20/06/2018
Though Yoga has been around for thousands of years, Science is just beginning to understand how yoga exerts its effects. Let's see what science has to say about benefits of yoga on International Yoga Day 2018.
1. Stephen Cope is a therapist and director of the Institute for Extraordinary Living in Massachusetts. He leads “Yoga and the Brain,” in which researchers study yoga’s effect on the brain using MRI. According to him, yoga can help in reducing stress.
Since our lives today include stressful scenarios, our stress response often stays in the “on” position at times it shouldn’t. Yoga helps decrease the body’s stress response by reducing levels of the hormone cortisol which is also responsible for dampening the effectiveness of the immune system by immobilizing certain white blood cells.
2. In addition, yoga also boosts levels of serotonin, and dopamine, which are responsible for feelings of relaxation and contentedness (acting as antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs).
3. Yoga stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms us down and restores balance after a major stressor is over. With parasympathetic activation, the body enters into a state of restoration and healing.
4. In a paper published in Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, the researchers say "this suggests that yoga can be considered as a complementary therapy or an alternative method for medical therapy in the treatment of anxiety disorders.”
5.In an article by Dr Tiffany Field, Director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami, she discusses effects of yoga on anxiety and depression, pain, cardiovascular, autoimmune and immune conditions and on pregnancy. The review tends to associate all sorts of well-being with the regular practice of yoga.
More of it can be found over here:
For World Yoga Day, a virtual special issue features articles about the clinical effects of yoga on mind and body
