The Psychology and Neuroscience of Yoga - The Mind-Body Connection

Transcript

there's so much research out there demonstrating how yoga can be helpful for mental health and well-being and I want to share some of that research with you by the end of this video you'll have an understanding of why it's important to create a mind-body connection some of the psychology and the neuroscience behind this practice my name is Kathy I have a PhD in psychology and thirteen years of mental health research experience I've been practicing yoga since 2008 and teaching since 2014 essential to a mind-body practice like yoga is the somatic experience is feeling what's happening in your body so especially with the postural practice of yoga there's a lot of body sensations so you're using sensations to to guide how you move and the sensation of stretching can can really build that sort of awareness of what's happening in your body and that that awareness of what's happening in your body is called interoception and some people are really good at interceptive awareness and some people aren't so good at feeling what's happening in their body and before I get into the neuroscience behind that I want to talk a little bit about the psychology and why it's important to have a strong mind body connection for mental health and mental well-being now there's two psychological constructs that I want to talk about the first is present moment awareness and the second is agency now being present in the moment it's about being aware of what's happening for you in this moment so sometimes it's called being mindful or being in the now now your body is always in the present moment but your mind can travel into the future into the past or be in the present as you start to develop a stronger mind-body connection you can use the sensations that you feel in your body to anchor your attention in the present moment in the now the next psychological construct I want to talk about is agency and agency is understanding that you can create change in your environment so be it in your external environment or your internal environments of what you feel in your body when you develop a stronger my body connection you become more aware that the way you behave can change your body sensations so for example how well you sleep when you go to sleep what you eat what you think these for the most part are under our control and can change sensations for us can change how we feel and knowing this is so important for self-regulation so let's talk a little bit about the neuroscience practicing being aware of what's happening in your body is associated with changes and brain areas associated with interception and that includes the insular cortex and it's a major player in this process the prefrontal cortex and the somatosensory cortex and the general gist of it is that the more that you practice feelings the more that you you change these brain areas so essentially you start to to rewrite cortical map so more of your brain activity is devoted towards feeling into your body and some people are really practice at interoception and some people are more practice at not feeling what's going on in their body how many of us have been guilty of ignoring body sensations in order to get something done so say you're working on a task and you start to get really hungry anything I I'm hungry but I really want to get this done so you pull your attention away from that body sensation or how many of us have been in a situation where you feel uncomfortable but yet you stay in that situation and it's okay every now and again I mean sometimes it's necessary to get something done but the more you practice it the pity you become at it so you can become quite practice at not noticing what's going on in your body so let's talk a little bit more about the neurocognitive side of things the more that you are aware of body sensations the more that you pull your attention away from automatic behavioral responses we only have so much attention so will you place it as important so if you are focusing on the interoceptive experience then you're pulling cognitive resources away from your automatic responses so you're using out some of your cognitive bandwidth by focusing on the moment and a neuroanatomical level you're freeing up more recent resources for areas of your prefrontal cortex to control some of the subcortical areas like the limbic system specifically the amygdala which is associated with emotional reactions and with more attention placed on your body sensations you get more information about what is actually happening for you in the present moment and you can use that information to help guide your behavior so let's take an example to sort of illustrate that so say you're in a situation where you start to feel upset sometimes we might just be triggered and react in an automatic way based on past experiences but if you're noticing body sensations you might suddenly become aware that you're being triggered that you're becoming upset and because your attention is focused towards what's happening now you can use that information so perhaps you see that you're becoming upset and you just say well I think the best course of action here is just to walk away from the situation or perhaps you decide that maybe I can find something positive in this maybe I can learn from this experience so what I've explained in this video is some of the psychological and neurological consequences of developing a strong mind-body connection I'm gonna reference some of the papers that I found this information from below so you can check them out for yourself and so in summary what I've described is that as you become more embodied as you notice more about what's happening for you you develop your interoceptive awareness you develop a greater sense of of being in the present moment of being aware of what's happening for you in a greater sense of agency now if you enjoyed this video please feel free to give it a thumbs up if you'd like to hear more about the psychology 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