Yoga isn’t just a type of physical activity. At it’s purest, yoga is a form of meditative exercise, intended to make the mind at one with the body. Each position utilizes a combination of deep, deliberate breaths and strategic movements to clear the mind and stimulate specific chakras, which are points of energy specific to locations within the body and related to certain emotions.
Because of this emphasis on the mind and emotion, there has been talk about yoga's potential benefits for depression. Here is a look at what research has to say about the subject.
What Studies Say
Numerous studies have been done to show the efficaciousness of yoga on multiple health issues, both physical and emotional. If you enjoy yoga, some experts say it can help with anxiety, blood pressure, heart function, pain, insomnia, and yes, even depression. In fact, one study found a decrease of fourteen points on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) for some of their subjects. This is a pretty significant amount, when you consider the BDI is on a scale of 1-35, bringing these yogis from being moderately depressed to feeling a slight mood disturbance according to the BDI caliber.
How it Works
How, you ask, can toe touches and backbends possibly do something that your prescription antidepressants can't? Well, if you think yoga isn't worth your time, it probably isn’t going to do much. Nor is it a good idea to quit any medication you might be taking and turn solely to yoga as soon as you’ve finished reading this article. Looking at is an exercise in flexibility alone isn’t going to quite do the trick, either. However, with the proper teaching and mindset, it can have a lot of power over the mind and may create a positive effect on your mood.
One of the ways yoga can be beneficial is through its ability to help you cope with stress, which is a significant factor in depression. Learning breathing exercises and making your joints and muscles more fit through stretching and increased stamina keeps your body stronger, so it can cope with bad situations and rocky stretches of life more easily, thereby staving off depressive times.
Furthermore, as with any sort of exercise, yoga releases chemicals in your brain—nice things, like serotonin and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) that make you happy and help control or stabilize good moods. Researchers have found yoga is better at this brain boost than other forms of exercise because of its emphasis on both the body and mind.
Part of what makes yoga so effective is the time it gives you to be at peace with yourself. A yoga session can last anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour and a half, and for that time, you don’t have to think about your problems, you don’t have to think about anything. You simply focus on the movements of your body and the steadiness of your breathing. It gives you a break from the outside world, and it gives you a break from yourself.
