How to Foster Brain Health with Yoga

by Baxter and Nina

From "Tantra Song" by Jamme

When Baxter travels around the country sharing our ideas about Yoga for Healthy Aging, he often asks his students to list their top worries regarding getting older. Hands down, the number one fear they list is developing dementia or Alzheimer�s disease, even when there is no family history of it. So we�ve spent quite a lot of time learning about brain health and how we can use yoga to support it as we age. We're happy to report there are quite a number of ways!

So today we�re providing recommendations for how to use your yoga practice to foster brain health, including both your cognitive health and the health of your central nervous system. If you are already practicing well-rounded active sequences that include a few restorative poses (or at the least a good Savasana), breath work, and meditation, that�s a great start, because regular exercise, stress management, and meditation for brain strength are all going to help both your brain and your nervous system.

The following recommends recommendations are for those who want to focus especially on brain health, whether you are just concerned about brain health in general, or have a special motivation, such as a family history of brain problems, such as early onset dementia or Parkinson�s disease.

What to Practice. For your balanced practices that include asanas, stress management, and meditation, be sure to vary the sequences that you practice as well as the individual poses that you include to keep your practice sessions fresh and stimulating for your brain! On rest days consider practicing a short �brain practice,� which could include meditation, a yoga philosophy study session on your own or with friends, or even time spent reading yoga books to find new poses, practices, and sequences to try.

How Often to Practice. In general, work toward practicing five to six days a week. Because exercise is important for brain health, we recommend practicing an active asana sequence (or another type of exercise, such as walking) around three to four days a week. On the other days, either work on your short brain-stimulating practice, an equanimity practice of your choice, or�if chronic stress is a problem�a short stress management session (see below).

Static Poses. The more physically challenging a pose is, the greater the workload is for your heart, which is a particularly good way to exercise your cardiovascular system and foster brain as well as your heart health. So we recommend including the challenging poses in your sequences for brain health as you would for cardiovascular health. See Techniques for Improving Cardiovascular and Heart Health for pose recommendation and timings. 

Besides providing exercise to benefit the brain and nervous system, static poses stretch your tissues, including the tissue around your nerves. With a regular asana practice, you can release holding patterns around your nerves, permitting more slide and glide through muscles and joints, which allows them to function them more effectively. 

Finally, balance poses help improve your proprioception (see How We Balance), fostering the health of the specialized nerves that allow you to sense where your body is in space.

To add learning into your asanas, vary your static poses as much as possible. Switch which side you start on, change your arm positions, or create a new version of a static pose. 

Dynamic Poses. Dynamic poses and flow sequences practiced for their cardiovascular benefits also foster brain health. So we recommend including dynamic poses in your sequences for brain health as you would for cardiovascular health. See Techniques for Improving Cardiovascular and Heart Health  for recommendations for dynamic poses to practice and how fast to move between poses. 

Also, like static poses, dynamic poses stretch tissues, including tissues around the nerves, so you can use dynamic poses to release holding patterns around your nerves, permitting more slide and glide through muscles and joints, which allows them to function them more effectively. 

A special advantage that dynamic poses provide is that because you are moving quickly from one position to another, all dynamic poses and flow sequences improve the functioning of your proprioceptors (see How We Balance), the specialized nerves that allow you to sense where you are in space.

To add learning into your asanas, vary your dynamic poses and sequences as much as possible, and experiment with inventing new mini vinyasas and flow sequences.

Meditation. If you already have a regular meditation practice, simply continue practicing as usual, with your favorite technique. If you do not currently meditate, because meditation has been shown to improve brain structure and function, we strongly recommend that you start. See Yoga Meditation Techniques for information. 

Stress Management. When you�re not feeling particularly stressed out, a well-rounded practice that includes active asanas and short-sessions of the stress management techniques of your choice will help keep your stress levels in check. And if you chose meditate every day, or do breath practices, restorative yoga or supported inversions on your rest days, all the better. However, because stress management is so important for brain healthy, if you�re experiencing chronic stress or entering a stressful period in your life, we recommend practicing at least a short stress management session for about 20 minutes every day. What you practice for your short stress management sessions could be any of the relaxation practices you prefer or that work in your particular circumstances: seated or reclined meditation, calming breath practices, one or two restorative and/or supported inverted poses, or a guided relaxation program. See Stress Management for When You're Stressed.

