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I read more than 50 scientific studies about yoga. Here's what I learned.

by Julia Belluz

I’m a yogi. I'm also a skeptic. Sometimes I wonder if the two can go together. I cringe whenever an instructor claims I'm "wringing the toxins" out of my organs with a twisting pose, for instance. Still, after eight years, I keep going back. Post-yoga, I feel calmer and more aware of my body, and this seeps into everything I do: how I work and relate to others, how I eat and sleep.

The bottom line

What we know:.

Yoga is probably just as good for your health as many other forms of exercise. But it seems particularly promising for improving lower back pain and — crucially — reducing inflammation in the body, which can actually help stave off disease. Yoga also seems to enhance "body awareness," or people's sense of what's going on inside themselves.

What we don't know:

Whether some forms of yoga are better than others, whether yoga should be prescribed to people for various health conditions, and how yoga compares with other forms of exercise for a good many specific health outcomes. There's also no good evidence behind many of the supposed health benefits of yoga, like flushing out toxins and stimulating digestion.

What this means for you:

If you like yoga, keep doing it. There's no evidence that it's particularly harmful, and it can lead to a range of heath benefits. Depending on your goal, it's important to find an appropriate style — from athletic ashtanga to gentle hatha. If you don't like yoga, no sweat: Just try another physical activity.

It's not just me. The most recent survey suggests more than 20 million Americans practice yoga, making it one of the most popular forms of exercise. Even Vladimir Putin , a devotee of "macho sports," added downward dog to his repertoire.

But is yoga really that great for health compared with other exercises? Does it really help improve our response to stress or correct bad posture, as often promised? Maybe our perceptions about yoga are biased. Or maybe, as some critics have pointed out, there are downsides to yoga. Who can forget the controversial New York Times story from 2012 suggesting that some people get seriously injured, or even die, on their yoga mats.

I wanted a more objective view on the health effects of yoga, so I turned to science, reading more than 50 studies and review articles and talking to seven of the world's leading yoga researchers. Almost immediately, I was struck by how weak the research on yoga is. Most studies were small and badly designed or plagued by self-selection bias. Making matters worse, there are so many varying styles of yoga that it's tough to say how meaningful evidence about one style is for others.

Still, what I learned is that there are a few things we can say about yoga, based on the available research. Yoga probably won't hurt you, despite what haters claim, and it appears to be just as good for your health as other similar forms of exercise.

Even more, yoga seems to help alleviate lower back pain, improve strength and flexibility, and reduce inflammation in the body — which, in turn, can help stave off chronic disease and death. Emerging research suggests yoga can increase body awareness , or attention to the sensations and things going on inside you. That's no small matter: Researchers think heightened body awareness can improve how well people take care of themselves.

Keep in mind, however, that other mind-body exercises — such as tai chi or meditation — can boost body awareness and reduce inflammation, too. That's the catch with a lot of yoga research: It still hasn't told us how much better or different yoga is for a number of health measures when compared with other forms of exercise. Finally, many of the most outlandish claims people make about yoga, like the idea that it can alleviate constipation or wring out toxins, either aren't backed by science or haven't been studied at all.

What is the state of yoga science?

(ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

The first randomized trial (or high-quality experiment) on yoga was published in 1975 in The Lancet . It showed that yoga was more effective than relaxation for reducing high blood pressure. But that trial only involved 34 participants, and all of them already had high blood pressure, so it is difficult to know whether the effect of the yoga would bear out in a larger trial of healthy people.

Since then, the number of yoga studies has dramatically increased, but the field is plagued by some of the same problems of that early study. Many yoga studies still involve small numbers of participants. Many lack a control group. Many don't compare yoga to activities we'd be interested in comparing it to. (Ideally, for instance, we'd want to know how yoga measures against another form of exercise or mind-body practice — not, as one study examined, comparing whether it's better for back pain than giving people a book on how to manage their back pain.) "For most conditions, the main problem is we don't have enough evidence yet"

What studies do exist are often short term. There are no long-term studies on mortality or serious disease incidence. There are few long-term studies on the potential harms yoga can wreak on the body. "For most conditions," says Holger Cramer, director of yoga research at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Essen, Germany, "the main problem is we don't have enough evidence yet."

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Studying yoga is also tricky. Researchers generally believe blinded studies are the highest quality of research, because participants involved don't know what intervention (such as a drug) they are receiving and their biases and perceptions don't color the outcomes. But you can't blind people to the fact that they're doing yoga.

Then there's the biggest question at the center of yoga research: How do you define yoga? "Yoga is many things to many people," said Karen Sherman , a researcher affiliated with the Group Health Research Institute. "What you put into a yoga intervention probably impacts what you get out."

(Soloviova Liudmyla/Shutterstock)

Lorenzo Cohen , chief of the integrative medicine section at MD Anderson Cancer Center, told me: "Many papers [on yoga] don't have enough of an in-depth description of what they mean by 'yoga.' What was the level of training of yoga therapists? How did they choose different postures or breathing exercises?"

What's more, there are so many components in a yoga class, it's tough to know what might be having an affect on health: If people report feeling better after a class, was that due to the experience of being part of a larger group? Was it the teacher's style? Was it the breathing exercises? The heat? These factors are difficult to isolate, and some of the ways yoga helps people might be hard for scientists to measure.

Still, the yoga researchers I spoke to said the quality and quantity of studies has been improving, so we may get better answers soon. "There are more researchers conducting yoga therapy studies, and when the smaller trials suggest benefit, that leads to larger, better-designed trials," said Cohen. There is also a move to study the biological outcomes of yoga — how classes affect things like hormone levels — which will lead us to a more objective picture of what yoga can do for the body.

1) Is yoga likely to hurt you?

No, probably not.

This question first came up in 2012, when the New York Times published a splashy article suggesting that yoga can wreck your body. The piece, adapted from the book The Science of Yoga: The Risks and Rewards , suggested yoga caused widespread harm to its practitioners — from ruptured disks and stroke to brain injury.

But that piece was largely based on cherry-picked anecdotes, exaggerating these horrible cases to suggest they were representative of the broader yoga experience when they simply aren't.

(Luna Vandoorne/Shutterstock)

Cramer has studied published reports of injuries and other harms from yoga for several review and told me this: "We found yoga is as safe as any other activity. It's not more dangerous than any other form of exercise." He added: "Yoga is not 100 percent safe, but nothing is 100 percent safe."

In a 2013 review of case studies , Cramer identified 76 unique incidents of adverse events from yoga. "Most adverse events affected the musculoskeletal, nervous, or visual system," he concluded. "More than half of the cases for which clinical outcomes were reported reached full recovery, 1 case did not recover at all, and 1 case died."

Most often, people got into trouble with the headstand pose, followed by shoulder stand, postures that required putting one or both feet behind the head, the lotus position, and forceful breathing. Pranayama-, hatha-, and Bikram-style yoga practices had the most adverse events associated with them.

Based on these cases, Cramer and his co-author had this practical advice for how to stay safe in yoga: Beginners should avoid advanced postures (such as headstands), and people with chronic health conditions (such as glaucoma) should consult their doctors before diving in. "Yoga," they added, "should not be practiced while under the influence of psychoactive drugs."

As for long-term yoga harms, Cramer pointed to two studies on joint and cervical disc degeneration in people who have been doing yoga for a while. But the studies had contradictory results, "so long-term health consequences cannot be clearly derived from the available evidence," Cramer said.

I asked MD Anderson's Cohen for his take. "There can, of course, be negative consequences if done incorrectly, like any body manipulation," he said, "but if you have the right teacher this will not happen." Even if a lot of yoga over a lifetime leads to injury, it's not clear those harms outweigh the benefits, or that people would have been better off running or weightlifting all the time.

2) How does yoga compare with other forms of exercise?

(Anna Furman/Shutterstock)

The short answer is: It depends on the type of yoga. Yoga classes that involve nothing more than lying around on piles of blankets and breathing aren't likely to build your muscles. But more strenuous types of yoga like ashtanga can be surprisingly similar to other forms of vigorous exercise.

"Some studies show, depending on yoga style, that it doesn't improve fitness as much as other forms of exercise," Cramer says. "But for rigorous and intense styles [of yoga] — that can be a form of exercise. It strongly depends on what you do when you do yoga."

For example, a few high-quality studies have shown that certain types of yoga can indeed make people stronger. One small, randomized trial in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research — which compared eight weeks of Bikram yoga with no intervention in 32 young, healthy, adults — found that the yoga classes improved people's deadlift strength.

The Bikram classes didn't, however, improve the participants' aerobic capacity. Another before-and-after study, published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing , found that hatha yoga could improve aerobic fitness in older people . Still, it's not clear that yoga is ideal here compared with, say, running or swimming.

Considering the mixed findings, a bit of common sense is helpful: If you go to a class mainly focuses on relaxation and doesn't elevate your heart rate, you're probably not getting a good cardio workout or building muscles. If you go to a more athletic yoga class that tires out your muscles and makes you pant, you can probably count on it helping to make you stronger. If you are panting in a yoga class, you're probably improving aerobic capacity to some extent. That said, if your main goal is building aerobic capacity, you might want to try running or swimming instead of or in addition to yoga.

Key studies:

1975: Lancet — "Randomised controlled trial of yoga and bio feedback in management of hypertension." This is the first-ever randomized trial on yoga, and it found that yoga was more effective than relaxation in reducing high blood pressure.

1985: British Medical Journal — "Yoga for bronchial asthma: a controlled study." This is the first randomized trial on yoga for asthma, and it was one of the first to show the effects of yoga on the inner organs.

1998: JAMA — "Yoga-based intervention for carpal tunnel syndrome." This was a well-regarded randomized trial that showed the benefits of yoga for carpal tunnel syndrome compared with wrist splinting and no intervention.

2005: Annals of Internal Medicine — "Comparing yoga, exercise, and a self-care book for chronic low back pain." This is the most important trial on yoga for lower back pain and the first really high-quality trial on yoga. Based on this trial, yoga had become increasingly recognized as an effective treatment for chronic lower back pain.

2013: Journal of the American College of Cardiology — "Effect of yoga on arrhythmia burden, anxiety, depression, and quality of life in paroxysmal atrial fibrillation." One of the first trials to show that yoga may have an impact on life-threatening diseases such as atrial fibrillation.

2013: Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research — "Bikram Yoga Training and Physical Fitness in Healthy Young Adults." This trial showed Bikram yoga can improve strength and flexibility but not aerobic capacity.

2014: Journal of Clinical Oncology — "Randomized, controlled trial of yoga in women with breast cancer undergoing radiotherapy." This high-quality trial demonstrated yoga can have benefits for women being treated for breast cancer.

2015: Brain, Behavior, and Immunity — "Mind-body therapies and control of inflammatory biology." A review of the evidence on yoga and other mind-body activities, and their relationship to reducing inflammation.

3) Does yoga really reduce stress and anxiety?

For all the talk of yoga lifting moods and calming people, the studies on this question are still surprisingly inconclusive.

Karen Pilkington , a research fellow at the University of Westminster, knows this research better than anybody: She sifted through the science for systematic reviews on yoga for both anxiety and depression . (Here's another, more recent systematic review of the evidence on yoga for depression by other authors.)

"There are indications that it might be helpful," Pilkington says. "But lots of the studies are quite small, and we definitely need more and bigger studies." In other words, yoga might help with mood disorders, but we don't yet know for sure because the studies to date have generally been so badly designed. "We can't say there’s conclusive evidence that yoga works for depression and anxiety," she explained. "We’re still really exploring yoga as an idea for testing and the best ways of testing it."

One complication here: When it comes to conditions like anxiety and depression, it can be difficult to untangle whether it's the yoga that's helping or simply the act of going out, joining a group on a regular basis, and so on. Even if yoga turns out to be unequivocally beneficial for depression, other research has shown that exercise in general can alleviate depression . So, again, it's not clear that yoga is the only way to get this benefit.

As for stress reduction, there are a few randomized trials — the highest-quality evidence — that have suggested yoga is about as effective as simple relaxation programs , more helpful than no intervention , but not as effective as stretching . Pretty mixed results.

4) Does yoga have long-term health benefits?

Possibly. To be clear, there's currently no direct evidence on yoga's long-term benefits. Researchers simply haven't tracked yogis over a span of 20 years or more and followed up to see whether they get diseases at a lower rate than non-yogis.

But that's not the whole story. There are also some randomized controlled trials suggesting that yoga may improve quality of life for diabetes patients , reduce cardiovascular disease risk factors, and even help people manage high blood pressure

How can this be? One possibility is that yoga can help reduce inflammation in the body — which turns out to be surprisingly beneficial.

You can think about inflammation in two ways. There's helpful inflammation, as when your body's immune system mounts a response to bacteria in a cut. There's also harmful inflammation. When you're stressed, your body's inflammatory response can go into overdrive, hampering its ability to fight off viruses and disease. People who are inactive, obese, or eat an unhealthy diet have higher levels of harmful inflammation. And researchers have found associations between inflammation and various chronic diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.

Yoga — like other mind-body exercises such as tai chi and meditation — seems to be particularly helpful at reducing harmful inflammation. A 2014 meta-analysis on the effects of mind-body therapies on the immune system found that yoga reduces inflammation-based blood markers. So did this 2014 randomized control trial looking at women with breast cancer and breast cancer survivors.

Michael Irwin at UCLA's medical school, one of the authors of a 2015 descriptive review on inflammation and mind-body exercises, said, "When you look at the aerobic exercise necessary to decrease inflammation, people have to maintain very vigorous levels." But not with yoga, he continued. "Even practices with minimum levels of physical activity [like Iyengar stretches] can have large effect sizes." Researchers don't yet know why, though they think the meditative components of yoga, tai chi, and meditation may have something to do with it.

In the past few years, some academics have also begun to study "body awareness" and its relationship to a number of health outcomes. Body awareness, according to this article in PLOS One , "involves an attentional focus on and awareness of internal body sensations." The idea is that in becoming more aware of your body, you might be more likely to notice when you're stressed, in pain, or tired, and perhaps less likely to abuse your body.

This 2013 study , involving 18 people with chronic neck pain who practiced Iyengar yoga once a week for nine weeks, found that participants reported increased body awareness after practicing. In this 2005 study , which compared three groups of women — 43 doing Iyengar and ashtanga yoga, 45 doing aerobic exercise, and 51 who did neither activity — the yogis reported more body awareness and body satisfaction than the other groups. These were both qualitative studies, not experimental trials, so it's difficult to know whether the yogic types are more "body aware" to begin with or whether the yoga made the difference.

"When you compare long-term yoga practitioners to people doing other forms of exercise," said Cramer, "you have better body awareness in yogis."

5) Does yoga help with lower back pain?

(My Good Images/Shutterstock)

Yes. Yoga does seem to help alleviate lower back pain, in both the short and long term. The evidence around this is some of the best yoga research we have. This meta-analysis of the evidence on yoga for back pain , from 2013, sums it up.

[There's] found strong evidence for short-term effectiveness and moderate evidence for long-term effectiveness of yoga for chronic low-back pain in the most important patient-centered outcomes. Given the low number of adverse events, yoga can be recommended as an additional therapy to patients who do not improve with education on self-care options.

That said, there are some caveats here, too. The leading researcher on this question, Karen Sherman, notes that it's still not clear whether yoga is any better than any other form of exercise for back pain. "It’s certainly a viable form of exercise, but is it better than other exercises [for back pain]? Probably not," she says. Some of the best research on lower back pain has only looked at one specific type of yoga — viniyoga.

Researchers haven't figured out why yoga helps with back pain. This Cochrane Review protocol offered a few guesses, suggesting that improved flexibility and muscle strength, as well as relaxation and body awareness, may help.

6) Does yoga improve flexibility and balance?

