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What Yoga Does to Your Body & Brain - Coggle Diagram
What Yoga Does to Your Body & Brain
Origin
Defined yoga = yoking / restraining of mind from focusing on external objects in efforts to reach a state of pure consciousness
Came to incorporate physical elements from gymnastics & wrestling overtime
Recorded techniques nearly as old as Indian civilization in 196 manuals called the Yoga Sutras
Multiple approaches to modern yoga, though most still maintain 3 core elements of Patanjali's practice: physical postures, breathing exercises spiritual contemplation
Hindu sage Patanjali
Between 1st and 5th century CE
Widely believed health advantages: improving strength & flexibility, boosting heart & lung function, enhancing psychological well being
Problems
Yoga studies = often made up of small sample sizes that lack diversity
Heavily relied on self reporting, makes results subjective
Unique combination of activities = difficult to determine which component is producing a specific health benefit
Tough to make specific claims about advantages
Benefits shown through contemporary studies
Flexibility & Strength
Short term: stretching change water content of muscle ligaments & tendons, make them more elastic
Over time: regular stretching stimulates stem cells → differentiate into new muscle tissue & other cells that generate elastic collagen
Twisting body into yoga's physical postures stretches multiple muscle groups
Frequent stretching = reduces body's natural reflex to constrict muscles, improving pain tolerance for feats of flexibility
Researchers haven't found any one form of yoga improves flexibility more than another so impact of specific postures is unclear, but like other low impact exercises, reliably improves fitness & flexibility in healthy populations
Potentially Powerful Therapeutic Tool
In studies involving patients with variety of Musculoskeletal disorders, yoga = more helpful at reducing pain & improving mobility than other forms of low impact exercise
Adding yoga to existing exercise routine → improve strength & flexibility for hard-to-treat conditions (e.g., chronic lower back pain, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis)
Therapeutic for Lung Health
Lung diseases (e.g., chronic bronchitis, emphysema, asthma) shrink passageways that carry oxygen & weaken membranes that brings oxygen into blood
Breathing exercises found in yoga relax muscles constricting those passageways & improve oxygen diffusion, especially helpful for ppl with weak heart muscles / have difficulty pumping enough oxygen throughout body
Yoga's mix of physical exercise & regimented breathing has proven similarly therapeutic
For those w/ healthy hearts, this practice = lower blood pressure & reduce risk factors for cardiovascular disease
Psychological Effects
One of the biggest claims = yoga improves symptoms of depression & anxiety disorders
Diagnosis of ↑ varies widely, as do their origin & severity, difficult to quantify yogas impact
Despite longstanding association between yoga & psychological wellbeing, there's little conclusive evidence on how the practice affects mental health
However, there's evidence suggesting yoga = help reduce symptoms of stress along w/ meditation / relaxation
Most widely celebrated benefit / most difficult to prove
Conclusion
In the future we'll need larger studies incorporating diverse participants → measure yoga's impact on heart attacks, cancer rates, cognitive function, etc.
For now, yoga = continue its ancient tradition as a way to exercise, reflect, relax
Research on effects of yoga = still evolving