5 Ways Yoga Can Improve Your Mental Health

  • Yoga enhances brain health by building new neural connections, boosting memory, attention, and learning.
  • Long-term yoga practice helps preserve brain areas like the cerebral cortex and hippocampus, which typically shrink with age.
  • It reduces stress hormones, raises endorphin levels, and increases GABA, easing anxiety and depression.
  • Meditation in yoga calms emotional responses by regulating the limbic system, offering lasting mood-boosting effects.
  • Yoga can complement traditional treatments for PTSD, promoting relaxation through deep breathing and activating the parasympathetic nervous system.

Yoga is like a workout for your brain! It helps build new neural connections and boosts memory, attention, and learning. Long-time yogis have thicker brain areas like the cerebral cortex and hippocampus, which usually shrink with age. So, yoga might just keep your brain sharper for longer, slowing down that age-related cognitive decline

Yoga not only reduces stress hormones and boosts endorphins but also raises GABA levels, which helps ease anxiety and depression. Meditation calms emotional reactions by chilling the limbic system. Research shows that yoga, alongside music, is one of the most effective mood boosters, with yoga offering longer-lasting benefits compared to relaxation techniques like massage or stress management.

Studies hint that yoga can be a game-changer for managing PTSD — helping to quiet those pesky intrusive memories and chill out emotional roller coasters. As a sidekick to traditional treatments, yoga brings the chill with deep, slow breathing that fires up your parasympathetic nervous system, paving the way for a more relaxed state.

Source: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/yoga-for-better-mental-health