How does yoga affect your mental health?

Yoga, a practice that brings your body and mind together through a series of breathing exercises, postures and meditation, reduces stress and encourages relaxation — practicing yoga is good for your physical and mental health. In addition to stress reduction and relaxation, yoga improves blood circulation because it increases your flexibility, concentration and inner peace.

Researchers have found that yoga has therapeutic effects on mental health as well as physical benefits. They even label yoga an effective “prescription” because it can solve the most common problems people seek psychotherapy for. As a result, yoga is now more than just a holistic approach to improving mental health and well-being. It is now backed up by science and has extensive research to support its benefits.

Therefore, we must examine how yoga affects our mental health and what its effects are.

How Yoga Affects Our Mental Health?

Yoga helps reduce or control the following behaviors that directly affect our mental health.

1.) Controlling Anger:

Regular yoga practice has shown positive results in reducing verbal aggression in adults. In 2012, a study of teenagers showed that their ability to manage anger through yoga was significantly improved compared to participants who received only physical education.

2.) Sleep Improvement:

If you suffer from sleep deprivation or insomnia, yoga can provide you with good deep sleep. A 2012 study of postmenopausal women diagnosed with insomnia showed that the severity of insomnia was reduced with yoga practice compared to a control group. In another study involving women with restless legs syndrome, yoga was found to help them improve several aspects of poor sleep quality.

3.) Reducing Anxiety:

Anxiety is a silent mental illness that slowly gets over people and kills them from the inside, just like depression. However, by practicing yoga, people experienced a reduction in symptoms of anxiety, including performance anxiety. For example, a 2013 study of teen musicians showed that yoga helped participants reduce anxiety during solo and group performances.

4.) Decreasing Mood Swings:

Several studies have shown that yoga significantly helps reduce depression, improves outcomes, and reduces perceived stress, indicating a positive improvement in our mood. In a 2013 study, a prison population underwent a 10-week yoga class. They reported signs of reduced psychological stress and increased positive emotions.

5.) Decreasing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Symptoms:

Adult women diagnosed with PTSD were part of a 2014 study in which they underwent 10 weeks of yoga therapy and showed a significant reduction in PTSD symptoms compared to a control group. When the study ended, 52 percent of the female participants who practiced yoga regularly no longer met the criteria for PTSD, compared with 21 percent of the control group.

6.) Relieves Migraines:

Recurring severe headaches are known as migraines, and there’s growing evidence that yoga can serve as a potential adjunct therapy to help you reduce the frequency of migraines. In 2007, a study of 72 migraine sufferers divided them into either a yoga therapy group or a self-care group for three months.

Compared with the self-care group, those who received yoga showed signs of reduced headache intensity, pain, and frequency. The researchers believe that the practice of yoga stimulates the vagus nerve, which has been shown to be effective in relieving migraines.

7.) Moves you from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system:

Yoga helps you transition from flying or flying to a state of rest and digestion, which means switching from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system. In the parasympathetic nervous system, you experience less anxiety and go into a more relaxed mode. Once you start breathing deeply, your “fight or flight” state will slow down and your nervous system will calm down.

8.) Fights Depression:

Studies have shown that yoga may have an antidepressant effect on your brain, thereby reducing depressive symptoms. Practicing yoga reduces a stress hormone called cortisol. This cortisol affects our levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter often linked to depression.

A study of participants in an alcohol-dependent program who practiced a special form of yoga called Sudarshan Kriya, which focuses on rhythmic breathing. After two weeks, participants had lower cortisol levels and limited depressive symptoms. ACTH, a hormone that stimulates the release of cortisol in our bodies, was also reported to be low in participants after two weeks of yoga practice.

9.) Build Your Sense of Self:

Yoga is a medium for learning and cultivating a non-judgmental relationship with oneself. The more time you spend on yourself, the better you’ll learn about yourself and build confidence.

Yoga helps you become confident, tough, pure, more rooted in your center and self-awareness, and develop a healthy, balanced self where you have nothing to hide or prove to others. In short, you gain a high level of willpower and become braver.

Final Thoughts

Many studies have been conducted worldwide, which proves that yoga offers countless physical and mental benefits. If you add yoga to your daily routine, you will slowly see positive changes in yourself, such as flexibility, calmness, inner peace, increased strength, anxiety, depression and reduced stress. So stop worrying and start practicing yoga.