(Olesya Feketa/Shutterstock)

The research here is limited. But there are a few high-quality controlled trials that suggest yoga can help increase flexibility in young people , healthy seniors , and computer users . One small study on stroke patients suggested that yoga may improve balance, as did this study in healthy young adults .

7) Can yoga really stimulate digestion or wring out toxins?

Anyone who has taken a yoga class has probably been exposed to wild claims by the teacher that certain poses will do anything from wring out toxins to stimulate a particular part of the colon and alleviate constipation. But the science backing up these kinds of very specific claims was scant, so I asked one of the researchers, Cohen, about where they come from.

"[Teachers are] basing it on personal experience, on anecdote, on the lineage of practice that's been handed down," he said. "They are probably not basing it on Western-style analytic techniques that followed a control trial design. We just haven't gotten there yet with yoga research, testing particular poses or breathing techniques for particular outcomes."

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Yoga for Health: What the Science Says

Clinical Guidelines, Scientific Literature, Info for Patients: Yoga for Health

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The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends yoga as a safe and potentially effective therapy for children and adolescents coping with emotional, mental, physical, and behavioral health conditions. Yoga can help children learn to self-regulate, focus on the task at hand, and handle problems peacefully. Yoga may also improve balance, relieve tension, and increase strength when practiced regularly. Because some yoga poses are harder than others, the AAP cautions that even children who are flexible and in good shape should start slowly.

What Does the Research Show?

In a 2019 study , 5-year-old kindergartners doing yoga twice a week in school in place of standard physical education showed less inattention and hyperactivity and completed a task faster than 5-year-olds doing physical education or no exercise.
A 2016 review found that school-based yoga programs seem to help improve adolescents’ health.
A 2015 systematic review of 16 studies (including 6 randomized controlled trials, 2 nonrandomized preintervention-postintervention control-group designs, 7 uncontrolled preintervention-postintervention studies, and 1 case study) for yoga interventions addressing anxiety among children and adolescents concluded that nearly all studies included in the review indicated reduced anxiety following a yoga intervention. However, the reviewers noted that because of the wide variety of study populations, limitations in some study designs, and variable outcome measures, further research is needed to enhance the ability to generalize and apply yoga to reduce anxiety.

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Yoga’s popularity among older Americans is growing. National survey data show that 6.7 percent of U.S. adults age 65 and over practiced yoga in 2017, as compared to 3.3 percent in 2012, 2.0 percent in 2007, and 1.3 percent in 2002.

Older adults who practice yoga should put safety first. It’s a good idea to start with an appropriate yoga class—such as one called gentle yoga or seniors yoga—to get individualized advice and learn correct form. Chair yoga is an even gentler option for seniors with limited mobility. And it’s important for older people with medical issues to talk to both their health care providers and the yoga teacher before starting yoga.

A 2015 study funded by NCCIH compared 14 experienced yoga practitioners to 14 physically active control participants of similar ages. In the control group, the amount of gray matter was lower in older participants than younger ones. In the yoga practitioners, there was no relationship between gray matter and age. Among the yoga practitioners, the volume of certain brain regions increased with the number of years of yoga experience and weekly amount of yoga practice.

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Only a small amount of research has investigated yoga for general well-being, such as improving sleep and reducing stress, and the findings have not been completely consistent. Nevertheless, some preliminary research results suggest that yoga may have several different types of benefits for general well-being.

Stress Management . Some research indicates that practicing yoga can lead to improvements in physical or psychological aspects of stress.
Balance . Several studies that looked at the effect of yoga on balance in healthy people found evidence of improvements.
Positive Mental Health . Some but not all studies that looked at the effects of yoga on positive aspects of mental health found evidence of benefits, such as better resilience or general mental well-being.
Health Habits . A survey of young adults showed that practicing yoga regularly was associated with better eating and physical activity habits, such as more servings of fruits and vegetables, fewer servings of sugar-sweetened beverages, and more hours of moderate-to-vigorous activity. But it wasn’t clear from this study whether yoga motivates people to practice better health habits or whether people with healthier habits are more likely to do yoga. In another study, however, in which previously inactive people were randomly assigned to participate or not participate in 10 weeks of yoga classes, those who participated in yoga increased their total physical activity.
Quitting Smoking . Programs that include yoga have been evaluated to see whether they help people quit smoking. In most studies of this type, yoga reduced cigarette cravings and the number of cigarettes smoked. Findings suggest that yoga may be a helpful addition to smoking cessation programs.
Weight Control . In studies of yoga in people who were overweight or obese, practicing yoga has been associated with a reduction in body mass index. An NCCIH-supported comparison of different yoga-based programs for weight control showed that the most helpful programs had longer and more frequent yoga sessions, a longer duration of the overall program, a yoga-based dietary component, a residential component (such as a full weekend to start the program), inclusion of a larger number of elements of yoga, and home practice.

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Yoga may help relieve low-back pain and neck pain, but it has not been shown to be helpful for some other painful conditions such as headache, arthritis, fibromyalgia, or carpal tunnel syndrome.

In 2017, the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) evaluated non-pharmacologic therapies, including complementary health approaches, and issued revised recommendations for the management of fibromyalgia. The strength of these recommendation is “based on the balance between desirable and undesirable effects (considering values and preferences), confidence in the magnitude of effects, and resource use. A strong recommendation implies that, if presented with the evidence, all or almost all informed persons would make the recommendation for or against the therapy, while a weak recommendation would imply that most people would, although a substantial minority would not.” Based on the evaluation of acupuncture, meditative movement practices (e.g., tai chi, qi gong, and yoga), and mindfulness-based stress reduction, the recommendation for each was weak for use of the therapy.
A 2015 Cochrane review of 61 trials involving 4,234 predominantly female participants with fibromyalgia concluded that the effectiveness of biofeedback, mindfulness, movement therapies (e.g., yoga), and relaxation techniques remains unclear as the quality of evidence was low or very low.
A 2018 report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality evaluated 8 trials of yoga for low-back pain (involving 1,466 total participants) and found that yoga improved pain and function both in the short term (1 to 6 months) and intermediate term (6 to 12 months). The effects of yoga were similar to those of exercise.
A 2017 Cochrane review of 12 trials involving 1,080 participants found low- to moderate-certainty evidence that yoga compared to non-exercise controls results in small to moderate improvements in back-related function at 3 and 6 months. Yoga may also be slightly more effective for pain at 3 and 6 months, however the effect size did not meet predefined levels of minimum clinical importance.
A 2017 review of 3 studies (involving 188 total participants) found that yoga had short-term benefits for both the intensity of neck pain and disability related to neck pain.
A 2015 attempt to review the research on this topic found only one study with 72 participants that could be evaluated. That study had favorable results, with decreases in headache intensity and frequency.
A 2018 meta-analysis of 13 clinical trials involving 1557 patients with knee osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis found that regular yoga training may be useful in reducing knee arthritic symptoms, promoting physical function, and general wellbeing in arthritic patients.
A 2017 review of two studies found some beneficial effect on pain, but due to the high risk of bias in both studies, the reviewers gave a weak recommendation for yoga in rheumatoid arthritis. Yoga incorporates several elements of exercise that may be beneficial for arthritis, including activities that may help improve strength and flexibility.

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Cancer . Quite a few studies have been done on yoga for people with cancer, especially on women with breast cancer. These studies have produced some evidence that yoga can help improve quality of life and reduce fatigue and sleep disturbances. Other forms of exercise may have similar benefits.
Multiple Sclerosis . A small amount of research in people with multiple sclerosis found that yoga has short-term benefits on fatigue and mood, but it doesn’t affect muscle function, reasoning ability, or quality of life. The effects of yoga on fatigue are similar to those of other kinds of exercise.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) . Studies in people with COPD have shown that yoga may improve physical ability (such as the capacity to walk a certain distance in a specific length of time), lung function, and quality of life.
Asthma . Studies of yoga in people with asthma have shown that it probably leads to small improvements in symptoms and quality of life.

.header_greentext{color:green!important;font-size:24px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.header_bluetext{color:blue!important;font-size:18px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.header_redtext{color:red!important;font-size:28px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.header_darkred{color:#803d2f!important;font-size:28px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.header_purpletext{color:purple!important;font-size:31px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.header_yellowtext{color:yellow!important;font-size:20px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.header_blacktext{color:black!important;font-size:22px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.header_whitetext{color:white!important;font-size:22px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.header_darkred{color:#803d2f!important;}.Green_Header{color:green!important;font-size:24px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.Blue_Header{color:blue!important;font-size:18px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.Red_Header{color:red!important;font-size:28px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.Purple_Header{color:purple!important;font-size:31px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.Yellow_Header{color:yellow!important;font-size:20px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.Black_Header{color:black!important;font-size:22px!important;font-weight:500!important;}.White_Header{color:white!important;font-size:22px!important;font-weight:500!important;} Yoga for Other Conditions

Anxiety or Depression . Yoga may be helpful for anxiety or depressive symptoms associated with difficult life situations. However, the research on yoga for anxiety disorders, clinical depression, or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), although mildly positive, is still very preliminary.
Cardiovascular Risk Factors . Stress and a sedentary lifestyle increase people’s risk of cardiovascular disease. Because yoga involves physical activity and may help reduce stress, it might help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. However, not much research has been done on this topic. Some studies have suggested that yoga may improve some risk factors, such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels, but the findings aren’t definitive.
Diabetes . Some research has suggested that participating in yoga programs is associated with better blood sugar control in people with type 2 diabetes, at least on a short-term basis.
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) . Some research has suggested that yoga may help to decrease IBS symptoms and severity, but the findings aren’t strong enough for definite conclusions to be reached.
Menopause Symptoms . Growing research indicates that yoga may help to reduce some menopause symptoms, and it’s at least as effective for menopause symptoms as other types of exercise.
Sleep Problems . Some research has indicated that practicing yoga may improve sleep in a variety of groups of people, including people with cancer, older adults, people with arthritis, pregnant women, and women with menopause symptoms.

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Yoga is generally considered a safe form of physical activity for healthy people when it’s done properly, under the guidance of a qualified instructor. But it’s possible to get hurt practicing yoga—just as when participating in other physical activities.

The most common injuries associated with yoga are sprains and strains. Serious injuries are rare. The risk of injury associated with yoga is lower than that for higher impact sports activities.

Older adults, women who are pregnant, and those who have health conditions should discuss their needs with their health care providers and yoga instructor. They may need to modify or avoid some yoga poses and practices.

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Cramer H, Lauche R, Klose P, et al. Yoga for improving health-related quality of life, mental health and cancer-related symptoms in women diagnosed with breast cancer . Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2017;(1):CD010802.
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Cramer H, Ostermann T, Dobos G. Injuries and other adverse events associated with yoga practice: a systematic review of epidemiological studies . Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport . 2018;21(2):147-154.
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Cramer H, Ward L, Saper R, et al. The safety of yoga: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials . American Journal of Epidemiology . 2015;182(4):281-293.
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Li C, Liu Y, Ji Y, et al. Efficacy of yoga training in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis . Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice . 2018;30:33-37.
Li Y, Li S, Jiang J, et al. Effects of yoga on patients with chronic nonspecific neck pain. A PRISMA systematic review and meta-analysis . Medicine . 2019;98(8):e14649.
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Explore the benefits of yoga: In-Depth Blogs, Expert Videos, and Real-Life Case Studies

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Feasibility and results of a case study of yoga to improve physical functioning in people with chronic traumatic brain injury

Affiliations.

1 a Department of Occupational Therapy , College of Health and Human Sciences, Colorado State University , Fort Collins , CO , USA .
2 b Department of Physical Therapy , Indiana University School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences , Indianapolis , IN , USA .
3 c Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D), Center on Implementing Evidence-Based Practice, Roudebush Veterans Administration (VA) Medical Center , Indianapolis , IN , USA .
4 d Department of Parks , Recreation and Tourism Management, College of Health and Human Development, Clemson University , Clemson , SC , USA , and.
5 e Heartland Yoga Therapy , Indianapolis , IN , USA.
PMID: 26208245
DOI: 10.3109/09638288.2015.1062927

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed-methods case study was to investigate whether an 8-week 1:1 yoga program was feasible and beneficial to people with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Method: This was a mixed-methods case study of one-to-one yoga for people with TBI included three people. We completed assessments before and after the 8-week yoga intervention and included measures of balance, balance confidence, pain, range of motion, strength and mobility. Qualitative interviews were included at the post-assessment. We include a percent change calculation and salient quotes that represent the perceived impact of the yoga intervention.

Results: All participants completed the yoga intervention and all demonstrated improvements in physical outcome measures. For the group, balance increased by 36%, balance confidence by 39%, lower extremity strength by 100% and endurance by 105%. Qualitative data support the use of yoga to improve multiple aspects of physical functioning, one participant stated: "I mean it's rocked my world. It's changed my life. I mean all the different aspects. I mean physically, emotionally, mentally, it's given me you know my life back…".

Conclusions: Yoga, delivered in a one-to-one setting, appears to be feasible and beneficial to people with chronic TBI.

Implications for rehabilitation: Chronic traumatic brain injury (TBI) leads to many aspects of physical functioning impairment. Yoga delivered in a one-to-one setting may be feasible and beneficial for people with chronic TBI.

Keywords: Balance; traumatic brain injury; yoga.

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A Case Study of a Yoga and Meditation Intervention in an Urban School: A Complex Web of Relationships and Resilience in the Search for Student Well-Being

Advisor(s): Philip, Thomas M ;
Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen

This dissertation is a case study of nine urban low-SES students of color who participated in a biopsychosocial classroom-based intervention called For Youth (FY). The rising prevalence of educational institutions in the U.S. utilizing interventions that combine yoga, meditation and/or mindfulness similar to FY, signals that these interventions need to be more closely evaluated and researched to determine their effectiveness. This study represents a compelling opportunity to take a closer look at what may be beneficial and/or problematic about yoga and meditation interventions for marginalized students, given the state of infancy of the research with regard to the effects of yoga and meditation practices on differentiated populations. Special attention is paid in this dissertation to discussing why researchers cannot disentangle the impact of the relationships that students have with the adult stakeholders who implement these interventions, from the effect of the practices of yoga, meditation and/or mindfulness themselves. The findings of this dissertation demonstrate that researchers and educators need to put a significant effort towards learning more about the complexities of how student well-being should be defined in the literature, especially for marginalized students, what students need to support their emotional resilience, whether yoga and meditation practices are suitable for students K-12, and if so, the best ways to implement these interventions in different school contexts.

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Being on this course reminded me that Yoga is always inspiring. It helps with all aspects of our lives. If someone asked me about doing the course I would say definitely do it - but don’t rush it!

Stephanie Thompson on the Yoga Foundation Course

Yoga has been an almost life-long passion. My sister and I started Yoga classes in the 60s, at the time of Flower Power and the Beatles in India and all things hippy. We are still doing it and I am a trained Yoga teacher. Having done a particular type of Yoga for many years I wanted to do a course to widen my knowledge, deepen my understanding and compare my form of Yoga to others. My Yoga is very practical and does not cover a lot of the concepts. We do think about Mindfulness and non-worry, but not the more complicated practises. What I discovered by doing the course was that however you practise Yoga there isn’t a conflict of the basic teachings.

This course was very reflective and it was important to me to be able to take as much time as necessary with assignments. The course tutor was very helpful and the constructive and encouraging feedback meant I could go back and rethink things and reflect. The flexibility of the course was also important to me. The assignments were challenging (in a good way!) and some aspects needed practise before it was possible to proceed. The anatomy and the nutrition units also gave practical insights which were helpful. The nutrition unit made me think about my diet and how to improve it. For me the unit on the physical sequence was the most challenging part of the course (as all Yoga sequences are different) but all the guidelines were there and it didn’t make me change anything but showed me that all the fundamental elements of Yoga were represented.

