lifespan. In addition to improving heart health, breathing, and circulation, yoga practice may induce changes at the cellular level. Doctor Sat Bir Khalasa, who teaches at Harvard Medical School says “Humans have an enormous capacity for self-regulation….We’ve even seen healthful practices down-regulate cancer cell growth. This is profound. At a cellular and molecular level, yoga, meditation, and breathwork can ignite significant change,” Khalsa says.
A study published in the journal Oxidatitve Medicine and Cellular Longevity concluded “Making yoga and meditation an integral part of our lifestyle may hold the key to delay aging, or aging gracefully, prevent onset of multifactorial complex lifestyle diseases, promote mental, physical, and reproductive health, and prolong youthful healthy life,”
Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine published a study that demonstrated participating in a yoga class offered measurable results in the form of increased Human Growth Hormone and DHEAS dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate, both of which decline dramatically with age. While the myriad of ways these compounds that are naturally produced by the endocrine system stave off aging are not well understood, there is a broad consensus that elevating HGH and DHEAS levels can keep us feeling younger longer.
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