2. Does yoga help with stress?
Researchers believe that yoga increases what’s known as vagal tone, the ability of the body to effectively respond to stress. The positive impact that yoga has on vagal tone helps regulate the nervous system, and helps to increase well-being and resilience to stress.[6]
Vagal tone is the state of the the largest cranial nerve called the vagus nerve, which helps with the regulation of all the major functions of the body. A relationship has been shown with an increase in vagal tone and a reduction in allostatic load (amount of stress accumulated over time). Individuals who have high vagal tone have a healthy functioning vagus nerve, and are more stress resilient. Those who have low vagal tone are more sensitive to stress.
Yoga poses for stress relief:
Triangle pose, Bridge pose, Legs up the wall pose, Downward dog pose, Child’s pose
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