Does Yoga Increase Brain Power?
The human brain is the most complex organ in the human body and is one of the body’s most important muscles. Like all muscles, the brain needs exercise for better functioning, and yoga Prahran is one of the best forms of exercise that improves brainpower.
Yoga Prahran differs from other brain improving exercises in its ability to facilitate proper breathing patterns that help a great deal in calming your body, invigorating your mind and regulating the vagus nerve, which is responsible for your body’s mood and stress levels. This is important for the brain, as stress and anxiety, in particular, can cause your brain to malfunction.
During controlled MRS studies, JACM found that yoga postures specifically, increase your gamma-aminobutyric (GABA) levels in your brain, which is responsible for calming your mind by superseding neural activity, subsequently improving your mood and anxiety.
The study also found that yoga helps to increase brain power by influencing emotional regulation at a psychological level, regulating the production of cortisol (the stress hormone), and increasing your brain’s grey matter, which is linked to improved memory and cognitive functioning.
This means that the clinical effects of combining yoga postures with breath practice not only works on your physical body by improving your strength, flexibility and balance but is also enough to literally change the structure of your brain.
While all yoga Prahran is great for brain power, like all yoga Prahran classes combine deep breathing, the stretching of muscles and meditation to increase cognitive functions, the best yoga for brain power is yoga that involves asanas (poses) and inversions. Hatha, Vinyasa and Yin are all great yoga Prahran classes for this, as they involve certain postures and inversions which increase blood circulation and oxygen flow to the brain, and hence keep it in good health.
There are also a number of yoga poses that we practice during these particular yoga Prahran classes that are designed to boost your memory and improve concentration, focus and overall cognition. As an added bonus, holding these poses can prevent the onset of age-related degenerative brain disorders, like Alzheimer’s.
Some of the yogic breathing techniques we do during class can also directly influence our brain’s chemistry, because the humming sound and vibrations we do during breathwork reduces brain fog, cultivates clear thinking, and improves memory.
The slow, deep, and conscious belly breathing can also help to lower your heart rate and blood pressure while sending safety signals to the calming branch of your nervous system. This relaxed state has been linked to increased working memory, which enables you to form new memories, and process and store old memories.
With symptoms of stress and anxiety at an all-time high, people are searching for ways to keep their brains healthy and improve their mental health. Yoga Prahran is a natural place to turn, especially with more and more studies using science to back up yoga’s effectiveness with increasing brainpower.
Your brain is a marvellous organ capable of doing the unbelievable. Protecting its sanity and well-being should be a top priority. At Kaya Health Clubs, we offer a number of different yoga Prahran classes, which all use a combination of yoga postures, breath work and meditation to strengthen and maintain your brain’s capabilities and increase brain power. Click here to view our timetable, or come experience a complimentary class.