Therapeutic yoga, including meditation, brings a range of benefits for those seeking to increase or preserve their neurological health.

Here’s a look at some of the research:

• This 2019 article, “Yoga effects on brain health: A systematic review of the current literature,” summarizes the positive effects of the practice on brain structure and function. Collectively, the studies included in the review demonstrated benefit in brain regions that may atrophy with age.
• “The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation,” published in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, offers images and an explanatory model for the brain-activation patterns associated with mindfulness meditation.
• This exciting study was among the first to demonstrate the effects of meditation on a key positive indicator of brain health and function: “Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness.”
• A 2017 cross-sectional study also showed greater cortical thickness in elderly people who did yoga compared to healthy age-matched controls.

The neurodegenerative condition Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, affecting 55 million people globally.

June is Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month—a good time to take a look at the promising evidence for how yoga may support prevention and care physically as well as mentally:

• A literature review on the effect of yoga in people with mild cognitive impairment and dementia examined eight studies that reported on yoga as either the primary intervention or one component of a multi-component intervention. Results, published in The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry in 2019, suggest that yoga may benefit cognitive functioning, particularly attention and verbal memory.
• And even just a few days of meditation training may improve the ability to sustain attention, a benefit previously reported in long-term meditators. As the authors of this study note, “Brief mindfulness training significantly improved visuo-spatial processing, working memory, and executive functioning.”
• A systematic review on yoga for balance shows moderate evidence of decreased fall risk in community-dwelling older adults and people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of neuromuscular impairment.
• According to the authors of this 2016 review, mind-body practices may target brain systems “involved in the regulation of attention, emotional control, mood, and executive cognition.” Furthermore, they say, practices such as yoga can be used to address mood and cognitive disorders of aging (like depression and caregiver stress), and serve as “brain fitness exercise.”
• You can also learn more with the Alzheimer’s Research & Prevention Foundation, which employs a yoga-based approach, and in the yogatherapy.health blog post “Yoga for people living with dementia.”

(Articles referenced may require a subscription for full access.)