Yoga benefits for PTSD

Yoga directly addresses the fight-or-flight response, which is at the heart of PTSD. The fight-or-flight response is a reaction that prepares the body to fight or flee from perceived threat. Because yoga deals directly with the mind-body connection, it helps veterans retrain the fight-or-flight response. Now, when they confront a situation that triggers their memories, instead of resorting to aggression or drowning in fear, they have other options: deep breathing, for example, as a means to self-calm. Other benefits include:

• The release of emotional issues.
• Help towards relaxing and strengthening the body.
• Unfreezing bad memories and creating new bodily memories.
• Giving feelings of joy and personal empowerment.
• The mind becomes more clear and open.
• It produces acceptance of the self.
• Life feels better balanced.
• It allows one to safely express stored emotions such as guilt, shame, anger, sadness and grief so those feelings can be understood and integrated.
• A regular yoga practice helps alleviate symptoms of PTSD including anger, anxiety, depression, guilt and paranoia.

more information and photo found here.

Changing the Brain's Stressful Habits

source: Psychology Today

written by: Alex Korb, PhD. 

As a neuroscientist, despite my initial incredulity, I came to realize that yoga works not because the poses are relaxing, but because they are stressful.  It is your attempts to remain calm during this stress that create yoga's greatest neurobiological benefit.

Your brain tends to react to discomfort and disorientation in an automatic way, by triggering the physiological stress response and activating anxious neural chatter between the prefrontal cortex and the more emotional limbic system.  The stress response itself increases the likelihood of anxious thoughts, like "Oh god, I'm going to pull something," or "I can't hold this pushup any longer".  And in fact, your anxious thoughts themselves further exacerbate the stress response. 

Interestingly, despite all the types of stressful situations a person can be in (standing on your head, running away from a lion, finishing those TPS reports by 5 o'clock) the nervous system has just one stress response.  The specific thoughts you have may differ, but the brain regions involved, and the physiological response will be the same.  The physiological stress response means an increase in heart rate, breathing rate, muscle tension and elevation of cortisol and other stress hormones.

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