Being on this course reminded me that Yoga is always inspiring. It helps with all aspects of our lives. Even as we age we can have as much vitality and contentment as ever. It is not necessary to be stressed to get things done. In fact if you are happy, contented and at peace you will get so much more done and not be depleted of energy and this is what practising Yoga teaches you. Apart from teaching classes I also find it useful in my work as a massage therapist and aromatherapist. And I teach massage to staff in Special Schools but of course the fundamentals of Yoga are in everything I do- even with my grandchildren.

If someone asked me about doing the course I would say definitely do it - but don’t rush it!

I would highly recommend this course to others who want a home-study course. The course has made me look more closely at myself and my lifestyle and it has also had an impact on the way I behave. It has definitely made me change things for the better!

Dee Barrett on the Yoga Foundation Course

Now that I am semi-retired with a little more time to spare it seemed like a good time to take up this course. I have practised yoga in weekly classes for about 14 years and I wanted to learn more about the history and philosophy behind it in order to improve my own practice. I am also interested in healthy living and eating and as I get older realise more and more the importance of looking after myself, both physically and mentally. So this course has been perfect for that and I now practise yoga daily and have made changes to my diet so that I feel calmer and understand my body better. My career has mostly been medical-based in hospitals or in a GP surgery and I now work just three afternoons so I can spend quality time practising yoga, studying and walking my dog in the countryside. The correspondence course has suited me very well in that I didn’t have to travel regularly and I could be flexible and take the time I needed for each unit. I liked that there was theory and practical work in each unit and I could take what I was learning to my weekly class as well as incorporating it into my daily practice. In fact the real bonus was actually making the time for daily practise and reaping the benefits. The unit on nutrition was particularly interesting in that we were asked to keep a food diary - not only of the foods we were eating but how they affected us and how we felt after eating. It became obvious which foods were enlivening for me and which made me sluggish and lethargic - and the same with drinks and consequently I have made changes to my eating habits. The unit on breathing was, again, very helpful as we studied different aspects of the breath through the various forms of yoga and then observed the effect on ourselves in a practical exercise. The unit incorporating aspects of Anatomy and Physiology and then understanding the various yoga postures meant that devising a yoga sequence that worked for me by using postures and counter-postures and felt good was very useful for my practise. I think it would be important to have done yoga prior to starting the course so that you could get the maximum benefit from the work. I can’t imagine learning the theory, history and philosophy without doing a yoga sequence alongside it to put the theory into practise. My tutor was a great support by providing help along the way when needed and giving prompt, useful and constructive feedback on written assignments. I really did the course to increase my knowledge of yoga and to help establish my daily yoga routine but now I feel I would like to learn even more of the philosophy and examine some of the ancient yoga texts. I would highly recommend this course to others who want a home-study course. As long as you are prepared to devote the time needed to study, as well as being prepared to look at yourself with an open mind, you will certainly reap the benefits. The course has made me look more closely at myself and my lifestyle and it has also had an impact on the way I behave. It has definitely made me change things for the better!

Like many people I first came to yoga as a result of back problems. In my 20’s and early 30’s my main form of exercise was at the gym, alongside classes such as circuit training and kick-boxing. Although I enjoyed these forms of exercise they led to back problems in the form of a prolapsed disc. This was when I decided to give yoga a try, mainly to help with my back, and I really enjoyed it both as a form of exercise and also for the benefits I felt from the relaxation and meditation side. I also no longer suffer from back problems.

Yoga Therapy Case Studies

150 hours (875 diploma) | 33 hours (625 diploma).

Conduct individual and group case studies to gain valuable practical experience as a Yoga Therapist! Enhance your skills in client intake and assessments, identifying client needs and priorities, and applying client-adapted Yoga Therapy tools. Gain confidence while working in a trauma-informed manner and implementing safe and ethical practices in your therapeutic relationship with clients under mentor supervision.

Case studies are an essential learning experience for Yoga Therapists. They provide an opportunity to put knowledge into practice, gain confidence in working with clients, and develop skills in client assessment, Yoga Therapy strategy design, and application of practices and techniques.

Embrace the transformative adventure of case studies, where challenges serve as catalysts for unparalleled growth, empowering both you and your clients!

client-centred yoga therapy sessions

real life learning

managing challenging situations

What to expect, learning objectives, who are the case studies for.

In Person/ Online

150 Hours/33 Hours

Complete case studies in your own time; up to 12 months (875 diploma) or 6 months (625 diploma).
Gain real-world experience by leading individual and group Yoga Therapy sessions.
Receive constructive support and feedback from your mentor and reflect on your development as a Yoga Therapist.
Develop healthy and meaningful therapeutic relationships with clients.
Identify your areas of interest, such as specific communities, working environments, or health conditions.
Expand your client base and repertoire by working with a variety of clients with different needs and interests.
Ensure that you are practicing within your professional boundaries and providing ethical and responsible care to your clients.
Sharpen your critical thinking skills by evaluating client needs, assessing progress, and making informed decisions about treatment plans.
Conduct individualised client intake and assessment to design a tailored Yoga Therapy session.
Follow Yoga Therapy safety protocols, identify red flags, and address contraindications.
Apply knowledge of anatomy, physiology, health issues, medications, and side effects using appropriate terminology.
Analyse case studies from a Yogic perspective.
Communicate and work in a trauma-informed manner.
Apply Yoga Therapy practices and techniques safely, incorporate props effectively, and develop realistic homework.
Assess client’s progress, immediate response, and provide lifestyle recommendations within Yoga Therapy’s scope of practice.
Understand and adhere to IAYT’s Scope of Practice and Ethical regulations, while engaging in self-reflection and self-inquiry.
Foster a collaborative therapeutic relationship and creatively solve challenges.
Recognise the need for medical referrals, consultation with mentors/supervisors, and seek professional support when necessary.

IN PERSON/ONLINE:

The case studies are flexible and completely self-paced, so you can work at your own pace and schedule your own session times with your clients.

The case studies are exclusively available for students finalising their diploma course.

There is no fee for the case studies. As the lead Yoga Therapist, you’ll be responsible for finding your own clients, scheduling the sessions, and determining the location and price of the sessions. Your mentor will be there to guide and support you throughout the entire process.

Frequently Asked Questions

A Yoga Therapy case study is a supervised practice in providing Yoga Therapy to a client. As the lead Yoga Therapist, you’ll be responsible for conducting an intake and assessment, developing a session plan, and delivering Yoga Therapy sessions. You’ll also be responsible for documenting the client’s progress and submitting a final case study report.

Here are some of the key elements of a Yoga Therapy case study:

Intake and assessment. This involves gathering information about the client’s health history, their goals for Yoga Therapy, and their current physical and mental state.
Session plan. This involves developing a plan for how Yoga Therapy will be used to address the client’s unique needs and desires. However, as Yoga Therapists, we must be flexible and adapt the plan as needed to meet the client’s changing needs.
Yoga Therapy sessions. This involves delivering Yoga Therapy sessions that are tailored to the client’s individual needs.
Documentation. This involves keeping records of the client’s progress, any challenges or situations that may have arisen, and mentor feedback received throughout the process. When the sessions are completed, you’ll document everything into a final case study report. This is a detailed report that summarises the entire case study process, including specific questions to help you reflect on your takeaways and development as a Yoga Therapist.
Mentorship. Throughout your case studies, you’ll receive mentorship from an assigned mentor. Mentorship is an important part of the case study process, and it can help you to develop your skills and knowledge, get feedback on your work, and navigate the challenges of the case study process.

The case studies are regarded as the most exciting and fulfilling part of our training, offering a glimpse into your future Yoga Therapy work. Our programme is designed specifically to prepare you for this moment, providing clear guidelines, detailed instructions, and continuous support from our case study coordinator and mentor.

Our programme is carefully designed to equip you with the necessary knowledge and skills to excel in Yoga Therapy Case Studies. Each module in the programme contributes to expanding your repertoire of expertise through a combination of theory and practice.

One reason we schedule case studies after the completion of modules is to ensure that your knowledge base is comprehensive and well-rounded. To prepare effectively, we recommend attending all classes, completing homework assignments, passing the end-of-module tests, and seeking opportunities for practical application. Throughout the programme, your teachers will guide and support you in refining your skills.

As you near the completion of your training, it can be helpful to explore potential clients who may be interested in participating in your case studies.

The duration of completing Yoga Therapy Case Studies may vary for each student, and at The Yoga Therapy Institute, we understand and support individual learning journeys. While students enrolled in the 875-hour course have up to 12 months, and students in the 625-hour course have up to 6 months, we acknowledge that some students may require additional time.

We believe in prioritising your comprehensive training, ensuring client safety, and fostering a supportive environment. If you need extra time to complete your case studies, we encourage you to take it. Our focus is on delivering high-quality education and promoting the well-being of both our students and their clients.

Here are some tips on how to find clients:

Start with your own network. Talk to your friends, family, and colleagues and see if they know anyone who might be interested in participating in your case study.
Talk to your existing students in yoga studios and gyms. Many students in regular yoga classes could greatly benefit from the safe and individually adapted Yoga Therapy sessions that you can provide. When a student asks about an injury or pain they experience, take the opportunity to inform them about your Yoga Therapy approach and how it could help them.
Use social media. Many students have found great success through social media by posting about their case studies and asking for referrals.

As a Yoga Therapy trainee, it is crucial to transparently communicate your status and fees to your clients in advance. The decision to charge a fee for participation in a case study is entirely up to you. It’s good to consider the value of your time and effort. Several factors may influence this decision, including your relationship with the client, their socio-economic status, and the location of the sessions.

It’s important to acknowledge that conducting case studies may involve certain expenses, such as studio rental and props. As you progress through your case studies and gain experience, you may choose to adjust your fees accordingly.

Ultimately, the determination of whether to charge a fee and the amount is a personal decision that should be made with careful consideration. We encourage you to assess the circumstances and ensure that your chosen approach aligns with your professional ethics, fair compensation, and maintaining a healthy client-therapist relationship.

Still have questions? Reach out to us . We’re always happy to help!

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Brain Plast
v.5(1); 2019

Yoga Effects on Brain Health: A Systematic Review of the Current Literature

Neha p. gothe.

a Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

Jessica Hayes

b Department of Psychology and Institute of Gerontology, Wayne State University

Emily Erlenbach

Jessica s. damoiseaux.

Yoga is the most popular complementary health approach practiced by adults in the United States. It is an ancient mind and body practice with origins in Indian philosophy. Yoga combines physical postures, rhythmic breathing and meditative exercise to offer the practitioners a unique holistic mind-body experience. While the health benefits of physical exercise are well established, in recent years, the active attentional component of breathing and meditation practice has garnered interest among exercise neuroscientists. As the scientific evidence for the physical and mental health benefits of yoga continues to grow, this article aims to summarize the current knowledge of yoga practice and its documented positive effects for brain structure and function, as assessed with MRI, fMRI, and SPECT. We reviewed 11 studies examining the effects of yoga practice on the brain structures, function and cerebral blood flow. Collectively, the studies demonstrate a positive effect of yoga practice on the structure and/or function of the hippocampus, amygdala, prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex and brain networks including the default mode network (DMN). The studies offer promising early evidence that behavioral interventions like yoga may hold promise to mitigate age-related and neurodegenerative declines as many of the regions identified are known to demonstrate significant age-related atrophy.

INTRODUCTION

The practice of yoga dates back over 2000 years to ancient India, with a focus on the unification of the mind, body, and spirit through the practice of physical movements, meditation and breathing exercises. Over the course of its lengthy existence, many different schools of yoga have emerged, each placing a different emphasis on the practice. However, despite their different philosophies and combinations of exercises, they all are integrated in the common theme of uniting the mind and body. Yoga’s prominence in western civilization emerged in the late 20th century. Although a review of the PubMed search on yoga yields the earliest scientific studies dating to 1948, there has been an exponential increase in publications beginning in the 2000s (see Fig. 1 ). While its origins root from religious principles, modern day culture is primarily drawn to it for its relaxation benefits (meditation and breathing exercises) and stretching and strengthening movements (physical poses). According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), yoga is the most popular form of complementary therapy practiced by more than 13 million adults, with 58% of adults citing maintenance of health and well-being as their reason for practice [ 1 ]. One of the reasons for yoga’s increase in popularity is its versatility, in that it can be taught at a range of different intensities. A systematic review by Larson-Meyer examined [ 2 ] the metabolic energy expenditure during Hatha yoga, the most widely practiced style of yoga in the United States. The review found that, while some specific yoga poses can be metabolically exerting (with energy expenditures >3 METS), most yoga practices fall under the American College of Sport Medicine’s criteria of “light-intensity physical activity” (2–2.9 METS) [ 3 ]. Compared to traditional forms of aerobic and anaerobic exercise, the relatively low-impact, modifiable nature of yoga can offer a middle ground for individuals with movement limitations, clinical diagnoses, and is particularly suitable for aging populations. Yoga’s focus on improving the self through both physical and mental practices incorporates more mindful elements absent in traditional forms of exercise.

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Search results from PubMed featuring the term “yoga” in the title and/or abstract of publications over the years shows an exponential growth in yoga research beginning in the 2000s.

Indeed, the practice of engaging the mind and body through meditation, breathing and physical poses has attracted significant attention from the medical community, and yoga has been frequently studied for its possible beneficial effects on physical and mental health outcomes. Systemic and meta-analytic reviews of randomized control trials have found positive associations between yoga practice and improvements in diabetes [ 4, 5 ], cardiovascular function [ 6 ], and musculoskeletal conditions [ 2, 3 ]. There is also considerable evidence for the beneficial effects of yoga practice on mental health including anxiety [ 9 ], stress [ 10, 11 ] depression [ 12, 13 ] and overall mental health [ 14 ]. Typically, yoga has been studied as an adjunct therapy in these studies conducted with adults and older adults often with clinical diagnoses. For example, Lin and colleagues [ 15 ] conducted a meta-analysis assessing the effects of yoga on psychological health, quality of life, and physical health of patients with cancer. They concluded that the yoga groups showed significantly greater improvements in psychological health, as indicated by anxiety, depression, distress, and stress levels, when compared with the waitlist or supportive groups.

Yoga’s acute and intervention effects on cognition are evident in a recent meta-analysis [ 16 ] which reported moderate effect sizes for attention, processing speed and executive function measures for studies conducted with adult populations. Yoga practice enables the practitioner to move in a controlled manner into modifiable physical postures concentrating initially on relaxing their body, breathing rhythmically, and developing awareness of the sensations in their body and thoughts in their mind. In addition to the physical benefits from sequentially completing the postures, the breathing ( pranayama ) and meditation exercises included in yoga are practiced to calm and focus the mind and develop greater self-awareness [ 17 ]. It is hypothesized that this combination of metacognitive thought and bodily proprioception during yoga practice could generalize to conventionally assessed cognitive functions including attention, memory, and higher-order executive functions. However, it is currently unknown if this relationship exists as a direct pathway, or if yoga indirectly influences cognitive functions through processes such as affective regulation. Negative affect including depression and stress are known to detrimentally impact both cognitive functioning [ 18 ] and brain structure [ 19 ] and systematic reviews discussed earlier have demonstrated the potential of yoga to improve anxiety, depression, stress and overall mental health.

Yoga has particularly gained traction as a research area of interest in its promising potential as a therapy to combat the alarming increase in age-related neurodegenerative diseases. Older adults are the fastest growing population in the US and around the world with over 2 billion people expected to be ≥60 years of age by 2050 [ 20 ]. Age is the biggest risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia in those aged 65 and older. In the absence of any effective treatments to cure the disease or manage its symptoms, researchers have explored the potential of modifying lifestyle behaviors such as nutrition and physical activity to drive beneficial plasticity of the aging brain and remediate age-related cognitive decline. Yoga may be an alternative form of physical activity which may help not only older adults achieve recommended levels of physical activity, but also for individuals who have disabilities or symptoms that prevent them from performing more vigorous forms of exercise.

