According to various clinical studies, consistently practicing yoga can help increase your memory and boost your IQ. Even 20 minutes of daily yoga practice can have a significant impact on your brain function. Yoga helps increase your oxygen levels which is crucial for your brain and other body organs.
Yoga was initially developed to help you calm your emotions as it forces you to focus on your breathing with longer exhalations than inhalations.
Non-yogis who begin practicing yoga at least twice a week have experienced a measurable impact on their brain function.
Yoga generally increases the size of your hippocampus, which is crucial in memory processing, thereby making you a better decision-maker.
With at least eight weeks of regular yoga practice, you will also find yourself managing your emotions much better, among other benefits.
5 ways yoga stimulates your brain functions
Most people who practice yoga do it to keep their bodies in ideal shape and condition.
But did you know that yoga can also improve brain health and functioning?
Research has proven that yoga and meditation increase the performance of the parts of the brain controlling attention, mood, and memory.
If you get into yoga, the following are some proven ways your brain health and functioning are going to improve:
1. IMPROVES BOTH SHORT AND LONG-TERM MEMORY
While practicing yoga, there is increased activity in the brain's key memory areas, which are the hippocampus and frontal lobe. The stimulation of these two areas results in boosting your short and long-term memories.
Yoga is easily accessible to injured and older people who are unable to work out vigorously. Most people aged 55 years and above tend to suffer from age-related memory loss, and this is where yoga comes in.
Since it provides similar benefits to aerobic exercise without any physical strain, yoga is ideal for improving short and long-term memory.
2. GUIDING BRAINWAVES INTO BENEFICIAL FREQUENCIES
The beneficial frequencies include alpha, theta, and delta, which lead to cognitive functioning, idea generation, and intellectual capacity. Yoga helps guide your brainwaves into these specific frequencies hence transforming to these states. In return, it leads to an increase in your IQ.
Brainwaves are the electric impulses in your brain that enable the communication of an individual's behavior, thoughts, and emotions through the brain's neurons.
The human brain waves generally occur at different frequencies, with some being fast and others slow.
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3. INCREASES THE BRAIN'S FOLDS
Yoga introduces structural changes in your brain and increases the number of folds. Research has proven that people who consistently practice meditation have more gyrification in their brain's cortex.
The surface of your brain is made up of bumps and wrinkles that are not entirely attractive to look at. They are referred to as gyrification or cortical folds.
They play a crucial role in your thinking ability as they contain the brain cells and increase your brain's surface area hence accommodating more cells.
Your brain's neuroplasticity allows it to adapt to any changes in the environment, such as regular meditation.
4. INCREASE GRAY MATTER DENSITY
Yoga helps increase the volume of gray matter in your hippocampus and frontal lobe. It is responsible for functions like memory, learning new skills, and interpreting senses of smell, hearing, sight, and touch.
40% of brain tissue is gray matter which consists of the brain neurons and cells. Despite being called gray, the tissue is pink in color and turns gray after one dies.
The volume of gray matter in the brain determines an individual's general intelligence. The thicker the gray matter, the more cells are present, hence better brain performance.
5. REDUCES STRESS AND ANXIETY
While practicing yoga, some parts of your brain tend to slow down and rest, allowing you to de-stress. This functionality takes place in two major areas, that is the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe.
The frontal lobe takes a break during meditation, taking a toll on your stress response. Similarly, yoga slows down your parietal lobe, which handles any information originating from your senses.
This includes sounds, sights, and everything else you observe in your environment.
Yoga also decreases your brain's amygdala, the message processing center receiving and reacting to emotions, reducing anxiety.
