Yoga With Pamela McDowell

Here are a few of the details of the study.

The study was a small pilot study 19 participants. Participants either practiced yoga or read for 60 minutes.

GABA levels of the 8 yoga practitioners and 11 readers were measured and compared. Yoga practitioners got a 27% increase in GABA whereas the readers experienced none.

(Actually, the researchers used magnetic resonance spectroscopy imaging devices to measure GABA-to-creatine ratios in the participants’ brains and did some fancy calculations to get to the corresponding brain GABA levels.)

The group practicing yoga had at least 4 months of experience practicing at least 2 days a week. They practiced their choice of asana-based yoga for the study.

The other group read periodicals and popular fiction – religious and self-help materials were excluded.

The yoga participants practiced for 60 minutes, 55 minutes of asana with a short rest at the beginning and end of practice.

Participants included 18-45 yr old men and women, with no history of psychiatric illness, alcohol abuse or substance abuse. The women were using “an acceptable method of birth control” and weren’t pregnant.

With a 27 % increase in GABA in the yoga practitioners, it is clear something is going on. And it stands to reason that since increasing GABA levels correspond to improvements in depression, anxiety, ADD & ADHD, and epilepsy, yoga should help with those conditions.

And since yoga has demonstrated success with depression, anxiety, and epilepsy, the conclusion appears to be correct.

Some questions remain (of course).

Since the test was on people with healthy GABA levels, will yoga help people with low GABA levels?

Is the effect unique to yoga, or does the increase in GABA increase with other forms of physical activity?

What about other aspects of yoga….do meditation, visualizations, reading spiritual texts and practicing pranayama produce increased levels of GABA, too?
(Except for a combined 5 minutes of rest and any breathing techniques incorporated into the postures, the practice did not include pranayama or meditation because researchers couldn’t verify the yoga practitioners were doing anything if they just sat there.)

While there is more to be learned, the study adds to the increasing evidence for the benefits of practicing yoga.

How to Benefit from the Yoga-GABA Study
Details about the Yoga - GABA Study
What is GABA?
Yoga Increases Your Brain’s GABA levels

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Tags: Yoga Studies and Research //