The purpose of this review was to synthesize the current evidence for yoga’s effect on brain structure and function among adults and identify the regions and neural networks impacted by its short-term or long-term practice.

Literature search and study selection

The aim of this review was to examine the role of ‘holistic’ yoga practice, i.e. studies that explored the role of yoga practice which included each of its three elements: yoga postures, yoga-based breathing exercise and yoga-based meditative exercises. We used the following databases to identify studies from inception to July 2019 that have examined effects of yoga on brain health: MEDLINE, PsychINFO, PubMed, Indian Council of Medical Research, and Cochrane. We used the following a priori search terms to identify all the relevant published articles: ‘yoga’, ‘hatha yoga’ and ‘brain health’, ‘brain function’, ‘MRI’, ‘fMRI’, ‘brain volume’ ‘SPECT’, ‘PET’. Reference lists of relevant articles were also scanned to locate other published works.

Study inclusion criteria were peer reviewed and published cross-sectional, longitudinal or intervention studies examining the role of holistic yoga practice that included physical postures, breathing and meditation. Study outcomes needed to include brain health measures assessed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), including functional MRI (fMRI) or single photon emission computed tomography scan (SPECT) or position emission tomography (PET). Figure 2 presents the PRISMA flowchart that summarizes the study selection process. Studies examining the sole effects of meditation or mindfulness were excluded as they have been reviewed elsewhere (21, 22) and do not meet the holistic definition of yoga practice. After screening for inclusion criteria, 11 studies were included in this review. These studies were categorized based on the outcome variables measured, into two groups: “Effects of Yoga Practice on Brain Structure” that describes the structural characteristics of the brain associated with yoga practice, and “Effects of Yoga Practice on Brain Function” that describes investigations of regions showing differential activation or connectivity in the context of yoga practice.

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Prisma flowchart.

Study characteristics

As seen in Table 1 , this literature is very nascent, as evident from our literature search returning 11 relevant studies published between 2009 and 2019. Most of the studies ( n = 6) were cross-sectional and therefore exploratory in nature, whereas 5 intervention studies examined the yoga-brain outcome relationships over study durations ranging between 10 and 24 weeks. All studies have been conducted with adult populations, with 5 studies having a mean age greater than 65 years, suggesting older adult samples.

Study characteristics of the 11 publications examining the role of yoga on brain structures and functioning

Study author (Year)	Sample size; characteristics; Mean Age; Male:Female	Style of Yoga	Study design	Categorization of Yoga Group/practitioner and controls	Imaging methodology	Study findings
Santaella (2019)	N = 40; healthy female older adults – 20 yoga practitioners and 20 controls; 67.35 years; 0 : 40	Hatha	Cross-sectional	8+ years of at least bi-weekly Hatha yoga practice vs. no yoga or mindfulness experience	Resting-state fMRI	Greater resting-state anteroposterior functional connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and right angular gyrus among yoga experts
Garner (2019)	N = 102; healthy young adults- 39 randomized to yoga, 32 to a sport control group, and 31 to a passive control group; 22.8 years; 16 : 86	Hatha	Intervention	All yoga and sport control participants had not practiced yoga or similar mind-body exercises for at least 6 months.	MRI	Increase in right hippocampal GM density among yoga group.
Gothe (2018)	N = 26; healthy adults – 13 yoga experts and 13 controls; 35.75 years; 2 : 24	Hatha	Cross-sectional	3+ years of weekly yoga experience vs. no yoga or mind-body therapy experience	MRI+ task-based fMRI	Larger GM volume in the left hippocampus among yoga experts
						Lower dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity during encoding phase of working memory task among yoga experts
Afonso (2017)	N = 42; older adults – 21 experts and 21 controls; 67.05 years; 0 : 21	Hatha	Cross-sectional	8+ years of yoga experience vs. no yoga or mindfulness experience	MRI	Greater cortical thickness in left prefrontal lobe region, including lateral middle frontal gyrus, anterior and dorsal superior frontal gyrus among yoga experts
Yang (2016)	N = 25, healthy older adults with MCI – 14 randomized to yogic meditation and 11 to memory enhancement training; 67.4 years; 13 : 12	Kirtan Kriya+Kundalini Yoga	Intervention	1-hour/week for 12 weeks + daily homework	MRI + H-MRS	Decrease in choline-containing compounds in bilateral hippocampus in the memory enhancement training group
						Increased GM volume in bilateral hippocampal in the memory enhancement training group
						No significant changes in yoga group
Eyre (2016)	N = 25; healthy older adults with MCI – 14 randomized to yogic meditation and 11 to memory enhancement training; 67.4 years; 13 : 12	Kirtan Kriya+Kundalini Yoga	Intervention	1-hour/week for 12 weeks + daily homework	Resting-state fMRI	Improved verbal memory performance which correlated with changes in functional connectivity in the DMN, significant clusters included the ACC, FMC, PCC, MFG and LOC among both groups
						Improved verbal memory performance correlated with increased connectivity between the default mode network and frontal medial cortex, pregunal anterior cingulate cortex, right middle frontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and left lateral occipital cortex
						Improved verbal memory performance positively correlated with increased connectivity between language processing network and left inferior frontal gyrus
						Improved visuospatial memory performance correlated inversely with connectivity between superior parietal network and medial parietal cortex
Villemure (2015)	N = 28; healthy adults – 14 yoga experts and 14 controls; 36.85 years; 10 : 18	All types (that integrated physical postures, breath control exercises and meditation.)	Cross-sectional	No defined criteria, open-ended questions to determine yoga expertise resulting in average yoga experience range of 6–16 years	MRI	No correlation between age and whole-brain total GM volume among yoga experts (negative correlation in controls)
						Positive correlation between years of yoga practice and GM volume in left mid-insula, left frontal operculum, left orbitofrontal cortex and right middle temporal gyrus
						Positive correlation between weekly hours of practice and GM volume in right primary somatosensory cortex and superior parietal lobe, left hippocampus, midline precuneus/posterior cingulate cortices, and right primary visual cortex
						Postures and meditation predicted hippocampal, precuneus/PCC and somatosensory cortex/superior parietal lobule volume
						Meditation and breathing predicted primary visual cortex, precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex volume
Hariprasad (2012)	N = 7; healthy older adults; age range 69–81 years; 4 : 3	Hatha – Yogasanass, pranayama, OM chanting	Intervention	1-hour 5 days a week for 3 months + 3 months of home practice	MRI	Increased GM volume in bilateral hippocampus (posterior region) following yoga intervention
Froeliger (2012b)	N = 14; healthy adults – 7 yoga experts and 7 controls; 35.95 years; 2 : 12	Hatha	Cross-sectional	3+ years of yoga experience with 45 + min of practice 3-4 times per week vs no yoga or meditation experience	MRI	Greater GM volume of frontal, limbic, temporal, occipital, and cerebellar regions among yoga experts
						Fewer self-reported cognitive failures among yoga experts
						Negative correlation between cognitive failures and GM volume
						Positive correlation between years of yoga experience and GM volume
Froeliger (2012a)	N = 14; healthy adults – 7 yoga experts and 7 controls; 35.95 years; 2 : 12	Hatha	Cross-sectional	3+ years of yoga experience with 45 + min of practice 3-4 times per week vs no yoga or meditation experience	Task-based fMRI	Lower right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (i.e. MFG) activity during viewing of negative and neutral emotional images among yoga experts
						Greater left superior frontal gyrus activity during Stroop task among controls
						Greater left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activity during Stroop task with presence of negative emotional distractors than neutral emotional distractors in yoga experts (opposite pattern for controls)
						No correlation between amygdala activation to viewing negative emotional image and task-related changes in affect among yoga experts (decreases in positive affect were correlated with increased amygdala activation in controls).
Cohen (2009)	N = 4; healthy older adults with prehypertension or stage 1 hypertension; 45 years; 2 : 2	Hatha – Iyengar	Intervention	1-hour bi-weekly practice for 6 weeks + 1-hour weekly practice and home DVD (average 20 min daily practice reported) for 6 weeks	Injection of Tc-bicisate + single proton emission computed tomography	Decrease in average cerebral blood flow ratio in right amygdala, right dorsal medial cortex, and right sensorimotor area during baseline scan following yoga intervention
						Increased activation in right dorsal medial frontal lobe, left dorsal medial frontal lobe, right prefrontal cortex, right sensorimotor cortex, right inferior frontal lobe, and right superior frontal lobe during meditation following yoga intervention
						Greater activity in the left side of anterior cingulate, dorsomedial frontal cortex, superior temporal lobe relative to the right following yoga intervention
						Greater laterality preference for the left over the right hemisphere during meditation compared to baseline following yoga intervention

Various styles of yoga were reported across the studies, with a majority ( n = 9) classified as Hatha yoga practice (a style that focuses on physical postures, breathing, and meditation). Other styles of yoga reported in the studies included Kundalini yoga with Kirtan Kriya ( n = 2), which focuses more on mediation and the chanting of mantras, and Iyengar ( n = 1) which is a type of Hatha yoga with a greater emphasis on anatomical detail and alignment. The 5 intervention studies ranged from 10 to 24 weeks and examined the brain health outcomes at baseline and end of the intervention. The frequency of yoga practice varied across the interventions ranging from once a week to biweekly to daily practice. Studies that compared brain health outcomes for yoga practitioners or experts with age- and or sex-matched controls typically included yoga practitioners with at least 3 or more years of regular (weekly or biweekly) yoga practice. None of these cross-sectional studies offered a standardized definition or specific criterion to define a yoga practitioner. Based on the studies included in this review, a yoga practitioner was defined as an individual who had consistently practiced yoga for at least 3 years on a weekly basis.

Effects of yoga practice on brain structure

In order to identify the effects of yoga practice on brain structure, researchers have utilized MRI to investigate how the structure of the brain differs among those with experience practicing yoga (see Fig. 3 ).

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Brain regions showing A) structural differences in yoga-practitioners compared to non-practitioners or B) a dose-dependent relationship between years of yoga practice and brain structure among practitioners. Yoga practitioners exhibited greater cortical thickness, gray matter (GM) volume, and GM density than non-practitioners in a variety of regions. Among yoga-practitioners, a positive relationship between the years of yoga practice and GM volume was also observed in a number of areas. All but one of the regions shown were created by making a 5 mm sphere around the coordinates provided in the studies reviewed. Since Gothe et al. (2018) did not investigate volume differences on a voxel-wise basis, a mask of the whole structure is shown.

Cross-sectional studies examining group differences

The majority of these studies have relied on comparing the brain structure of experienced yoga practitioners, with the brain structure of non-practitioners, or yoga-naïve controls, to detect cross-sectional differences existing between the groups. Afonso et al. [ 23 ] found differences in cortical thickness among female adults over the age of 60 with 8 or more years of Hatha yoga experience compared to a non-practitioner control group. The yoga-practitioners exhibited greater cortical thickness in an area of the left prefrontal cortex that included part of the middle frontal and superior frontal gyri. Importantly, participants between groups were matched for the typical amount of non-yoga physical activity they engage in, suggesting that the differences in cortical thickness are not just due to a potentially greater levels of overall physical activity among yoga-practitioners.

Other studies that investigated cross-sectional differences in brain structure between yoga-practitioners and non-practitioners primarily focused on detecting differences in gray matter (GM) volume rather than cortical thickness. Our own work [ 24 ] sought to determine whether the volume of the hippocampus, a subcortical structure that plays an important role in memory, differed between yoga-practitioners with at least 3 years of experience compared to non-practitioners. We found the volume of the left hippocampus to be significantly greater among yoga-practitioners compared to age- and sex- matched controls with similar physical activity and fitness levels. We also tested differences between the thalamus and caudate nucleus, which are subcortical structures that served as control regions. No significant differences were found between the two groups, suggesting that yoga effects on the brain may be selective and similar to those observed in the aerobic exercise-cognition literature. Consistent with this result, another study [ 25 ] also identified volume differences in the left hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus between healthy adults with and without yoga experience. A number of additional frontal (bilateral orbital frontal, right middle frontal, and left precentral gyri), temporal (left superior temporal gyrus), limbic (left parahippocampal gyrus, hippocampus, and insula), occipital (right lingual gyrus), and cerebellar regions were also larger among yoga-practitioners than non-practitioners. Given that this sample of yoga-practitioners reported fewer cognitive failures than their yoga-naïve counterparts, the researchers correlated the number of lapses in cognitive function that participants reported with the volume of regions where group differences were observed. A negative correlation was reported, such that higher numbers of cognitive failures were associated with smaller GM volumes in the frontal, limbic temporal, occipital, and cerebellar regions stated above.

Villemure and colleagues [ 26 ] investigated whether the correlation of age with total GM volume of the whole brain differed between a group of yoga-practitioners and non-practitioners. While within the group of healthy adults without yoga experience, a negative correlation was observed between age and the total GM volume of the brain, no relationship was found between age and brain structure within the group of yoga-practitioners. However, the difference in slopes between the groups was not statistically significant. Non-practitioners did not exhibit larger or thicker brain structures compared to experienced yoga-practitioners in any of these studies.

Intervention studies examining yoga training effects

In comparison to the aforementioned cross-sectional studies, studies employing yoga interventions have investigated how the structure of the brain changes as a result of relatively short-term yoga practice. Hariprasad and colleagues [ 27 ] measured changes in the GM volume of the bilateral hippocampus and the superior occipital gyrus, which served as a control region, following a 6-month yoga intervention. Participants consisted of healthy older adults who underwent an hour of formal training 5 days a week for 3 months and then completed the same daily regimen at home for an additional 3 months with regular booster training sessions. An increase in the volume of the bilateral hippocampus from pre- to post-intervention was observed; however, the sample of this study was quite small ( n = 7) and did not compare these changes to changes in hippocampal volume of a control group. Another study [ 28 ] also evaluated changes in the GM volume of the bilateral hippocampus, as well as in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, but they did so in participants with mild cognitive impairment who completed a 12-week intervention consisting of weekly 1-hour sessions of either Kundalini yoga with Kirtan Kriya or memory-enhancement training. Both groups also completed 12 minutes of daily homework that was related to their intervention. Unlike previous studies, the results of a mixed effects model showed the volume change of the bilateral hippocampus did not differ between the two groups, but that the change in volume of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex was different for the two intervention groups. Within the memory enhancement group, there was a trend toward increased volume of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex following the intervention, a change that was not observed within the yoga group. It is possible that the shorter length of this intervention (12-weeks) in comparison to the 6-month intervention utilized by Hariprasad and colleagues [ 27 ] explains the differences in study results pertaining to hippocampal volume. However, since memory-enhancement training targets a single aspect of cognition and thus is likely to directly target areas involved in memory, it may not serve as an equal comparison group for yoga, whose effects are exerted in a more indirect fashion.

Garner and colleagues [ 29 ] investigated the impact of yoga training on GM density, which is related to a voxel’s signal intensity and is reflective of the amount of gray matter within each voxel. They did this by comparing changes in GM density among healthy young adults after a 10-week intervention in which participants self-selected enrollment in a Hatha yoga, sport control, or passive control group. Although the yoga and sport control groups both underwent 10 hours of weekly practice which involved similar body movements, the meditation and breathing components of holistic yoga practice were not incorporated into the workouts performed by the sport control group. Unlike participants in these groups, who had not participated in their selected activities for at least 6 months prior to the intervention, participants in the passive control group did not alter any of their daily habits. No differences were observed between the yoga and passive control groups, but compared to the sport group, GM density of the yoga group was shown to increase in five regions and decrease in three regions following intervention. The only region to show an effect specific to the yoga intervention was the right hippocampus, which showed increased GM density over time within the yoga group and decreased GM density over time within the sport control group. Interestingly, this region showed significantly lower GM density at baseline for the yoga group compared to the two control groups. Neither gender or height differences were found to explain this, and no other sociodemographic characteristics were found to differ between the groups, but based on known links between the hippocampus, stress, and blood pressure, the authors suggest that individuals who are vulnerable to stress may have been driven to select yoga due to its known relaxation benefits.

