In The News: Yoga and Transformative Life Skills

• Study: Meditation Improves Memory, Attention
  Undergraduate college students who took a mindfulness class (emphasizing the physical posture and mental strategies of focused-attention meditation) improved scores on GRE (Graduate Record Examinations; the standardized tests considered for grad school application).
• Ohio Congressman's Meditation Crusade
  Congressman Tim Ryan will be introducing a bill that will help states implement S.E.L. standards and promote mindfulness in medical schools, teacher-training programs, and to help treat veterans.
• Yoga: How We Serve People With Mental Illnesses
  An interview with Jenna Ritter, founder of DHARA, a non-profit organization for low-income adults living with various emotional and mental health issues.
• A Series of Poses for Fitness, Inside and Out
  About an ashtanga yoga class for female inmates at the Richmond City Jail in Richmond, Va.
• VA Study: Yoga Improves Balance Following Stroke
  A VA study published recently in the journal Stroke reveals that starting yoga — even long after you’ve suffered a stroke — may noticeably improve your balance.
• Yoga: Helping Survivors of Sexual Trauma to Heal
  An interview with Zabie Khorakiwala, who fused her passion for working with survivors of sexual trauma with yoga, and developed Transcending Sexual Violence through Yoga.
• Yoga proves to reduce depression in pregnant women, boost maternal bonding
  University of Michigan study the first to show evidence that mindfulness yoga may offer effective treatment for depressed new mothers-to-be.
• Yoga as stroke rehabilitation can help patients recover
  A study published in the journal Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association reveals that patients who participated in a yoga-based rehabilitation workout program following a stroke had better improvement than those who did the usual post-stroke rehab.
• Scientific research shows yoga to relieve stress and depression
  A study published in the Journal of Medical Hypotheses found that individuals who practice yoga are less likely to suffer from a plethora of stress-related ailments.
• Travis County inmates offered yoga classes
  Geoff O'Meara has been teaching yoga to inmates at the Travis County Correctional Complex for a year and a half. 
• Stretching the boundaries of yoga
  The practice, associated mostly with the health-conscious affluent, may offer low-cost treatment for back pain and other ailments
• Yoga may ease insomnia, menopause problems
  A couple of yoga sessions a week could help ease sleep problems and other effects of menopause, a small study suggests.
• Yoga and Children’s Mental Health
  Balancing the body’s systems has a great impact on mental perspective. Focus, concentration, creative thinking, and emotional skills are enhanced with mindful breathing practiced in children’s yoga.
• Cleanse Mental Toxins Through Meditation Process
  As surely as some people go to detox centers to rid their bodies of toxic drugs and alcohol, people go to meditation centers in order to release mental toxicity, mental "drugs" such as a lifetime of stored memories, desire, anger, sadness, greed, confusion: all crammed into the brain cells.
• Meditation may help brain tune out distractions
  People who meditate may be able to use their brain in ways others can't to tune out distractions and focus on the task at hand.
• Yoga in school showing results, officials say
  Erica Hill reports on a school in Calif. that has incorporated yoga into its daily curriculum and since it started, suspensions are down 60 percent and test scores have risen.
• Yoga may help feet, ease migraine
  Yoga practice is a good way to keep your feet strong and flexible, and is also endorsed as a possible treatment for migraine.
• Veterans learn to use yoga and meditation exercises to reconnect with their emotions
  A pilot study involved learning a yoga breathing techniqueinvolving cyclical breathing patterns, along with mindfulness meditation. The treatment holds promise for PTSD symptoms.
• Docs rope in on yoga experts to treat neurological disorders
  With huge treatment gap for a increasing cases of mental and neurological disorders in the country, health experts are pitching in for traditional yoga to help the mentally ill patients to cope through their situation.
• Yoga Prevents Bullying in School
  Exposure to Yoga curriculum in school results in students’ self-reported decrease by 60% in their own bulling behavior and a 42% decrease in regard to being bullied by others at school.
• Lesson No. 1: Learn to relax - Emory freshmen focus on cutting stress, staying well
  Emory University freshmen are learning how yoga could reduce their stress — a crucial lesson as they embark on their first college midterms all while adjusting to living on their own.
• 8-week yoga intervention associated with improvements in pain, psychological functioning and mindfulness, and changes in cortisol levels in women with fibromyalgia
  The results suggest that a yoga intervention may reduce pain and catastrophizing, increase acceptance and mindfulness, and alter total cortisol levels in women with fibromyalgia. The changes in mindfulness and cortisol levels may provide preliminary evidence for mechanisms of a yoga program for women with fibromyalgia.
• Harvard Medical School Suggests Yoga May Benefit Heart Disease
  A recent article from Harvard Health Publications online talks about yoga as being a useful alternative therapy to coping with cardiovascular disease, as well as other age-related diseases. For people seeking such yoga therapy, be sure to look for a class offering yoga, breathwork, and meditation from a teacher that holds a safe space for students and helps them modify poses to meet their abilities and limitations.
• Meditation and the Brain
  An eight-week study found that meditation can affect regions of the brain that are associated with sense of self, empathy, muscle control, stress and memory. 
• How Meditation May Change the Brain
  M.R.I. brain scans taken before and after meditation found increased gray matter in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory... and a reduction of gray matter in the amygdala, a region connected to anxiety and stress.
  
