Keep up to date with the yoga community with our monthly round-up of yoga health news including salty yoga, yoga for kids and keeping your brain healthy.
The research to prove that yoga is good for health keeps emerging. This month we look at yoga health news including salty yoga, the benefits of yoga for children and the research showing yoga can help prevent Alzheimers and dementia.
Salty yoga
Salt has been used as a therapy for a very long time. The use of salt baths and caves were considered to boost the immune system, soothe allergies, improve skin conditions, and beat stubborn colds.
Salt therapy, or halotherapy as it is also known, became more mainstream in the 1800’s. A Polish physician, noticing that salt miners had healthier lungs than the general population, set up the first “salt spa”.
The theory behind salt therapy is that salt has antifungal, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and antiviral properties.
Salty yoga combines the benefits of salt therapy with yoga poses designed specifically to help with breathing. For this reason, as well as being good for sinus problems, it can also help athletes increase endurance by boosting lung capacity.
Breathe Easy, a halotherapy spa is the first place to offer the practice in New York. The salt room has walls made of rock salt bricks and is lit with salt crystal lamps. For one night a week, the room is converted into a yoga studio, where Ellen Patrick leads a with a slow flow yoga practice focused on breathing.
There is some science to back up the use of salt therapy.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine studied 24 patients with cystic fibrosis. The study found that symptoms were eased and breathing improved after inhaling the salt-infused vapor.
Another study in the European Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology tested regular salt therapy treatments for several weeks on patients with asthma. The patients reported breathing easier after the course of salt therapy.
The benefits of Yoga for children
Unfortunately, in modern society, children seem to be becoming as stressed out as adults. For this reason, many parents and educational institutions are turning to yoga practice to ease these stresses. Yoga can really provide all round physical and mental health benefits for children.
Here are just some ways in which practicing yoga will support your child’s development
- Enhances flexibility and coordination
- Strengthens mind-body awareness
- Improves concentration and memory
- Encourages good listening skills and ability to follow instructions
- Increases confidence and self-esteem
- Improves breathing and can help with physical conditions such as asthma
- Improve social skills
- Reduces stress
- Helps children deal with overwhelming emotions
There are plenty of yoga classes for children that incorporate fun and games into the practice. The classes can reduce stress, help children deal with emotions and socialize with others. In addition, yoga classes can also help with skills such as focus and concentration that will help them in school.
Yoga for brain health
You might think that to improve memory and keep your brain healthy you should be doing puzzles like Sudoku and crosswords. However, research at UCLA suggests that Yoga is better for brain health and memory than mental challenges such as puzzles.
A team of UCLA neuroscientists studied the effects of a three-month course of yoga and meditation on patients. They found that the practice helped minimize the cognitive and emotional problems that often precede Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. They also found that yoga practice was more effective than standard memory exercises.
Helen Lavretsky, the study’s lead author said that “Memory training was comparable to yoga with meditation in terms of improving memory, but yoga provided a broader benefit than memory training because it also helped with mood, anxiety and coping skills,” said, the study’s senior author.
The is fact that yoga reduces anxiety could be an important factor in preventing dementia. This is because chronic stress can be damaging to the brain. A recent review of the literature on dementia led by Dr. Linda Mah found that chronic stress and anxiety can damage areas of the brain involved in emotional responses, thinking, and memory.
So whether you are old or young, the latest yoga health news shows that there are plenty of good reasons to make yoga and meditation a part of your daily practice. Yoga can help us achieve good health now and in the future.
We will have more yoga health news next month.