Dose-response relationships

The second general strategy employed by researchers to investigate the effects of yoga practice on brain structure is to characterize the specific nature of the relationship between yoga practice and brain structure among experienced yoga practitioners. Such analyses primarily consist of examining the “dose-dependent” relationship between years of yoga practice and brain structure (see Fig. 3 ). However, evaluating how each of the different components of yoga practice (i.e. postures, breathing, meditation) is related to the structure of the brain is also of interest. Two of the cross-sectional studies already mentioned (25, 26) investigated relationships of this nature. After identifying regions of the brain in which yoga-practitioners exhibited greater GM volume than non-practitioners, Froeliger and colleagues (25) looked within these regions to identify areas where years of yoga practice was correlated with GM volume. They found that the extent of yoga experience within yoga-practitioners was positively related to volume of frontal, limbic, temporal, occipital, and cerebellar regions, while no regions showed a negative association between years of yoga practice and GM volume.

Villemure and colleagues [ 26 ] also sought to identify a dose-dependent relationship between GM volume, years of yoga practice and current weekly yoga practice as reported by the yoga-practitioners. Volumes of the left mid-insula, frontal operculum, orbital frontal cortex, and right middle temporal gyrus were positively correlated with years of yoga practice, while volumes of the left hippocampus, midline precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex, right primary visual cortex, and right primary somatosensory cortex/superior parietal lobe were positively related to the weekly number of hours spent practicing yoga. In addition to investigating this dose-dependent relationship between yoga practice and brain structure, the researchers conducted multiple regressions to evaluate how well each aspect of yoga practice predicted GM volume in the areas found to correlate with weekly yoga practice. Commonality analysis allowed them to divide the amount of variation in GM volume that was accounted for by all the predictors into the percentage of the effect unique to each predictor and common to each combination of 2 or more predictors. A combination of the posture and meditation components of yoga practice accounted for 42% of the explained variance in hippocampal GM, 41% in precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex GM, and 45% in primary visual cortex GM. Meanwhile, 44% of the explained variance in primary somatosensory cortex/superior parietal lobe GM volume was accounted for by the meditation and breathing components of yoga practice.

Effects of yoga practice on brain function

Although the majority of studies investigating yoga’s relationship with the brain have focused on structural brain measures, a handful of studies ( n = 5) have compared how brain functioning differs between those with and without yoga experience. Three of these studies were cross-sectional in nature, with two comparing task-related brain activation and the other comparing functional brain connectivity between experienced yoga-practitioners and non-practitioners.

Task-related fMRI findings

Figure 3 represents the brain regions identified across the 3 studies based on the task-related fMRI findings. In addition to investigating differences in GM volume, our own work [ 24 ] evaluated how yoga-practitioners and non-practitioners differed in brain function during subcomponents of a Sternberg working memory task. No differences between the groups were identified during the maintenance or retrieval portions of the task, but yoga-practitioners exhibited significantly less brain activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) during encoding compared to yoga-naïve controls.

Froeliger and colleagues [ 30 ] used the same sample of yoga practitioners and non-practitioner controls who showed differences in GM volume [ 25 ] to investigate differences in task-related activation during an affective Stroop task. One focus of this fMRI study was to evaluate effects of yoga on emotional reactivity by considering the impact of group, the emotional valence of images viewed, and the interaction of group and valence on the BOLD response to viewing emotional images. A significant interaction was noted in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (middle frontal gyrus), and further investigation demonstrated that the percent signal change in this region was greater when viewing neutral images compared to negative images among non-practitioners. Meanwhile, among yoga-practitioners, the percent signal change in this region was lesser than that observed in non-practitioners regardless of whether the image had a negative or neutral emotional valence. Across all participants, the percent signal change in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was negatively correlated with the percent signal change in the amygdala when viewing negative images, but not when viewing neutral images. The second aim of the study was to identify how yoga experience alters the impact of emotional distraction on the Stroop-BOLD response. To investigate this, the main effects of group, the emotional valence of the distractor image, and the interaction between these on the BOLD response during the Stroop contrast (incongruent vs congruent number grids) were considered. The non-practitioners showed less activation in the left superior frontal gyrus compared to yoga-practitioners regardless of distractor image’s emotional valence. Furthermore, the percent signal change of the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex was greater among yoga-practitioners if a negative distractor was presented than if a neutral distractor was presented, while the opposite pattern was observed within the group of non-practitioners. Positive affect was shown to decrease significantly from baseline to the completion of the affective Stroop task among all participants and this change was positively correlated with the response to viewing negative images in the left amygdala. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction between this response and group, such that among non-practitioners a greater response to viewing negative emotional images was related to greater decreases in positive affect. Among yoga-practitioners, however, this relationship between amygdala BOLD response to negative emotional images and change in affect was not present.

Functional connectivity findings

Unlike the previous two studies, which utilized fMRI to identify brain activation occurring during engagement in a cognitive task, a recent cross-sectional study [ 31 ] utilized fMRI to identify whether yoga practice is related to functional brain connectivity. In response to interest surrounding yoga as a tool to combat aging, and the vulnerability of the default mode network (DMN) to typical and pathological aging processes, healthy older adults with at least 8 years of yoga experience were paired with age, education, and physical activity-matched yoga-naïve controls. Greater resting-state anteroposterior functional brain connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and right angular gyrus was observed among yoga practitioners compared to yoga-naïve controls. While a decrease in resting state functional connectivity is often associated with aging, this study suggests that yoga may reverse this age-related effect among older female subjects.

Other studies investigated longitudinal changes in the functional connectivity of the brain function following yoga intervention. One such study conducted by Eyre and colleagues [ 32 ] utilized fMRI to examine how the functional connectivity of the brain at rest changed following a 12-week intervention with either yoga or memory-enhancement training, as previously described in summarizing the results of Yang et al. [ 28 ]. Results showed that improvements in verbal memory recall were positively associated with changes in connectivity primarily within areas of the default mode network. Specifically, this effect was present in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, frontal medial cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, middle frontal gyrus, and lateral occipital cortex for both of the intervention groups. Similarly, changes in functional connectivity of the left inferior frontal gyrus, found in the language network, were also positively associated with changes in verbal memory recall for both groups. However, the relationship between changes in connectivity and memory was no longer significant in the posterior cingulate cortex or inferior frontal gyrus within the yoga intervention group after removal of an outlier. While an area within the superior parietal network near the precentral and postcentral gyri exhibited a negative relationship between changes in functional connectivity and changes in visuospatial memory, the authors interpreted this negative association to be reflective of enhanced efficiency following intervention. A 12-week intervention was used in another study [ 33 ] to investigate whether changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF) measured with single-photon emission computed tomography were influenced by Iyengar yoga during baseline and meditation scans among four patients with mild hypertension. The right amygdala, dorsal medial cortex and sensorimotor areas showed decreases in baseline CBF following the intervention. Meanwhile, activation was greater during meditation in the right prefrontal cortex, sensorimotor cortex, inferior frontal lobe, superior frontal lobe and the right and left dorsal medial frontal lobes following yoga training. Furthermore, the greater activity of the left anterior cingulate, dorsomedial frontal cortex, and superior temporal lobe, relative to the right, was more prominent after the intervention. Following yoga training, laterality preference for the left over the right during meditation compared to baseline also became more pronounced.

Our review of the yoga-imaging literature suggests that behavioral mind-body interventions such as yoga practice can affect the anatomy of the brain. Yoga practice appears to be linked to anatomical changes in the frontal cortex, hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex and insula. Throughout the studies reviewed, yoga practice showed a consistent positive relationship with measures of brain structure (i.e. GM volume, GM density, cortical thickness), such that regions showing an effect of yoga practice were greater in experts or had more gain following intervention. Differences in brain function between yoga-practitioners and non-practitioners have been observed in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, with yoga-practitioners showing less activation during both working memory and affective Stroop tasks. Additionally, yoga-practitioners differed from non-practitioners within the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, superior frontal gyrus, and amygdala during other aspects of the affective Stroop task. Studies investigating changes in the functional connectivity of the brain following yoga practice have primarily identified increases in the default mode network, one of which found that those changes were related to memory performance.

Although the direction of differences in brain function between yoga-practitioners and non-practitioners may be inconsistent, it is the interpretation of those differences and what they imply about the potential utility of yoga practice in maintaining brain health that are of ultimate interest. Given the complex nature of the brain, there is often more than one way something can exert an effect. This, in addition to the specific task being used, individual differences in the way participants strategize, and other differences in study design could account for differences in results across studies. While the nature of yoga’s relationship with brain function seems less straightforward than it does with structure, the evidence still points toward yoga exerting a beneficial effect on brain function. Findings that link the pattern of brain functioning observed in yoga-practitioners to performance or health outcomes offer support for the beneficial influence of yoga on brain function.

Evidence suggests that global GM declines with age [ 34 ] while physical activity and cardiovascular fitness [ 35, 36 ] as well as mindfulness [ 21, 22 ] have shown to confer neuro-protective effects. The holistic practice of yoga combines physical activity in the form of postures with yoga-based meditative and breathing exercises. The findings from studies reviewed in this paper are therefore not surprising and suggest that yoga confers similar cortical neuro-protective effects. These findings could not only have a significant public health impact on cognitive aging but also call for exercise neuroscientists to design systematic trials to test the efficacy and effectiveness of yoga practice in comparison to other forms of physical activity and mindfulness practices.

A majority of the studies highlight changes in hippocampal volume following yoga practice. The hippocampus is known to be critically involved in learning and memory processes [ 37 ]. Yoga effects on the hippocampus are also aligned with findings from the aerobic exercise literature [ 38 ], as well as the mindfulness literature [ 39 ], suggesting that exercise alone and mindfulness alone, as well as a combination of the two in the form of yoga practice, have a positive effect on this critical brain structure implicated in age-related neurodegenerative diseases and chronic stress [ 19, 40 ]. Other than the hippocampus, work of Froelinger and colleagues [ 25 ] suggests that yoga practitioners have higher GM volume in a number of regions including frontal (i.e., bilateral orbital frontal, right middle frontal, and left precentral gyri) (see Fig. 3 ), limbic (i.e., left parahippocampal gyrus, hippocampus, and insula), temporal (i.e., left superior temporal gyrus), occipital (i.e., right lingual gyrus) and cerebellar regions. Experimental and lesion studies indicate these brain structures are involved with tasks of cognitive control [ 41 ], inhibition of automatized or prepotent responses [ 42 ], the contextually appropriate selection and coordination of actions [ 43 ], and reward evaluation and decision making [ 44, 45 ]. The cerebellum, a brain structure known for decades as integral to the precise coordination and timing of body movements [ 46 ], has more recently been acknowledged to be involved in cognition, specifically executive function [ 47, 48 ].

The studies reviewed also implicate the role of yoga in functioning of the dlPFC and the amygdala (see Fig. 4 ). Gothe et al. [ 24 ] found that yoga practitioners demonstrated decreased dlPFC activation during the encoding phase of a working memory task in comparison to the controls. Froelinger et al. [ 30 ] also found yoga practitioners to be less reactive in the right dlPFC when viewing the negatively valanced images on the affective Stroop task. Task-relevant targets activate the dlPFC, whereas emotional distractors activate the amygdala [ 49 ]. Exerting cognitive control over emotional processes leads to increased activation in the dlPFC, with corresponding reciprocal deactivation in the amygdala [ 50, 51 ]. The studies suggest that when emotional experience occurred within the context of a demanding task situation, yoga practitioners appeared to resolve emotional interference via recruitment of regions of the cortex that subserve cognitive control. Plausibly, these findings may indicate that yoga practitioners selectively recruit neurocognitive resources to disengage from negative emotional information processing and engage the cognitive demands presented by working memory and inhibitory control tasks demonstrating overall neurocognitive resource efficiency.

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Brain regions showing differential task-related activation in yoga-practitioners. Yoga practitioners showed less activation than non-practitioners in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the encoding phase of a Sternberg Working Memory task (yellow). Yoga practitioners also showed less activation than non-practitioners in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right superior frontal gyri, but more activation in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex during various aspects of an Affective Stroop task (red). All regions shown were created by making a 5 mm sphere around the coordinates provided in the studies reviewed.

A network of neural structures including the frontal lobe, the anterior cingulate cortex, the infero-temporal lobe and the parietal cortex are known to be involved in cognitive operations including stimulus processing and memory updating [ 52, 53 ]. Specifically, the anterior cingulate cortex is part of the brain’s limbic system and has connections with multiple brain structures that process sensory, motor, emotional and cognitive information [ 54 ]. In our reviewed studies, Eyre et al. [ 32 ] found verbal memory performance to be correlated with increased connectivity between the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, frontal medial cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, middle frontal gyrus, and lateral occipital cortex following a 12-week yoga intervention. Villemure et al. [ 26 ] also reported a positive correlation between the dose of weekly yoga practice and GM in the cingulate cortex. Collectively these results are promising and corroborate the aerobic exercise literature, as the anterior cingulate cortex is one of the brain structures that shows disproportional changes as a result of participation in moderate intensity physical activity [ 55 ]. Many of these regions are part of the default mode network, which is typically activated during rest and deactivated when an individual is engaged in an external task [ 56 ]. Following a yoga intervention, increases in connectivity of regions in the DMN were associated with improvements in verbal memory recall [ 32 ]. Given that functional connectivity of the DMN has been negatively associated with age-related pathologies such as Alzheimer’s disease [ 57 ], as well as in the context of typical aging [ 58 ], the increases in functional connectivity in regions of the DMN reported by Eyre et al. further indicate that yoga practice is a promising intervention for use among aging populations.

Future directions

Although yoga-cognition has emerged as a topical area in the field of exercise neuroscience, the studies are preliminary and lack the rigorous methodology that is applied in the exercise-cognition literature. Sample sizes for yoga studies have ranged from 4 to 102 participants and a majority of the work has been cross-sectional in nature. While the beauty of yoga lies in the diverse and modifiable combinations of postures, breathing and meditative exercises, this concurrently poses a challenge for scientists to compare findings across studies. Furthermore, there is no standardized definition for a yoga practitioner, nor a universal standard for certification. Of the yoga practitioners sampled in the reviewed studies, their experience ranged from regular practice 3–5 days a week for 3 to 16 years. This poses a challenge to compare research findings across studies.

Although cross-sectional studies limit us in our ability to draw casual conclusions, such a design can provide certain advantages over the use of interventional studies design in identifying the effects of yoga practice on the brain given that 9.3 years was the lowest average number of years of yoga practice reported by yoga-practitioners in these studies. Following yoga-practitioners for such an extended period in an intervention design would pose a variety of practical difficulties, and thus cross-sectional comparisons between yoga practitioners and yoga-naïve controls provide a unique opportunity to gain an idea of the maximal benefits that extensive yoga practice may lead to. Nonetheless, it is the promise of yoga as an intervention for individuals with various health issues that has sparked much of the growing interest in the effects of yoga practice on brain structure and function, since its established cognitive benefits and accessibility to people with a wide range of physical capabilities suggest it may be an effective intervention for typical and pathological cognitive decline among older adults. Yet for yoga interventions to have clinical utility in such circumstances, compliance to the intervention program is a necessity. None of the reviewed intervention studies provided information about participants’ compliance and adherence to the yoga program. Future studies need to document and report attendance and adherence rates. The intervention studies also employed different frequencies, intensities and doses of yoga practice which resulted in heterogeneity across intervention designs as well.

