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Are yoga and meditation good for my brain?

February 15, 2007 by Caroline Latham

Yoga
Here is ques­tion 16 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions.

Ques­tion:
Are yoga and med­i­ta­tion good for my brain?

Key Points:

  • Yoga, med­i­ta­tion, and visu­al­iza­tion are all excel­lent ways to learn to man­age your stress levels.
  • Reduc­ing stress, and the stress hor­mones, in your sys­tem is crit­i­cal to your brain and over­all fitness.

Answer:
Yes. It’s clear that our soci­ety has changed faster than our genes. Instead of being faced with phys­i­cal, imme­di­ate­ly life-threat­en­ing crises that demand instant action, these days we deal with events and ill­ness­es that gnaw away at us slow­ly, with­out any stress release.

Dr. Robert Sapol­sky, in an inter­view about his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, points out that humans unique­ly “can get stressed sim­ply with thought, turn­ing on the same stress response as does the zebra.” But, the zebra releas­es the stress hor­mones through life-pre­serv­ing action, while we usu­al­ly just keep mud­dling along, get­ting more anx­ious by the moment.

Pro­longed expo­sure to the adren­al steroid hor­mones like cor­ti­sol, released dur­ing the stress response, can dam­age the brain and block the for­ma­tion of new neu­rons in the hip­pocam­pus, which is the key play­er in encod­ing new mem­o­ries in your brain. Recent stud­ies have shown these neu­rons can be regen­er­at­ed with learn­ing and envi­ron­men­tal stim­u­la­tion, but while short-term stress may improve atten­tion and mem­o­ry, chron­ic stress leads indi­rect­ly to cell death and ham­pers our abil­i­ty to make changes and be cre­ative enough to even think of pos­si­ble changes to reduce the stress.

What are the best defens­es against chron­ic stress?

  1. Exer­cise strength­ens the body and can reduce the expe­ri­ence of stress, depres­sion, and anxiety.
  2. Relax­ation through med­i­ta­tion, tai chi, yoga, or oth­er tech­niques to low­er blood pres­sure, slow res­pi­ra­tion, slow metab­o­lism, and release mus­cle tension.
  3. Biofeed­back pro­grams that pro­vide real-time infor­ma­tion, allow­ing you to learn effec­tive tech­niques for reduc­ing stress levels.
  4. Empow­er­ment, because atti­tudes of per­son­al con­fi­dence and con­trol of your envi­ron­ment resolve the stress response.
  5. Social net­work of friends, fam­i­ly, and even pets help fos­ter trust, sup­port, and relaxation.

Fur­ther Reading

  • Bedard M, Fel­teau M, Maz­man­ian D, Fedyk K, Klein R, Richard­son J, Parkin­son W, Minthorn-Big­gs MB. Pilot eval­u­a­tion of a mind­ful­ness-based inter­ven­tion to improve qual­i­ty of life among indi­vid­u­als who sus­tained trau­mat­ic brain injuries. Dis­abil Reha­bil. 2003;25:722–31.
  • Brem­n­er JD. Trau­mat­ic stress: effects on the brain. Dia­logues Clin Neu­rosci. 2006;8:445–61.
  • Czeh B, Muller-Keuk­er JI, Rygu­la R, Abu­maria N, Hiemke C, Domeni­ci E, Fuchs E. Chron­ic Social Stress Inhibits Cell Pro­lif­er­a­tion in the Adult Medi­al Pre­frontal Cor­tex: Hemi­spher­ic Asym­me­try and Rever­sal by Flu­ox­e­tine Treat­ment. Neu­ropsy­chophar­ma­col­o­gy. 2006 Dec 13; [Epub ahead of print].
  • Warn­er-Schmidt JL, Duman RS. Hip­pocam­pal neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis: oppos­ing effects of stress and anti­de­pres­sant treat­ment. Hip­pocam­pus. 2006;16:239–49.
  • Sapol­sky, RM. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers (Owl Books; 2004). ISBN: 0805073698
  • Pub­li­ca­tions by Robert Sapolsky
  • The Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Stress
  • Is there such thing as GOOD stress?

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: aging, American-Society-Aging, brain-exercise, Brain-Fitness, Brain-health, brain-health-resources, brain-workouts, Cognitive-Training, Emotions, Health & Wellness, health-professionals, mental-stimulation, Mind-Fitness, Neurogenesis, Neurons, older-adults, Prevent-Alzheimers, Stress

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. How does yoga says

    January 2, 2008 at 11:35

    slow down your metabolism?

  2. Rajni says

    July 31, 2008 at 3:21

    The effects of stress that are described in the arti­cle above- I have seen them myself. It is quite true — and any­body who has gone through pro­longed stress­ful peri­ods can tes­ti­fy to this — that it slows down the gen­er­al work­ing of the mind, it effects our mem­o­ry, and impairs our deci­sion mak­ing capa­bil­i­ty in our day to day lives.
    I am going to rec­om­mend the book ‘Why Zebras…’ to my friends!

  3. jairo obando says

    November 12, 2008 at 5:02

    All the thoughts are placed in my mind dur­ing the med­i­ta­tion and that do that we can sep­a­rate them of the neg­a­tive thoughts and give them the just val­ue and influ­ence in our life. So I think that the yoga and oth­er tec­nics of relax­ation help a lot for the health brain.

  4. Nalini says

    October 14, 2009 at 4:28

    Would love to see infor­ma­tion about Brain State Tech, based in Scotts­dale, AZ men­tioned here. Their War­rior Project has helped thou­sands of vets recov­er from PTSD.

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