• Yoga better than walking for mood, study confirms
  Those who practice yoga probably already know this, but a new study shows that yoga improves mood -- even more than walking.
• Yoga Enhances Mood, Relieves Anxiety
  A new research study suggests the performance of yoga provides specific benefits for improving mood and reducing anxiety.
• Can Yoga Help Kids And Teens Learn?
  A growing body of evidence suggsts that Yoga-based programs in schools can aid students by cultivating the qualities associated with successful learning.
• Yoga Reduces Inflammatory & Endocrine Responses To Stress
  Pioneer guided imagery researchers from Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus, Ohio, examined whether the practice of hatha yoga can reduce stress responses
• Yoga keeps seniors who use wheelchairs fit
  A yoga class at the College Harbor Retirement Center in St. Petersburg is helping keep seniors who use wheelchairs fit and healthy.
• Effects of mindful yoga on sleep in pregnant women
  Experimental pilot study to measure the effects of a mindfulness-based yoga intervention on sleep in pregnant women.
  
• Yoga Practice Helps Sleep Quality Among Assisted Living Residents
  A new study shows that yoga exercise improved overall sleep quality, whereas depression, sleep disturbances, and daytime dysfunction decreased significantly.
• Gentle yoga may aid migraine sufferers
  A combination of yoga poses, breathing exercises and relaxation may help reduce the frequency and intensity of migraines, a new study suggests.
• Yoga can relieve trauma
  A week of yoga can reduce feelings of sadness and possibly prevent an increase in anxiety level after calamity.
• Yoga is for Every-Body: Join the path to Health and Happiness
  Yoga is generally celebrated for its ability to increase flexibility while strengthening, relaxing and toning the body, but one teacher is also keen to emphasise its importance for mental wellbeing.
• Yoga holds out a dose of hope for cancer-afflicted
  In the absence of effective counselling for those suffering from diseases like cancer, Aids and tuberculosis, researchers have now come out with a proven alternative way to tackle the shock from diagnosis and trauma of toxic treatment.
• India inmates take yoga to reduce their jail sentences
  Prisoners in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh are being freed early if they complete yoga courses.
• Yoga helps Rwandans with depression
  Project Air has helped over a thousand people in its first year.
• Yoga helps our respiratory system
  A regular yoga practice will give you the time to be more aware of breathing and to actually spend time breathing deeper than you might in normal everyday activity.
• Using Yoga for Diabetes
  Yoga is ideal for treating type 1 and type 2 diabetes. While many older folks may think yoga is for new-age hippies, a list of yoga’s benefits for diabetics often changes their minds.
• Can yoga and meditation prevent high blood pressure?
  Researchers at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre want to study if yoga, combined with meditation, can help lower blood pressure and prevent the onset of hypertension.
• How ancient yoga practice can improve your health
  Research shows that the relaxation response triggered through meditation can lower blood pressure and heart rate. The deepening of the breath calms the body.
• Yoga 'cuts inflammation'
  Incorporating yoga sessions in your daily routine could lower a number of compounds in the blood and reduce the level of inflammation that normally rises because of both normal aging and stress, revealed a new study.
• Finding a Better 'Position' to Deal With Disease
  At major cancer centers across the country, patients are putting themselves in a better 'position' to cope with their cancer. Some of the biggest names in cancer care -- M.D. Anderson, Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, among them -- now offer their patients classes in yoga.
• Yoga Benefits Cancer Patients
  Some of the major cancer centers across the country now offer their patients yoga as a complementary therapy in an effort to provide a more integrative approach to care. In addition, some physician-directed programs educate patients in yoga techniques.
• Yoga as a practice tool
  Studies show that practicing yoga can improve overall physical fitness, strength, flexibility and lung capacity, while reducing heart rate, blood pressure and back pain.