Did you know that practicing yoga can significantly improve your health? That’s why everyone gives this relaxing activity a try.
Yoga is a traditional physical and mental discipline that has its origin in India and that proposes methods to connect the body, the breath and the mind. All this is based on different physical postures, breathing exercises and a large amount of meditation that result in an improvement in the health of any person. In addition, its benefits in mental health have already been recognized.
To learn more about this, we show you how yoga can improve your decision making and your emotional intelligence.
What are the benefits of yoga for mental health?
Some researchers decided to review 11 studies in which people who practiced yoga daily were compared with others who did not; From there they assured that the advantages of practicing it are diverse, but that these focus especially on brain functions.
The areas of the brain that benefit from this exercise are those that are in charge of making decisions, planning, those that control your emotions and those that control memory.
One characteristic shared by all the investigated studies is the use of brain scanning techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging or functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the brains of the participants. In addition, although different comparison criteria were used between the studies, all of them showed an improvement in the body due to yoga (Gothe, Khan, Hayes, Erlenbach and Damoiseaux, 2019).
What changes does yoga cause in the brain?
One of the favorable changes that happen through this practice is the increase in the size of the hippocampus , an area related to the cerebral cortex that is located inside the temporal lobe. This part of the brain is very important as it aids in memory processing and begins to shrink as the average individual ages. It is also the structure that is first affected if the individual suffers from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
On the other hand, the experts also noticed that the prefrontal cortex and brain networks grew in size in those participants who practiced yoga. This means that, thanks to the development of the prefrontal cortex, essential when planning and multitasking tasks, yoga is able to make you make better decisions .
Other areas benefited by yoga are the amygdala and the cingulate cortex, which provide great help both with emotional regulation and learning and memory.
All this leads us to the conclusion that this practice helps you manage your emotions effectively through deep concentration and steady breathing followed by controlled exhalations that calm the body and lower the heart rate. In fact, yoga began thousands of years ago as a way to calm emotions.
However, it is not the only way to obtain the same benefits, as there are aerobic exercises, such as running, that provide similar results in mental health. Therefore, more research is needed to fully understand the effects of yoga on the body .
References
- Gothe, NP, Khan, I., Hayes, J., Erlenbach, E. and Damoiseaux, JS (2019). Yoga Effects on Brain Health: A Systematic Review of the Current Literature . Brain Plasticity . doi: 10.3233 / BPL-190084
- Minda, Z. Yoga Improves Your Memory, Decision Making and Emotional Intelligence, New Study Shows. For Inc. [Revised February 2020].