While the reviewed studies examined the relationship between yoga and brain structure or function, only one [ 24 ] employed cognitive or behavioral assessments which correlate with the studied brain regions. Future studies should administer such assessments to establish if the neural changes produced by yoga practice are indeed manifested into improved cognitive performance and/or behavioral changes. Another limitation among the reviewed studies is lack of reported data on the lifestyle characteristics of yoga practitioners. A national survey [ 59 ] found that, compared to the US average, yoga practitioners are more likely to be highly physically active, non-obese, and well-educated – each of which [ 60–62 ] are known to individually contribute to positive changes in brain structure and function. The same survey also found that yoga practitioners are almost four times more likely to follow vegetarian or plant-based diets compared to the US population which could also contribute to brain health [ 63 ]. Future research should examine how the lifestyle characteristics of yoga practitioners may interact with the physical practice of yoga and contribute towards brain function and structure.

Unlike intervention studies and randomized trials, the design of cross-sectional studies limits the control researchers can exert on possible confounding or mediating variables. Most of the cross-sectional studies compare the brains of yoga practitioners with several years of experience to age- and sex-matched yoga-naïve controls. However, only three of these studies matched the groups on the levels of physical activity between the groups or their cardiovascular fitness levels. Moving forward, researchers should conduct well-powered yoga interventions with appropriate controls to examine the neuroimaging outcomes. A variety of cognitive measures and neuroimaging analysis techniques have been used in the literature. Perhaps a foundation would be to test yoga interventions against the established evidence for aerobic exercise and mindfulness practices. Designing randomized controlled trials with exercise and mindfulness comparison groups will allow us to further the literature with the goal of identifying the unique and holistic effects of exercise vs. mindfulness vs. yoga practice.

The literature is too nascent, and it would be premature to dive into comparisons between different styles of yoga practice. This is evident from the studies reviewed as none of them compared the effectiveness of one style of yoga versus another. This question is intertwined with the ‘holistic’ definition of yoga practice as different styles of yoga place greater or lesser emphasis on one or more elements of physical postures, breathing, and meditation. Well-powered randomized control trials are needed not only to identify the ‘active ingredient’ that is driving the yoga effects on brain health, but also examine the synergistic neuro-protective effects of these elements. Lastly, it remains to be determined whether web-based yoga interventions will be as effective as in-person yoga interventions which were primarily utilized in the reviewed papers. There has been an exponential growth in the development of mobile health apps [ 64 ] and it remains to be determined whether web-delivered yoga interventions will be as effective as in-person often group based interventions.

This review of literature reveals promising early evidence that yoga practice can positively impact brain health. Studies suggest that yoga practice may have an effect on the functional connectivity of the DMN, the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex while engaged in cognitive tasks, and the structure of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex- all regions known to show significant age-related changes [ 65, 66 ]. Therefore, behavioral interventions like yoga may hold promise to mitigate age-related and neurodegenerative declines. Systematic randomized trials of yoga and its comparison to other exercise-based interventions, as well as long term longitudinal studies on yoga practitioners are needed to identify the extent and scope of neurobiological changes. We hope this review can offer the preliminary groundwork for researchers to identify key brain networks and regions of interest as we move toward advancing the neuroscience of yoga.

Author contributions

NG, JD – conceptualization, analyses and writing. JH – structuring and writing results, figures and tables. IK – review of studies, extraction of data and preparation of Table 1 . EE – revision and writing of the manuscript.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors have no conflict of interest to report.

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Hot Yoga Tallahassee: A Case Study of Misogynistic Extremism

In November 2018, a 40-year-old gunman opened fire inside a yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida, killing two women and injuring four more before committing suicide. The attack was motivated by his inability to develop or maintain relationships with women and his perception of women’s societal power over men. This case study analyzes the behavior and history of the gunman to prevent targeted violence while drawing particular focus to the risk posed by misogynistic extremism.

Open access
Published: 13 September 2024

The phenomenon of yoga in the imagination of Turkish nursing students: "The way to place goodness in the heart"

Özüm Erki̇n 1 ,
Aynur Çeti̇nkaya 2 &
Begüm Güler 3

BMC Nursing volume 23 , Article number: 655 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

The aim of the research is to shed light on the experiences of a group of nursing students enrolled in a yoga elective course who practiced yoga regularly for 14 weeks, regarding yoga and the phenomenon of doing yoga, with a qualitative approach.

This qualitative study was conducted at a public university in Izmir, Turkey. The study sample consisted of 61 students enrolled in the 1st-year yoga course at the Department of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences. Except for two students, 59 of them participated in the study. Participants attended a face-to-face yoga course once a week for 1.5 h over a 14-week period. Each session comprised 30 min of theoretical instruction and 60 min of practice. In data collection, an interview form containing five questions was used to understand nursing students' experiences and thoughts about practicing yoga. In addition, A4 sized papers in different colors were presented to the participants. The participants were asked to draw and/or cut a shape by choosing the paper in the color that most evokes yoga. Then they were asked to explain why they chose this color and why they drew this shape. Participants were given one hour. After the data were collected, the pictures drawn by the participants and their descriptions of their drawings were transferred to the computer and included in the analysis. Qualitative data were hand-coded by the researchers. Within in-vivo coding, code names were formed from the participants' expressions. The findings analyzed by content analysis were interpreted with the literature under the themes by presenting quotations.

It was determined that the participants used nature figures (sun, cloud, tree, sky, flower) (f = 75), people doing yoga (f = 12), and sound, light and other figures (bird sound, wave sound, candle, light bulb, traffic light, heart, eye, left key, peace, swing, India, circle, etc.) (f = 29) in the shapes they drew and cut out on A4 sized papers in different colors to describe their experiences and thoughts about practicing yoga. The participants mostly chose blue-green-yellow colors ( n = 41). With qualitative question analysis, a list of codes was created from the answers given by the students to the questions for the phenomenon of “doing yoga” (number of codes = 98). After the analysis of the data, four categories were reached. The category names and frequency numbers explaining the phenomenon of practicing yoga were distributed as “symbol of health and serenity (f = 345)”, “the way to place goodness in your heart (f = 110)”, “the most effective way to meet the self (f = 93)” and “no guarantee of relaxation (f = 71)”, respectively.

Conclusions

The results indicate that yoga is perceived by nursing students as a multifaceted practice that evokes a range of emotional and physical responses. Most participants associate yoga with symbols of health, serenity, and self-awareness, often using natural elements and blue-green-yellow the colors to represent these feelings. However, there is also recognition that yoga may not guarantee relaxation for everyone, as some students reported difficulties in meditation, physical discomfort, and challenges in focusing. The study highlights the variability in how individuals experience yoga, emphasizing both its positive effects on well-being and the potential challenges in practice. These findings suggest that while yoga is widely valued for its calming and health-promoting benefits, it may not be universally effective in achieving relaxation or mindfulness.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Yoga is a practice that has been subject to many different interpretations and translations over thousands of years. Patanjali's phrase "Yogas Chitta Vrittis Nirodha" translates to "Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind" in English [ 1 ]. Hagen & Hagen (2024) have emphasized that yoga is commonly understood in society as a tool for mental calmness and balance[ 2 ]. This provides a comprehensive model for personal development, contributing to the individual's balanced harmony in every aspect—mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual [ 3 , 4 ]. By developing inner awareness as well as meta-awareness, yoga offers a roadmap for individuals to see and understand their own state and surroundings more clearly [ 5 ]. Yoga enhances physical functionality by alleviating pain and discomfort, thereby reducing physical ailments. Moreover, yoga offers physical health benefits, including increased strength and flexibility, as well as improved posture [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ].

According to Bhavanani (2014), yoga extends beyond mere physical or mental health; it also addresses emotional, social, and spiritual needs [ 11 ]. By increasing personal awareness, it can strengthens both inner attachment and social connections [ 6 , 9 , 12 ]. Research shows that participants' self-confidence increases during yoga practice, and they might gain better skills to manage their mental health. This underscores not only the physical advantages of yoga but also its significant contributions to mental and emotional well-being [ 8 , 9 , 13 , 14 ]. Yoga can fosters heightened bodily awareness, elevates mood, and enhances overall well-being. It also promotes self-acceptance, personal fulfillment, and social harmony. This holistic process provides psychological relief and mental tranquility, aiding in the management of common mental health issues such as anxiety and depression [ 11 ].

Today, young adults increasingly experience stress, pressure, and mental health issues [ 15 ]. Research links young people's stress levels to high demands at school and the pressure to meet these demands [ 16 ]. Additionally, lack of physical activity and sleep problems also can contribute to their difficulties in coping with these issues [ 17 , 18 ]. Academic expectations from parents, especially those from middle-class families, can further increase the pressure on young people, leading them to evaluate their self-worth solely based on their achievements. This adds to the existing academic pressures, causing young people to worry more about future educational and career opportunities [ 19 ].

Yoga can physically contribute to nervous system balance by decreasing stress-related sympathetic activity and stimulating the parasympathetic system. Consequently, it can positively impact stress and mental health issues, particularly in young people. Nursing students, who often undergo a stressful educational period, can also benefit from these effects [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ]. Therefore, it is recommended to integrate mindfulness programs, including breathing techniques, meditation, and yoga, into the nursing curriculum [ 21 , 22 ]. In the literature, a yoga course was integrated into the nursing curriculum in Turkey for the first time by Erkin and Aykar (2021) [ 20 ]. Most studies with students in the field of yoga in the literature are quantitative, although yoga has been studied in college students using qualitative methods, no studies found in nursing. This is one of the starting points of this research. The aim of the research is to shed light on the experiences of a group of nursing students enrolled in a yoga elective course who practiced yoga regularly for 14 weeks, regarding yoga and the phenomenon of doing yoga, with a qualitative approach. This qualitative study tries to fill this gap in the literature by explaining the imaginary meanings that nursing students attending yoga courses attribute to the yoga experience.

Design and participants

The research, designed in a qualitative type, was conducted during the 2018–2019 academic year. In line with the qualitative research approach, a purposeful sampling method was used. The qualitative method sees the experience of reality as subjective, varying from person to person. Moreover, it is a reliable method for studying a little known or understood area. Therefore, a qualitative descriptive design was adopted to explore students’ knowledge and perspectives [ 25 ].

Participants attended a face-to-face yoga course once a week for 1.5 h over a 14-week period. Each session comprised 30 min of theoretical instruction and 60 min of practice. The content of the yoga course is detailed in Table 1 . The theoretical component included a weekly 30-min PowerPoint presentation covering topics such as the history of yoga, meditation, breathing techniques (pranayama), yoga poses (asanas), chakras, mindfulness, and compassion. The practical sessions were conducted in a tranquil and dimly lit room, following a structured 60-min schedule: 15 min of pranayama (e.g., ocean breath, equal breathing, cooling breath, humming bee breath, alternate nostril breath, kapalbhati pranayama), 30 min of hatha yoga asanas involving gentle stretching and strengthening exercises with each pose held for 5–10 breaths and repeated five times, 5 min of meditation, and 10 min of shavasana. These sessions were led by a yoga instructor (first author) registered with the Yoga Alliance. No home practice was required. According to the course rules, students were allowed up to 20% absenteeism. At the end of the 14-week period, it was determined that students were absent for an average of 1.5 weeks. There was only one change in the planned yoga protocol. Although it was initially planned to use one breathing technique every two weeks, all breathing techniques were combined based on the students’ feedback and used in the sessions after students learned all the techniques (after the 6th week). Class attendance was encouraged through messages in a WhatsApp group. However, attendance was not included in the scoring.

The sample of the research was planned to consist of first-year students enrolled in the elective course "Yoga" in the Nursing Department of the Faculty of Health Sciences at İzmir Democracy University in Izmir ( N = 61). Two students did not participate in the study because the topic and objectives did not interest them. Data were collected from a total of 59 nursing students on a voluntary basis. After the yoga course, the last week interviews were conducted with 59 participants who voluntarily agreed to participate in the study. Of the participants (n:59), 40 were female and 19 were male, with ages ranging from 18 to 21. Forty-six participants described their health perception as "good," nine as "very good," and four as "poor." (Appendix 1).

Data collection

Data collection was conducted using a structured interview form alongside a creative activity where participants were asked to draw a picture and write a text representing the concept of doing yoga. Data were collected through structured interviews guided by a pre-developed interview Schedule (see Appendix 1). The structured interview form developed for this study included seven open-ended questions and prompts designed to elicit detailed responses from the participants regarding their experiences with the yoga course. Prior to commencing data collection with the main participant group, the interview schedule was pilot tested with five nursing students who met the inclusion criteria but were not part of the final sample. This pilot testing allowed for refinement of the interview questions and ensured clarity and comprehensiveness.

After obtaining the necessary permissions for the research, the students engaged in the yoga course were comprehensively briefed on the study’s objectives, content, methodology, and the individuals responsible for its execution. The last week of "Yoga" course (14th week), students asked to draw a picture and write a text representing the concept of doing yoga. Each student was given colored A4 papers and, for those who wished to use them, colored pencils in the classroom environment. Before starting to draw, students were asked to write their gender on the back of the paper, but not their name or surname. In addition to the picture they drew, they were asked to write their thoughts about yoga and what they drew regarding the concept of doing yoga on a separate piece of paper or in appropriate spaces on their drawing paper. Besides students filled the interview form. They also filled out a structured interview form to capture their experiences and thoughts about practicing yoga. Participants were given one hour to complete the task. After the data were collected, the drawings and their related descriptions made by the participants were digitized and included in the analysis [ 26 ]. For security purposes, the data were stored in Google Drive™ accessible to authors.

To examine subjective experiences, the techniques of "drawing" and "description" were used together, attempting to integrate the strengths of both methods. Participants were provided with A4 papers in different colors and asked to choose the color that most reminded them of yoga. Starting from the theme of "The meaning of doing yoga for them," participants were asked to draw pictures representing their perceptions and to write descriptions related to their drawings. In a similar approach referred to as "projective technique" in the literature, the drawing is accepted as a tool for reflecting emotions. Projection means expression and is based on the assumption that "an individual's behavior is a reflection of their personality" [ 26 , 27 ].

Data analysis and interpretation process

The data were analyzed using an inductive approach. Inductive analysis involves coding the data to categorize it, identifying relationships between these categories, and reaching a holistic picture based on this. The key point in data analysis in this study was to create categorical labels embedded in the data [ 26 , 27 ]. In this study, a code list was developed, data were coded, categories were created, and data were reported within these categories. Data analysis was conducted by the researchers through coding. For some themes, in-vivo coding, which is included in the qualitative research methodology of grounded theory, was used as an inductive coding process. In vivo coding involves creating a theme tag using the code that comes directly from the data, i.e., the participant's own expressions [ 28 ].

All these processes were carried out in collaboration with two field experts (ÖE, AÇ). Similar codes were grouped together to form a certain number of categories and reported to establish the main idea in the data. Comparing codes and categories with the literature aimed to contribute to the validity of the data analysis. At the end of the data collection phase, a conceptual model related to the topic was developed by the researchers [ 26 ]

The research team acknowledges the importance of reflexivity in qualitative research. The first researcher, who has a PhD degree in public health nursing with 16 years of experience in nursing, is an instructor of yoga courses for undergraduate nursing students. The researcher maintained a critical awareness of their own biases and assumptions that could potentially influence the data analysis throughout the research process. We aimed to minimize bias by employing a systematic thematic analysis approach and by regularly discussing the emerging themes with a second author, who is a specialist on qualitative research and has a qualitative PhD thesis in public health nursing. This cooperation contributed to ensuring the findings’ objectivity and reliability. Regretfully, it was not possible to get direct participant input on the findings because of the anonymous nature of the data collection process. The third researcher, who is a master’s degree student in public health nursing with 3 years of clinical experience in nursing, is an instructor of yoga. Nonetheless, we think that the utilization of rich participant quotes in conjunction with the iterative analytic process guarantees that the results truly reflect the participants’ experiences with the yoga course.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Before starting data collection, information about the research was provided to the school administration, permission was obtained, and contact was made with the participants. Approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of Manisa Celal Bayar University (02/12/2019, no:20.478.486). Participation was based on voluntariness and willingness, and students were informed about sensitive points related to the teacher-student relationship (such as participation or non-participation in the research not affecting their performance evaluations, etc.). Written informed consent to participate was obtained from all of the participants in this study.

