How Does Yoga Lower Stress?
Feeling stressed? Whether you're worried about a heavy workload or are struggling to balance work and home obligations, practicing yoga could help you relax. Yoga offers stress-lowering benefits that calm your mind and ease the physical effects of stress and anxiety.
Yoga Offers Stress-Busting Benefits
Your sympathetic nervous system releases cortisol and adrenaline when you're stressed. These hormones, part of the body's fight-or-flight response, provide the extra energy you need to tackle stressful situations.
Cortisol and adrenaline levels usually return to normal when a stressful situation ends, but may remain high if you're frequently stressed. High levels of the hormones may make it difficult to feel calm even when you're not handling a stressful situation.
Yoga counteracts the heart-pounding effects of cortisol and adrenaline with a combination of poses, yogic breathing, and mindfulness. Yoga reduces tension, decreases your heart rate, and could even lower your blood pressure.
Yoga Relieves Stress-Related Pain Naturally
Stress doesn't just affect your emotional health. It can lead to physical complaints, including tension headaches and migraines. Do the muscles in your neck, shoulders, or upper back feel tight when you're stressed? Muscle tension, a common reaction to stress, may affect the range of motion in your neck or arms and could increase your risk for headaches.
Yoga poses stretch and relax tight muscles, reducing pain. During yoga class, you'll perform a sequence of poses that work all the muscles in your body. Yoga offers an excellent way to strengthen your muscles and improve balance, while enhancing flexibility.
Calming Your Nerves with Yogic Breathing
Deep, controlled breathing is an essential part of yoga. As you perform poses, you'll synchronize your breathing to correspond with specific movements. Take the cat-cow pose, for example. You'll start the pose on all fours, then inhale as you arch your back and lift your head toward the ceiling during the cow portion of the pose. You'll transition to the cat portion by exhaling slowly as you drop your head and round your back.
Yogic breathing calms your nervous system, helps regulate your emotions, and offers a natural way to reduce anxiety. The next time you feel stressed, inhale slowly through your nose, completely filling your lungs with air. Open your mouth and exhale slowly. Repeat the process several times to take full advantage of the calming effects of yogic breathing.
Mindfulness Offers an Effective Antidote to Intrusive Thoughts
During yoga class, you'll learn how to use meditation to improve mindfulness. Mindfulness happens when your mind is clear and your focus is only on the present moment. As you meditate, you'll let go of worries and focus on your breathing or a mantra or peaceful image.
Meditation lowers stress and anxiety, improves self-awareness, and enhances focus and concentration. Do you struggle to fall asleep because unwanted thoughts keep circling through your brain? Practicing meditation in the evening banishes negative thoughts that may prevent you from falling asleep.
The Proven Benefits of Yoga
Multiple research studies have demonstrated the stress-relieving benefits of yoga. Yoga novices who practiced Hatha yoga for eight weeks reported significant improvements in stress and increased mindfulness, according to a study published in Acta Psychologica in 2023.
Not sure which type of yoga offers the most stress-relieving benefits? When researchers compared Hatha and Vinyasa yoga, they noticed participants' anxiety scores and salivary cortisol levels were significantly lower after Hatha yoga, but not Vinyasa yoga. Their research appeared in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2020. Vinyasa yoga involves quick transitions between poses, while Hatha yoga is slower-paced.
In a study published in Anxiety, Stress, & Coping in 2017, yoga practitioners reported significant improvement in stress, anxiety and well-being after yoga sessions. Once control group subjects were included in yoga classes, they also experienced improvements in stress, anxiety, depression and insomnia.
Lower your stress level naturally with yoga! Ready to sign up for a yoga class? Get in touch with us, and we'll help you choose the perfect class.
Sources:
Acta Psychologica: The Influence of Hatha Yoga on Stress, Anxiety, and Suppression: A Randomized Controlled Trial, 11/2023
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691823002512
MDPI: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health : A Comparison of the Acute Effects of Different Forms of Yoga on Physiological and Psychological Stress: A Pilot Study, 8/21/2020
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/17/6090
Anxiety, Stress, & Coping: The Effect of Yoga on Stress and Psychological Health Among Employees: An 8- and 16-Week Intervention Study, 11/23/2017
Harvard Health Publishing: Yoga for Better Mental Health, 4/29/2024
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/yoga-for-better-mental-health
New York Times: Want to Relax? Try Yoga, 11/30/2018