Most yoga teachers would agree that that the ancient practice has some pretty amazing benefits on your life, especially when it comes to health. From increased immune function, improving depression, decreasing chronic pain, stress reduction, lowering blood pressure… it can all seem a little too good to be true, but did you know that all of these claims are supported by scientific research?
According to Alex Korb, Ph.D and neuroscientist from the University of California, the benefits of yoga sound like magic but they’re not. Dr Korb says that the things you do and the thoughts you have change the firing patterns and the chemical composition of your brain. This means that regular yoga practice can actually have an effect on your whole nervous system and that it has the capacity to change your brain (Laura Plumb).
The nervous system is a vast network within the body. It includes the autonomic nervous system which is responsible for many functions including the bodies stress response. The autonomic nervous system has a direct effect on your emotions and can control whether you feel safe and relaxed or threatened and tense.
Yoga has the ability to increase our resilience to stress through self regulation, it gives us the ability to control our internal stress response as well as our emotional response and this leads to a belief in ones ability to be able to handle stress (Sat Bir Khalsa, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School). Yoga works not because the poses are relaxing, but because they are stressful. It is your intention to stay calm during this stress that creates yogas greatest neurobiological benefit (Korb).
So next time your yoga teacher cues you to take a deep breath, soften your face and just relax into that challenging posture why don’t you give it a try and see if it makes a difference to your practice and over time a difference to your health and your life as a whole.