Research validity and reliability

In qualitative research, the researcher investigating the problem is at the center of the research. The main measurement tool in the research is the researcher themselves. Therefore, the issue of objectivity has always been at the center of methodological debates in social sciences. In qualitative research, the concept of "trustworthiness" is considered instead of validity and reliability [ 27 ]. Various criteria of trustworthiness were considered in the processes of this research.

During the data analysis phase, in the creation of the code list, and in the interpretation of the findings, a comprehensive perspective was attempted to be reflected through a thorough literature review on the subject. All records in the data collection and analysis processes were kept systematically. Quotations were made from all data sources. The frequencies of the drawings and descriptions were determined, and those with high frequencies and those that were strikingly related to the topic were included. The data collection and data analysis processes were reported in detail as far as space limitations allowed, and original quotations from the data were included. Furthermore, in the quotations, descriptions written by the participants in their own handwriting were also used.

The number of participants in the study was 56. This number is considered sufficient for an in-depth exploration of the research topic. Students were instructed to create an illustration and compose a text depicting the concept of practicing yoga. Each student received colored A4 paper, and colored pencils were provided for those who wished to use them within the classroom setting. Prior to beginning their drawings, students were asked to indicate their gender on the back of the paper, ensuring that they did not include their name or surname. Alongside their drawings, students were required to write their reflections on yoga and describe what they had drawn related to the practice of yoga, either on a separate sheet of paper or in suitable spaces on their drawing paper. Additionally, students completed an interview form. Participants were allotted one hour to finish the assignment. This approach allowed for a thorough and comprehensive examination of the participants’ perspectives. To enhance transferability, purposive sampling was employed in the study. In purposive sampling, participants are selected to have specific characteristics relevant to the research topic. This approach ensured that the participants’ perspectives would represent the research topic effectively. To ensure dependability, interview questions, data collection, and analysis were consistently applied throughout the entire research process. In this study, to achieve confirmability, all stages of the research were described openly and transparently, aiming to reduce the impact of researcher bias. All transcripts and notes used in the study were stored for reference.

The reporting process of the study adhered to the COREQ (CONsolidated criteria for Reporting Qualitative research) guidelines, as outlined by Tong et al. (2007) [ 29 ]. The study follows CLARIFY 2021 guidelines for reporting yoga research [ 30 ].

Participants expressed their experiences and thoughts about practicing yoga by drawing and cutting shapes on A4-sized papers of different colors. It was determined that they used nature figures (sun, cloud, tree, sky, flower) (f = 75), figures of people practicing yoga (f = 12), and other figures such as sound, light, and others (bird sound, wave sound, candle, light bulb, traffic light, heart, eye, key, peace, swing, India, circle, etc.) (f = 29). Participants mostly chose blue-green-yellow colors ( n = 41).

A code list was created from the responses of students to questions about the concept of "practicing yoga" through qualitative question analysis (number of codes = 98). After analyzing the data, four categories were reached. The categories describing the concept of practicing yoga were distributed as follows in terms of symbols and frequency numbers: "symbol of health and tranquility (f = 345)", "the way to place goodness in your heart (f = 110)", "the most effective way to meet oneself (f = 93)", and "no guarantee of relaxation (f = 71)" (Fig. 1 ).

Concepts and codes identified in the qualitative analysis of nursing students' perception of the phenomenon of "practicing yoga"

Category 1. Symbol of health and serenity (f = 345)

The subcategories that received the most references from nursing students in explaining the phenomenon of practicing yoga under this category are "Serenity and Peace (f = 169)", "Comfort (f = 120)", "Health, Well-being, Happiness, and Energy (f = 56)". Below is the picture and description of the participant related to the subcategory "Symbol of Health and Serenity" (Fig. 2 ): "The reason for choosing the shape of a cloud and the color blue is that it brings me peace, reminds me to take deep breaths and be grateful. It reminds me that there are beautiful things in life and that I need to enjoy life." Additionally, "when you start doing yoga, your thoughts change, you feel rested, and your heart fills with peace." Participant 7, Female.

Cloud figure (blue) -participant 7

Participant 22 wrote the following in the interpretation of the figure they drew (Fig. 3 ): "The color blue always makes me feel happy and peaceful. I chose this color because yoga makes me feel peaceful and happy. For example, when I feel restless and unhappy, going to the beach, seeing the sea, seeing blue calms me down. Also, when I think of yoga, I imagine an endless deep blue sea. A sea with birds flying over it and a deep blue sky. A painting with sunny weather" Participant 22.

Interpretation by participant 22 (blue)

Participant 35's drawn figure is a butterfly, and their description is as follows (Fig. 4 ): “When I think of yoga, I think of a butterfly. Because when I do yoga, I feel as free and light as a butterfly. I imagine my wings taking me wherever I want inside. The green color relaxes me and makes me happy. The wings of the butterfly in my soul's greenery take me to purity…”.

Butterfly figure (green) -participant 35

Participant 9, in the chosen color and the comment on their drawing, expressed the following regarding the sub-category "Symbol of Health and Serenity" (Fig. 5 ): "I chose this color for its energy. Since energy is important in yoga, I chose orange. I chose this shape because I believe yoga is best done in a natural environment. Yoga reminds me of serenity, the feeling of being in emptiness, and relaxation (Fig. 5 )."

Tree figure and comment (orange) -participant 9

Participant 19, in the chosen figure and the comment on their drawing, stated the following (Fig. 6 ): "Because yoga reminds me of mental and physical health. In my opinion, health is manifested in the combination of blue and green colors. That is, balance in nature is something that exists in the soul and body." Participant 19 depicted a ladder figure in combination with blue and green, defining yoga as "soul and body therapy" (Fig. 6 ).

The place where the moon meets the sun (turquoise)-participant 19

Category 2. The way to place goodness in your heart (f = 110)

The meaning of the phenomenon of doing yoga by participant 11, an 18-year-old female nursing student, was labeled as "being aware of placing goodness in heart" as the category tag. This category, referred to 110 times by the participants, includes the subcategories of "Purification (f = 65)" and "Being a virtuous person (f = 45)". Participants mentioned virtues such as "patience, tolerance, love for all creatures, flexibility, equality, non-prejudice, peace, optimism, freedom" contributing to the concept.

Participant 51, an 18-year-old male who described his health as poor, used the light bulb figure to express "happiness, peace, security" and commented, "It causes positive effects on people" (Fig. 7 ). Participant 51 expressed the following regarding the subcategory " The way to place goodness in your heart" in the figure and comment (Fig. 7 ): "The light bulb illuminating the environment is connected to yoga. Yoga enlightens a person's mind."

Light bulb (yellow) -participant 51

Participant 39, a 19-year-old male, mentioned that practicing yoga leads to "thinking more compassionately." Participant 21, a female, stated, "Yoga is something that requires patience."

Here is the drawn peace figure and comment by participant 46, related to this category (Fig. 8 ). This participant said, "I chose pink because it opens up and gives peace. Of course, there is also light pink, not just dark pinks. I chose this sign because where there is yoga, there is love for all living beings, and where there is love, peace is inevitable."

Peace figure (pink) -participant 46

Category 3. The most effective way to meet yourself (f = 93)

For nursing students, practicing yoga means creating "awareness" and is the most effective way to meet oneself (f = 93). Participant 43, a 19-year-old female with a poor health perception, described feeling "calmer, more aware, and internally peaceful" when practicing yoga, as shown in Fig. 9 . Under the category of "the most effective way to meet oneself," Participant 43's figure and comment about yoga are as follows (Fig. 9 ): "…I chose this color because it gives me peace. The other colors make me restless, but this color makes me feel like I can breathe. Yellow is like an endless void to me. A color that makes me experience everything with all its reality. It's like a sky where you can escape from the chaos of the world and get lost in it…".

The world and heart (yellow) -participant 43

Participant 8 chose a cloud figure, describing yoga as "like rising above the clouds" and wrote the following about yoga practice: "Finding oneself in life, being at peace with oneself… [someone who starts practicing yoga] starts to know themselves, their love for life increases." Participant 8, Female.

Participant 33, a female who chose yellow for its calmness and non-straining quality, described the effect of yoga as "self-discovery" and wrote the following (Fig. 10 ): "You awaken your sleeping mind and body, and find the 'self' within you." Participant 33, Female.

Flower and human (yellow)- participant 33

The statement from participant 48 is as follows (Fig. 11 ): "In this image, what I want to convey is; the individual who practices yoga finds themselves, reaches their essence, and becomes aware of their own existence after a long and perhaps short journey. I chose the color orange because it reminds me that energy exists, is alive, and can be transmitted at any moment. For me, yoga is an indicator of energy. After yoga, the body revives and rejuvenates."

The road (orange)- participant 48

Category 4. No guarantee of relaxation (f = 71)

Among the nursing students ( n = 59), 16 (27.1%) indicated that they do not recommend yoga. The subcategories of this category include "difficulty in relaxing during meditation/emptying the mind (f = 23)", physical complaints (f = 21)", "difficulty in focusing (f = 18)", and "negative perceptions (f = 9)". Participants used expressions such as "headache, neck pain, back pain, dizziness, exhausting, feeling bad, difficult, fear, nervousness, inability to relax, disbelief" in relation to this category. A 19-year-old male participant, participant 41, stated about yoga, "I cannot meditate, I do not feel comfortable." Participant 44, a 19-year-old female participant who rated her health as poor, stated during yoga, "I cannot fully control my breathing and do meditation, I cannot empty my mind, so I cannot achieve complete peace."

Yoga, often conceptualized in the Western world as a physical practice [ 31 ], is considered a practice that can calm the mind and access a higher state of consciousness where individual and universal consciousness merge, using the body [ 32 ], in yoga traditions, the physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions of the individual are intricately connected [ 1 ]. When we relate the benefits of yoga to traditional yoga theories and systems, it can be interesting to explore its connection with the chakra system and colors. The main focus of yoga can be to regulate the functioning of chakras while awakening the associated energies [ 33 , 34 ]. It was thought that the free association of the students' drawings and descriptions could provide guidance in determining their experiences related to the concept of yoga. In this study, where the experiences of nursing students who took the elective yoga course were evaluated with a qualitative approach, participants mostly chose blue, green, and yellow-colored papers, symbolizing nature. When viewed from the perspective of the chakra-yoga system explained in the yoga course, it was thought that the participants might have resonated with certain energy centers or chakras. Blue, green, and yellow colors are respectively associated with the throat chakra, heart chakra, and solar plexus chakra [ 35 ]. The throat chakra is associated with communication, speech power, intellectual development, creativity, and expression [ 36 ]. Participants 7 and 22, who currently perceive their health as good, and participant 19, who chose blue and turquoise colors, may reflect a desire for in-depth communication and original expression, or a need for improvement in these areas. During yoga practice, especially breathing exercises and poses focusing on the throat region can be worked on this chakra, thus enhancing students' capacity for clearer communication and expressing inner truths [ 37 , 38 ].

The philosophy of yoga emphasizes the importance of harmony and unity with nature, which is why many yoga asanas (poses) are named after elements from nature, such as the tree pose, which symbolizes the stability and balance of a tree through its strong roots and upward-reaching branches [ 39 ]. In this study, visuals related to yoga such as the sun, clouds, trees, sky, and flowers were found. Participant 9 recalling and drawing a tree figure during yoga experiences indicates their awareness of this symbolic relationship. Research has shown that spending time in nature has positive effects on people's mood and mental health [ 40 , 41 ]; similarly, many yoga philosophies emphasize the importance of being in harmony with nature [ 42 ]. Therefore, a student's preference for a natural environment while practicing yoga and associating this practice with a tree in nature is thought to reflect both the healing power of nature and the relationship of yoga poses with elements in nature. This symbiotic relationship reminds us of how interconnected humans are with nature and how yoga practice can strengthen this connection. This aspect of yoga can also encourage individuals to strengthen their relationship with nature and adopt a more respectful attitude towards the environment. This can be seen as a reflection of the principle of 'ahimsa' or non-harming, which is one of the foundational principles of yoga philosophy [ 43 ].

Deep breathing practices are fundamental components of yoga and meditation. Consciously controlling breathing can activate the parasympathetic nervous system and trigger the relaxation response [ 44 , 45 ]. Additionally, breath awareness is part of mindfulness practice and brings the individual into the present moment. Feeling gratitude helps a person recognize the positive aspects of their life and develop a more positive life perspective [ 46 ]. Gratitude practice can improve mental health and allow for greater enjoyment of life [ 47 ]. Participant 7's choice of a cloud shape and blue color is explained by the feeling of tranquility it brings, reminding them to take deep breaths and be thankful, and to remember that there are beautiful things in life that they should enjoy. Participant 7's statement confirms this. The shape of a cloud and the choice of the color blue directing them to take deep breaths, be thankful, remember that there are beautiful things in life, and enjoy life, can contribute to the participant's spirituality [ 48 ]. Such an approach can be balancing both mentally and emotionally, especially for students under academic pressure [ 49 ].

Yoga, meditation, and breathwork (pranayama) practices can be effective in creating a deep sense of peace by bringing individuals to the present moment and calming their inner dialogue [ 50 , 51 ]. Participant 22's statement, " The color blue always makes me feel happy and peaceful. I chose this color because yoga makes me feel peaceful and happy. For example, when I feel restless and unhappy, going to the beach, seeing the sea, and seeing blue calms me down ," also indicates the participant's association of yoga practice with feelings of peace and happiness, demonstrating the potential of yoga experience to provide inner tranquility and balance. Furthermore, the participant's desire to go to the beach and see the sea may refer to the healing and calming effect of nature [ 52 ]. Participant 19 states, " Yoga reminds me of spiritual and physical health. For me, health lives in the colors blue and green, meaning it is something in nature and in the spirit of nature ," and Participant 35 says, " When I think of yoga, I think of a butterfly because when I do yoga, I feel as light as a butterfly. I think my wings take me wherever I want inside me. The color green relaxes me, makes me happy, and the green inside me takes me to purity. " These statements may be associated with the heart chakra represented by the color green. This chakra is considered the center of love, compassion, and connection [ 36 ], and therefore, the association of green with this chakra may symbolize the participant's feelings of relaxation and happiness during yoga practice [ 48 ]. The phrase " the green inside me takes me to purity " in Participant 35's statement indicates that green represents purity and healing in the heart chakra, and the opening of this chakra allows the person to feel more peaceful and purer [ 53 ]. In this context, Participant 35's positive feelings toward green and the sense of relaxation may be a result of balancing and opening the heart chakra, contributing to their emotional experiences such as lightness and tranquility in yoga practices [ 54 ].

Participant 51, despite describing their health as poor, mentioning positive effects such as " Happiness, peace, trust " through the figure of a light bulb during yoga practices, can be explained by the illuminating effect of yoga on the mind. Just as a light bulb illuminates its surroundings, yoga enlightens the individual's mental and spiritual state, capable of transforming negative thoughts and emotions into positive ones. This contributes to achieving a general state of well-being and a positive mood by providing both physical and mental relaxation [ 55 ]. Participant 39 mentioned the effect of " thinking more humanely " while practicing yoga. Participant 21 commented that " yoga requires patience ." Participant 46 chose pink because " It opens up and gives peace within me, where there is yoga, there is love for all living beings, and where there is love, peace is inevitable. " Yoga can facilitates a tranquil mental state, reducing stress and tension, thereby promoting harmonious relationships and fostering peace within individuals and their social interactions. Central to yoga philosophy are humanism and the pursuit of a peaceful life [ 56 ] qualities reflected in participants' experiences, affirming yoga's role in cultivating positive personal and societal outcomes.

