At this point in the semester, with exams, papers, and deadlines looming over us, its important more than ever to watch out for our physical and mental health. One way that might help deal with the stress and anxiety that comes with finals week is to practice deep breathing and meditation, both of which are an essential part of yoga.
Yoga is a total mind-body workout.
According to Natalie Nevins, a physician and yoga instructor, the purpose of yoga is to “create strength, awareness, and harmony in both the mind and body”. True to this, yoga includes both strengthening and stretching poses with deep breathing and meditation or relaxation.
So, what exactly are the benefits of yoga? Yoga can help improve our balance or spatial perception, sensory information processing, focus and attention, communication, self-regulation, and motor control. Let’s focus our attention on the first two— balance and sensory information.
We may not notice it, but balance plays a critical role in our lives. Our balance helps us to effectively deal with stimuli that bombard us and disrupt our equilibrium, allowing us to avoid injuries and accidents. There are actually three main factors that help us maintain good body balance: the proper functioning of the visual, somatosensory, and vestibular systems, along with the muscular and central nervous systems. Yoga, by requiring the maintenance of postures or asanas, could help improve both physical and emotional balance by practicing both self- control and body awareness. Now, yoga is being considered as a potential treatment for balance disorders concerning the vestibular, muscular, and neurological systems. A study by Prado et al. in 2014 then investigated how yoga influenced control and maintenance of body balance. They had 34 individuals in the experiment: half did not perform any physical exercises, while the other half had three 60-minute yoga sessions a week for five months. Once the 60 sessions were up, a body balance test (Balance Rehabilitation Unit) was used to measure limit of stability (LOS), center of body pressure area (COP), and velocity of sway (VOS) in three visual, vestibular, and somatosensory conditions of static balance; and additionally, practical tests were also used in which thet had to assume four asanas. From this experiment, it was found that the group which had yoga sessions had significantly higher scores! This means that based on the data, yoga training may indeed improve body balance.
Although this is the case, a review of 15 studies on yoga and body balance by Jeter et al. in 2014 argued that although most articles claim the beneficial effect of yoga on body balance, “study design and poor reporting quality obscure the results”, and that “balance as an outcome is underutilized, and more probing measures are needed”.
Since yoga has been found to enhance body awareness, there has now been a movement to make use of ‘yoga therapy’. An interesting direction that it may take is yoga as Sensory Integration Therapy, proving to enhance sensory processing, along with a sense of personal space, gross motor skills, and learning to cope with change/ transitions. A quantitative study by Studnitzer and Miller in 2014 observed the effects of yoga on 7 children within the ASD, data was gathered through interviews with the children’s parents and observation. It was found that from not being able to form or hold a yoga pose, the children were able to successfully performing poses for sustained periods. They were also seen to improve in terms of strength, flexibility, balance, focus, and concentration. The parents also reported seeing improvements in the social, and academic performance of the children.
These effects of yoga prove once again why it has endured for thousands of years. It is exciting to find that the practice is continuing to evolve, and is able to help and improve the lives of more people.
Jennie Ehleringer. (2010). Yoga for Children on the Autism Spectrum. International Journal of Yoga Therapy: 2010, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 131-139
Jeter, P.; Nkodo, A.; Moonaz, S.; Dagnelie, G. (2014). A Systematic Review of Yoga for Balance
in a Healthy Population. THE JOURNAL OF ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE
Volume 20, Number 4, 2014, pp. 221–232
Prado, E.; Raso, V.; Scharlach, R.; Kasse, C. (2014). Hatha Yoga and body balance. Int J Yoga. 2014 Jul-Dec; 7(2): 133–137.
Studnitzer, A.; Miller, A. (2014). Yoga: Therapy for Children on the Autism Spectrum. Academic Exchange Quarterly. (8)2.
YOGA AND DEVELOPING PROPRIOCEPTION by Cupido, C.: https://www.gaia.com/article/yoga-and-developing-proprioception
