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Practicing hatha yoga 3 times a week for 8 weeks improved sedentary older adults’ performance on cognitive tasks which are highly relevant to everyday routine, researchers report.
The findings involved 108 adults between the ages of 55 and 79 years old, 61 of whom attended hatha yoga classes. The others met for the same number and period of sessions and involved in stretching and toning exercises rather than yoga.
At the end of the 8 weeks, the yoga group was speedier and more accurate on tests of information recall, mental flexibility and task-switching than it had been prior to the intervention. The stretching-and-toning group saw no significant alternation in cognitive performance with time. The differences seen between the groups weren’t the result of differences in age, gender, social status or other demographic factors, the research team reported.
Hatha yoga is an ancient spiritual practice which involves meditation and focused breathing while an individual moves via a series of stylized postures, said Neha Gothe, who led the research with University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Edward McAuley. Beckman Institute director Arthur Kramer also led to the study. Gothe has become a professor at Wayne State University.
“Hatha yoga requires focused effort in moving with the poses, controlling the body and breathing at a steady rate,” Gothe said. “It can be done that this concentrate on your body, mind and breath during yoga practice may have generalized to situations outside of the yoga classes, resulting in a better ability to sustain attention.”
“Participants within the yoga intervention group showed significant improvements in working memory capacity, that involves continually updating and manipulating information,” McAuley said. “They were also capable of singing the task available quickly and accurately, without getting distracted. These mental functions are relevant to our everyday functioning, as we multitask and plan our day-to-day activities.”
Previous studies have discovered that yoga can have immediate positive psychological effects by decreasing anxiety, depression and stress, Gothe said.
“These studies claim that yoga comes with an immediate quieting impact on the sympathetic central nervous system and on the body’s reaction to stress,” she said. “Since we all know that stress and anxiety can impact cognitive performance, the eight-week yoga intervention might have boosted participants’ performance by reducing their stress.”
The results of the study are only preliminary and involve a reasonably short-term intervention, the researchers said. Further research is required to confirm the results and reveal the underlying brain mechanisms at play.
The team reported its findings in The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences. The National Institute on Aging in the National Institutes of Health supported this research.