Equanimity. Because cultivating equanimity as you age will allow you to think more clearly and make better decisions, as well as help you handle brain changes to the brain that might arise over time, consider focusing on equanimity practices, such as studying yoga philosophy, practicing yoga for emotional wellbeing, and meditating to understand your thought patterns, that help you stay balanced and cultivate contentment with what you have and what you don�t have. See LINK.

Healthy Eating and Digestion. Eating a healthy, nutritious diet fuels your brain and nervous system and helps support their health. And due to the way your gut is connected to your brain, keeping your gut healthy and happy through by maintaining a good diet and supporting good digestion, also benefits your brain and nervous system health. See How Yoga Helps Your Digestive System for information about how to use yoga to support healthy eating and healthy digestion.

Sleeping. If you have trouble sleeping for just one night, it can affect your brain function the next day. But if you have chronic sleeping problems, ongoing lack of sleep can more have serious effects, such as impaired memory, and may even be linked to dementia. So, if chronic insomnia is a problem for you, we recommend that you use your yoga practice to support better sleep. See 5 Tips for Better Sleep. 

Learning. Because your brain is �plastic� and continues to actively grow and rewire itself when it is stimulated, we recommend using your yoga practice as a way to keep learning. Try new poses or new variations of familiar poses, new sequences, and new practices beyond asana (such as mudras or breath practices) on a regular basis. We also recommend studying yoga philosophy, because in addition to helping you learn to cultivate equanimity, yoga philosophy will expose you to new concepts and terminology (some of which are quite challenging to work your head around!). And because learning a new language is especially effective for brain health, try working on your Sanskrit!

Community. Remaining socially active supports brain health and delays the onset of dementia. Social engagement is a learning exercise, and as with other mentally stimulating activities, helps build up healthy brain cells and the connections between them. Attending yoga classes and participating in your local yoga community is a good way to stay socially active as well as to keep your practice going strong. If you�re not already active in the yoga community, find a way to join:

• Find a regular class you can afford
• Attend free events at your local yoga studio
• Go on a retreat (if it�s in your budget)
• Attend yoga conferences
• Practice yoga with a friend
• Attend a yoga book groups
• Participate in an online yoga community
• Volunteer for yoga community service

We hope after all this you�re starting to feel encouraged, because you now have a rich set of techniques you can use to support your brain health. It�s never too early start supplementing your yoga practice with these techniques, so try something new today!

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Your Brain is More Than That Thing in Your Skull

by Baxter and Nina

Your brain is an organ of the body just like your heart or liver. Although the organ itself resides in the skull, it is not isolated from the rest of your body as you might tend to think. Through an network of nerves, it is essentially connected to all the other organs, structures, and systems of your body. 

So, what we do to keep our other organs and systems healthy has an effect on our brains and we shouldn�t be surprised by that. But we are surprised! We tend to think of keeping the brain healthy just by feeding it new information and experiences, such as by learning new languages, playing music, and doing crossword puzzles. But just plain physical exercise could be as or more important than mental exercise. In fact, a recent study that looked at both leg strength and cognitive ability in twins as they aged showed that those who maintained better leg strength as a result of exercising had better memory and other cognitive functions than their non-exercising twin. 

But targeting cardiovascular health with your practice could be especially helpful for brain health. As our colleague Ram says, �What is good for the heart is good for the brain.� And just as a healthy diet is important for the physical health of our heart and other organs, the same is true for our brains.

Learning a bit about the basic components that make up �the brain� will help you understand how your yoga practice can have a stronger influence over the health of your brain than you might first think:

Brain. The organ we call the brain is housed securely within your skull, and extends down your toward your spinal cord in the form of the brain stem. The part of your brain located in your skull has different areas that are associated with different functions. For example, the deeper parts of the brain deal with background functions, such as digestion, blood pressure, hormonal balance, to name just a few and the more superficial parts are involved in activities associated with our conscious thoughts and actions.