In the chakra system, colors and their associated energy centers are believed to promote balance and harmony in our daily lives and physical well-being [ 33 ]. Students' selection of these colors related to chakras may reflect their own energy balances and personal development needs, often unconsciously. Yoga practice can equips individuals with tools to enhance the harmony and integrity of these energy centers [ 57 ]. Participant 43, with a negative perception of health, reported becoming " A calmer person, awareness increases, and inner peace occurs; I chose this color (yellow) because it gives me peace. While other colors make me uneasy, when I look at this color, it feels like it gives me breath, and it continues to an endless void. Yellow, for me, is like escaping from the chaos of the world and getting lost in an endless sky ." Participants finding the color yellow soothing and describing it as providing a sense of freedom and freshness like an endless sky can be associated with the solar plexus chakra, typically represented by the color yellow [ 35 ]. This chakra is linked to self-confidence, willpower, and self-realization. [ 58 ]. Participant 33 described the experince of yoga with a flower and human figure as " Self-discovery ," stating, " you awaken your sleeping mind and body and find the 'self' within ." Participant 8 drawn a cloud figure, describing yoga as " like rising above the clouds," saying, "finding yourself in life, being at peace with yourself… [someone who starts practicing yoga] begins to know themselves, their love for life increases ."These statements and figures reinforce the basic themes of "self-discovery" and "being at peace with oneself" in yoga practice [ 59 ], indicating an important relationship between one's yoga practice, personal growth, and quest for inner peace [ 60 ]. Participant 48 believes that " After a long and perhaps short journey of practicing yoga, individuals find themselves, reach their essence, and become aware of their existence. I chose this color (orange) because it reminds me that energy exists, is alive, and can be transmitted at any moment. For me, yoga is a sign of energy; after yoga, the body revitalizes and refreshes. " The choice of orange suggests a strong relationship between yoga practice and energy, as this color, can be associated with the Sacral chakra, symbolizes vitality, creativity, and emotional balance [ 36 ].

In this study, there seem to be mixed views among some participants regarding yoga practice. While yoga and meditation are generally recommended as tools for reducing stress and enhancing personal well-being [ 24 , 61 , 62 ], some students (participants 41–44) have reported not finding this practice beneficial. For example, some participants have advised against practicing yoga due to physical discomfort (head, neck, and back pain, dizziness), inability to empty the mind during meditation, difficulty in focusing, and negative perceptions. The comments of participants 41 and 44 are thought to indicate their individual experiences regarding their inability to meditate and the discomfort they feel during yoga practice. Yoga and meditation practices can create different experiences in each individual; while they can be relaxing and healing for some, they can be challenging and discomforting for others [ 63 ]. This suggests that yoga and meditation can not universal solutions but practices that should be compatible with an individual's personal preferences, experiences, and health conditions [ 26 ].

Participants' health conditions can influence their experiences during yoga practice. Participants who feel unwell or have a specific health problem may find the practice challenging. This underscores the importance for educators and health professionals to provide stress management and relaxation techniques tailored to individual needs [ 64 ].

Limitations

The qualitative data collected in this study regarding the phenomenon of yoga is in Turkish. However, selecting an international journal for publication and translating the text into English may have limited the full conveyance of the figures and participants' expressions to the readers due to the unique cultural characteristics of the language. The concepts of yoga and chakras, meditation, and similar topics, which were theoretically as well as practically conveyed to the participants during the 14-week course content, may have influenced the participants' views on the phenomenon of yoga. The use of a qualitative design tradition in the research both limited the generalizability of the findings and contributed to the originality of the study.

This study has identified four themes that explain the phenomenon of practicing yoga. These are respectively; "symbol of health and tranquility", "way to place goodness in the heart", "most effective way to meet the self", and "no guarantee of relaxation" themes. The findings will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of student experiences and ultimately understand their positive and negative experiences. By delving into the student perspective, this research aims to provide valuable insights for educators and healthcare professionals. Most of the research on the phenomenon of practicing yoga is conducted abroad, and it is a less studied area in Turkey. Although yoga, which is becoming increasingly popular in our country, is known to be a practice that makes a person feel good; research on how individuals feel about practicing yoga and how they think about it is specific to the subject. Participants associated practicing yoga with symbols and colors found in nature, emphasizing the importance of its effects on the body, mind, and spirituality. In addition, findings regarding the experiences of individuals practicing yoga, a practice that is also becoming increasingly popular in Turkey, have been obtained. Although it is seen that qualitative approaches such as in-depth interviews and content analysis are used in almost all of the qualitative studies on the subject [ 48 , 65 , 66 ], no study has been found that examines individuals' perceptions by drawing pictures and interpreting them. In this respect, the current research's unique research method can contribute to the literature.

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The authors extend their sincere gratitude to the nursing students who willingly took part in this study. Their participation is greatly valued and appreciated.

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Department of Public Health Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Izmir Democracy University, Izmir, Turkey

Özüm Erki̇n

Department of Public Health Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Manisa Celal Bayar University, Manisa, Turkey

Aynur Çeti̇nkaya

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ÖE and AÇ contributed to study design. AÇ contributed to analyze data. ÖE, AÇ and BG write the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Ethical approval for the study was obtained from Manisa Celal Bayar University Non-invasive Clinical Research Ethics Committee (Decision no:20.478.486, Date:02/13/2019). We adhered to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and relevant guidelines. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants in this study. Participants were ensured to provide their consent voluntarily and without coercion. Written informed consent to participate was obtained from all of the participants in this study. Before the research, the purpose of the study was explained to the students and that they could leave the study at any time. At the beginning of the study, it was informed that participation in the study was voluntary and that no grade would be given. The evaluation of this course consisted of 10 open-ended questions as part of the year-end assessment. Students were asked to name 10 yoga poses they knew, describe the posture, explain the benefits, indicate the indications and contraindications, and identify the associated chakras. The grade distribution of the students was as follows: AA (n:31), BA (n:16), BB (n:6), CB (n:6). Necessary precautions were taken to protect the confidentiality of the data, the identity information of the participants was not included in the data collection tools and all personal details in the data collection forms were kept confidential. The identifying images or other personal details of participants are presented in a way that does not compromise anonymity.

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Erki̇n, Ö., Çeti̇nkaya, A. & Güler, B. The phenomenon of yoga in the imagination of Turkish nursing students: "The way to place goodness in the heart". BMC Nurs 23 , 655 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-024-02288-y

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This paper explores some of the challenges to countering transnational organized crime in Mali, focusing primarily on the United Nations Multidimensional Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), but also considering the challenges faced by other multilateral actors and initiatives. The objective is to feed into a larger research initiative exploring multilateral efforts to counter organized crime in conflict-affected and fragile areas. Examining MINUSMA as well as other UN Country Team efforts in relation to transnational organized crime offers a critical point of reflection.

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The paper offers a brief background on how transnational organized crime and illicit trafficking dynamics contributed to the 2012 crisis in Mali, as well as the origin and deployment of MINUSMA and other parallel international intervention mechanisms. It then assesses how the mission approached transnational organized crime and concludes with some reflections on what these limitations suggest for future peacekeeping operations or other approaches to responding to transnational organized crime in conflict-affected regions.

Access "Peacekeeping Responses to Transnational Organized Crime and Trafficking: A Case Study of MINUSMA" here .

Suggested citation: Gaston Erica, Nickel Catharina, Karimou Imane and Marc Werner. Peacekeeping Responses to Transnational Organized Crime and Trafficking: A Case Study of MINUSMA : UNU-CPR, 2024.

Multilateral responses to transnational organized crime and conflict

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Kananga, building of the Provincial Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (CVJR)

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Yoga Research and Spirituality: A Case Study Discussion
Case Study. A 59-year-old Spanish-speaking, Hispanic female from El Salvador enrolled in a rheumatology natural history study was referred to the yoga study after completing a clinic visit. She self-identified as Catholic and was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.
The Effect of Yoga on Stress, Anxiety, and Depression in Women
In the study of Streeter et al., [20] it was found that greater improvement in mood and greater decreases in anxiety during 12 week of yoga intervention compared to walking group. Oken et al. [4] did not observe any significant effect of yoga on improvement in mood in patients with MS, the limitation of this study is the small number of ...
I read more than 50 scientific studies about yoga. Here's what I ...
In a 2013 review of case studies, Cramer identified 76 unique incidents of adverse events from yoga. "Most adverse events affected the musculoskeletal, nervous, or visual system," he concluded.
Impact of 10-weeks of yoga practice on flexibility and balance of
Methods: Over a 10-week period, a yoga group (YG) of athletes (n = 14) took part in biweekly yoga sessions; while a nonyoga group (NYG) of athletes (n = 12) took part in no additional yoga activity.Performance measures were obtained immediately before and after this period. Measurements of flexibility and balance, included: Sit-reach (SR), shoulder flexibility (SF), and stork stand (SS ...
Yoga for Health: What the Science Says
A 2015 systematic review of 16 studies (including 6 randomized controlled trials, 2 nonrandomized preintervention-postintervention control-group designs, 7 uncontrolled preintervention-postintervention studies, and 1 case study) for yoga interventions addressing anxiety among children and adolescents concluded that nearly all studies included ...
Full article: Yoga bodies, yoga minds: contextualising the health
In the paper that follows, Krzysztof Bierski offers us a further case study of how yoga is practised in clinical settings - a hospital in India and a hospital in Japan. In both institutions, the techniques offered to patients might differ, but the method of instruction is similar. With a focus on skill, teachers emphasise process rather than ...
Case study: Reversal of pelvic floor prolapse symptoms with... : Yoga
This case study is limited to observations recorded in one individual. Because of the benefits of Ashtanga Yoga experienced by one patient, further research would be beneficial in establishing a link between the practice of specific techniques of yoga and the control/reversal of pelvic floor issues.
Yoga Research and Spirituality: A Case Study Discussion
Yoga Research and Spirituality: A Case Study Discussion Int J Yoga Therap. 2015;25(1):33-5. doi: 10.17761/1531-2054-25.1.33. Authors Kimberly R Middleton 1 , Regina Andrade 2 , Steffany Haaz Moonaz 3 , Charlene Muhammad 4 , Gwenyth R Wallen 5 Affiliations 1 National Institutes of Health (NIH ...
Effects of yogic breath regulation: A narrative review of scientific
Experimental papers, case studies and case series in English, revealing the effects of yogic breathing were included in the review. The studies that had used yogic breathing in combination with other Yoga practices were excluded. Studies in languages other than English, and whose abstracts were unavailable were excluded from the review.
Yoga Case Studies
Yoga Case Study: Explore insightful case studies that demonstrate how personalized yoga practices can effectively address various health issues and promote overall well-being. My Yoga Network. Home; ... Yoga Therapy Case Study. The Impact of Yoga and Psychoeducation on Epilepsy Co-morbidities. Yoga as a Complementary and Alternative Management ...
The Role of Yoga in Enhancing Student Well-being and Academic
This review will offer insightful information about the beneficial effects of yoga on pupils by looking at numerous studies and research articles. Discover the world's research 25+ million members
An Individualized Yoga Programme for Multiple Sclerosis: A Case Study
Purpose: Despite the evidence that yoga is beneficial for people with multiple sclerosis (MS), substantial in-depth qualitative studies of yoga and MS-and individualized yoga programmes (IYP), in particular-are lacking. The aims of this paper are (a) to conduct a case study on an IYP for one participant with MS in terms of her experience of yoga and how yoga affected her particular symptoms of ...
Yoga at the Promise Program: A Feminist Qualitative Case Study of
This case describes a qualitative case study of a yoga program which involved direct-instruction yoga practice for students at an urban, alternative school. It describes the general methodology of case study and the specific methods that we used. This project is the fruit of a collaborative friendship between Joanne Spence, a yoga service ...
Effectiveness and safety of yoga to treat chronic and acute pain: a
The studies included in the reviews analysed different types of yoga, the most frequent ones being yoga iyengar, 12 37 38 40 42 43 hatha yoga 37-39 42 43 and viniyoga, 37 38 40-43 yogic mind resonance technique, 39 yoga of awareness, 35 43 yoga‐based special techniques 37 yogic meditation 37 and two reviews did not specify a yoga type ...
Feasibility and results of a case study of yoga to improve physical
Purpose: The purpose of this mixed-methods case study was to investigate whether an 8-week 1:1 yoga program was feasible and beneficial to people with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Method: This was a mixed-methods case study of one-to-one yoga for people with TBI included three people. We completed assessments before and after the 8-week yoga intervention and included measures of balance ...
A Case Study of a Yoga and Meditation Intervention in an Urban School
Author(s): King, Sará | Advisor(s): Philip, Thomas M; Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen | Abstract: This dissertation is a case study of nine urban low-SES students of color who participated in a biopsychosocial classroom-based intervention called For Youth (FY). The rising prevalence of educational institutions in the U.S. utilizing interventions that combine yoga, meditation and/or mindfulness ...
The School of Health
Like many people I first came to yoga as a result of back problems. In my 20's and early 30's my main form of exercise was at the gym, alongside classes such as circuit training and kick-boxing. Although I enjoyed these forms of exercise they led to back problems in the form of a prolapsed disc. This was when I decided to give yoga a try ...
Yoga Therapy Case Studies
Complete case studies in your own time; up to 12 months (875 diploma) or 6 months (625 diploma). Gain real-world experience by leading individual and group Yoga Therapy sessions. Receive constructive support and feedback from your mentor and reflect on your development as a Yoga Therapist. Develop healthy and meaningful therapeutic ...
PDF Therapeutic Yoga Example Case Studies
YC's Holistic Yoga Teacher Training Case Study Examples www.yogaclub.us Page 2 Yoga Club's Holistic Yoga Teacher Training Therapeutic Yoga ~ Case Study Examples Here are two examples of Case Studies. As you can see, they are a little different. Some clients will need a focus more on the structural assessment and applications.
Yoga Effects on Brain Health: A Systematic Review of the Current
Other styles of yoga reported in the studies included Kundalini yoga with Kirtan Kriya (n = 2), which focuses more on mediation and the chanting of mantras, and Iyengar (n = 1) which is a type of Hatha yoga with a greater emphasis on anatomical detail and alignment. The 5 intervention studies ranged from 10 to 24 weeks and examined the brain ...
PDF Yoga Therapy Case Study example
Yoga Techniques Deep breathing in the morning before the start of the day. Making time for 2 yoga classes per week. d. Appropriate pacing for individual (not to rush/pressure them or move too slowly) Instead of having her do daily poses at home, just listed the breathing. This way she will not feel pressured nor feel like a failure.
Hot Yoga Tallahassee: A Case Study of Misogynistic Extremism
In November 2018, a 40-year-old gunman opened fire inside a yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida, killing two women and injuring four more before committing suicide. The attack was motivated by his inability to develop or maintain relationships with women and his perception of women's societal power over men.
The phenomenon of yoga in the imagination of Turkish nursing students
The aim of the research is to shed light on the experiences of a group of nursing students enrolled in a yoga elective course who practiced yoga regularly for 14 weeks, regarding yoga and the phenomenon of doing yoga, with a qualitative approach. This qualitative study was conducted at a public university in Izmir, Turkey. The study sample consisted of 61 students enrolled in the 1st-year yoga ...
Pursed Lips Breathing dan Senam Yoga Pada Pasien Asma Bronkhial: Case Study
This study used a case study method on a 65 year old male patient. After six therapies, there was a decrease in pain, an increase in thoracic cage in inspiration and a decrease in the degree of ...
Peacekeeping Responses to Transnational Organized Crime and Trafficking
This paper explores some of the challenges to countering transnational organized crime in Mali, focusing primarily on the United Nations Multidimensional Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), but also considering the challenges faced by other multilateral actors and initiatives.

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I read more than 50 scientific studies about yoga. Here's what I learned.

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