Benefits of Yoga on Mental Health
Written by: Bethany Vazquez
Yoga has many benefits, both physical and mental. In this article, I will be addressing the benefits yoga has on mental health. Yoga can help people navigate stress, anxiety, and improve overall health. Yoga can be for everybody; able-bodied people, people with disabilities, and older people. I will specifically talk about the benefits yoga can have for people with stress/anxiety.
One benefit of yoga is meditation,
“There is evidence that stress reduction can be effected through psychological methods, including meditation. Recent metaanalysis has demonstrated that in diverse populations, it provides small to moderate reductions in the negative affect dimensions of psychological stress, such as 10–20% reductions in depression and 5–10% decreases in anxiety” (Goyal et al., 2014).
Meditation is scientifically proven to reduce stress which can be a benefit to someone’s mental health. One aspect of mental health is anxiety, which I will go on to talk about how yoga can help with this.
Personally, yoga has been a practice I could go to if I need to relax and reduce my anxiety. As a college student, I find myself frequently overwhelmed with assignments and exams. A fellow yogi who writes about her experience with anxiety and yoga says,
“When I look back at my behaviour in the time leading up to the acute anxiety state, I can see that I was always rushing, always trying to appear to others, perhaps, as being active. There was no time for what my counsellor referred to as just ‘being’. Yoga, and the excellent teacher I have, taught me that slowing down is one of the single most effective things someone with anxiety can do. But it is not easy, as it goes against the gram. Yoga was helpful in teaching me this under-rated skill — and it is a skill. During my first yoga lessons, a little part of me used to feel like screaming at the teacher ‘get on with it’. I smile to myself now when I think of that” (Wainwright).
This skill of “just being” helps prevent anxious thoughts and is one of the many benefits of yoga.
Yoga has also been known to reduce stress,
“Yoga has been found to improve not only the perception of stress but its physiological impact on the ANS, endocrine system, and the immune system. All of which can, over time, lead to disease, illness, and potentially death. It is vital that health practitioners find methods of stress reduction to offer their patients. Yoga has few side effects, is low-cost, and can be done almost anywhere by anyone regardless of physical ability or age. It can also reduce the need for healthcare services and hence cost. Yoga is also a component of self-care where patients can take an active role in their own health and wellbeing instead of being an inactive participant in interventions given to them, such as tests, medications, or other therapies” (Diamond).
Yoga helps reduce stress which, if not treated, could lead to disease. It is also affordable and can even be an alternative to other healthcare services that are expensive.
Yoga has many benefits on mental health. Yoga reduces anxiety, stress, and it is a fun alternative to take care of one’s self. Yoga’s benefits include better sleep, breathing exercises, meditation, movement, stretching, and calming the mind. Yoga truly can be for everybody and has shown positive effects on anyone who has participated in it. Yoga not only helps people physically, but mentally as well.
References
Diamond, Lisa. “The Benefits of Yoga in Improving Health: Lisa Diamond Recommends the Prescription of Yoga to Improve Patients’ Physical and Mental Wellbeing with Little Cost to the Health Service.” Primary Health Care, vol. 22, no. 2, 2012, pp. 16–19.
Kaitlin N. Harkess, Paul Delfabbro & Sarah Cohen-Woods | Cornelia Duregger (Reviewing Editor) (2016) The longitudinal mental health benefits of a yoga intervention in women experiencing chronic stress: A clinical trial, Cogent Psychology, 3:1, DOI: 10.1080/23311908.2016.1256037
Wainwright, Noreen. “The Benefits of Yoga.” Mental Health Practice, vol. 15, no. 10, 2012, pp. 9.
