Do you make excuses of your hectic schedule for not practising yoga and meditation? Then, let us tell you just 25 minutes of Hatha yoga and meditation can help you improve brain function and energy levels. A new study has confirmed the fact. The findings of the study have confirmed that practising 25 minutes of Hatha yoga or mindfulness meditation every day can boost the brain’s executive functions, cognitive abilities linked to goal-directed behaviour and also the ability to control knee-jerk emotional responses, habitual thinking patterns and actions.
Researcher Peter Hall from the University Of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada says that Hatha yoga and mindfulness meditation both stress on the brain’s conscious processing power on a limited number of targets like breathing and posing. It also reduces processing of nonessential information.
"These two functions might have some positive carryover effect in the near- term following the session, such that people are able to focus more easily on what they choose to attend to in everyday life," Hall added.
The team involved 31 participants, in which the participants completed 25 minutes of Hatha yoga, 25 minutes of mindfulness meditation and 25 minutes of quiet reading (a control task) in randomised order. The results indicated that following both the yoga and meditation activities, the participants performed significantly better on executive function tasks compared to the reading task.
"This finding suggests that there may be something special about meditation-- as opposed to the physical posing-- that carries a lot of the cognitive benefits of yoga," said lead author Kimberley Luu.
The study concluded that meditation and Hatha yoga were both useful for enhancing energy levels, but Hatha yoga can noticeably have more powerful effects than meditation alone. Hatha yoga includes physical postures and breathing exercises combined with meditation. Mindfulness meditation involves observing thoughts, emotions and body sensations with openness and acceptance.
(With ANI Inputs)