Throughout our lives, our brains can change, heal, and grow though a process called �neuroplasticity�. In response to stimulation and learning, the brain actively grows and rewires itself. With your yoga practice, learning new poses and practices, not to mention delving into yoga philosophy, will directly stimulate your brain. Other factors that influence your brain�s plasticity include lifestyle, environment, and exercise, so using yoga for exercise and stress management as well as to support healthy choices about lifestyle and environment will benefit brain plasticity.

Your brain is also strongly affected by your physical condition. For example, chronic stress can affect how your brain functions day to day, such as making your thinking foggy, and, over longer periods of time, even change the structure of your brain for the worse, such as shrinking certain areas. Your circulatory system influences your brain because a sudden change in blood flow could cause dizziness or fainting, or in extreme cases, a stroke, which could result in permanent damage or even death.

Sleep also has a strong effect of healthy brain function because too little sleep leaves us drowsy and unable to concentrate in the short run, and leads to impaired memory and physical performance in the long run. And scientists now believe that sleep helps to clear out toxins from the brain as well as from the body, which is vital for the long-term health of your brain.

In general, using yoga for exercise, stress management, maintaining circulatory system health, improving sleep, supporting a healthy diet, will all contribute to the health of your brain, as does participating in your local yoga community.

Blood-Brain Barrier. The brain and spinal cord are surrounded by three layers of connective tissue, which create the blood-brain barrier. This barrier protects your brain, making it very hard for infections to get to the brain and preventing the fluid around the brain from seeping out. However, blood vessels still directly penetrate and surround the entire brain, so your circulatory system can deliver fuel to and remove waste from it moment by moment. You can have a positive influence on the moment-by-moment supply to your brain with your yoga practice by supporting good digestion and circulation, and lowering your stress levels. 

Nervous System. Your brain communicates with your entire body through your central and peripheral nervous systems. The central nervous system consists of the brain and the spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system consists of the large and small nerves that connect your spinal cord to all the parts of the rest of your body. Together, they all work together to make up the entire nervous system. 

Because the nerves from your peripheral nervous system plug into just about every structure in your body, they create a two-way communication system between the brain and body. Due to this two-way communication, we can influence the function and physiology of the brain with our yoga practices. For example, when we use our breath, meditation, or asana practice to trigger the Relaxation Response, we not only create a mental state of calm but we also expand our thought-behavior repertoire to include a wider range of possibilities than those we have in stress mode (see Stress and Your Thought-Behavior Repertoire).

Gut. Although your brain has two-way communication with all the parts of your body, it may not surprise you to learn that your brain has a special two-way relationship with your gut. The human gut has a semi-independent nervous system, called the enteric nervous system, which derived from the same embryonic neural crest cells that give rise to the brain. Your gut is in constant communication with your brain, primarily through your central and peripheral nervous systems. But your gut also communicates with your brain through neuropeptides to regulate complex feeding behavior and pain perception. And there is new evidence that even your gut bacteria communicates with and coordinates signals between the gut and the brain. So keeping your gut happy and healthy through a well-balanced asana practice, stress management, and a healthy diet will benefit your brain health as well (see The Digestion System and Yoga).

Circulatory System. As mentioned above, the circulatory system supplies fuel to and removes waste from our brain each moment of our lives to keep the brain healthy and operating well. If the circulatory becomes compromised with conditions such as plaque build-up in the large blood vessels leading the brain, or if it has weak spots that could rupture and bleed, then the brain is at risk for strokes. Using yoga to keep your circulatory system healthy may lower your chances of developing cardiovascular disease (see Techniques for Improving Cardiovascular and Heart Health). And if a stroke does occur, yoga can be useful in your recovery. 

We hope this gives you a good appreciation of the ways in which your brain is closely tied to the other systems of your body, and a better understanding of how yoga can help you foster brain health. For specific tips about how to do this, see 6 Ways to Foster Brain Health with Yoga

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