The psychological benefits of yoga practice

Abstract

Interest in yoga as an intervention to support mental health is growing. Understanding how yoga yields psychological benefit and for whom is needed to position it as a treatment for mental health. Currently, little is known about the psychological mechanisms of change through which yoga improves psychological wellbeing. This is in part due to a lack of mediational research and the heterogeneity and poor reporting of interventions within existing yoga research.

Chapter 1 presents a systematic review and narrative synthesis exploring mediation studies investigating potential mechanisms of change for yoga. 16 studies were included in the analysis and assessed for quality of methodology and mediation. Evidence was found to suggest mindfulness, self-compassion and interoception mediated the relationship between practising yoga and both mental health and wellbeing. Further high-quality research is needed. Limitations include the heterogenous nature of yoga research and the inclusion of poor quality and cross-sectional mediation studies.. Further research is needed to draw clinical implications, however tentative conclusions suggest that yoga could share transdiagnostic mechanisms of change with third wave therapies. It is suggested that future studies looking at mediators of yoga and psychological benefit should include randomised longitudinal design which is designed well to assess mediation. Studies would benefit from looking at the eight limbs of yoga and clearly conceptualising psychological outcomes.

Chapter 2 presents a quantitative study exploring the difference between yoga practisers and non-yoga practisers on measures of psychological wellbeing, psychological flexibility, and psychological inflexibility. The study looked at whether components of yoga (the eight limbs) were related to or predicted wellbeing, flexibility, and inflexibility. The study recruited 463 participants (227 yoga practisers and 236 non-yoga practisers) who completed an online cross-sectional survey. Results showed yoga practisers had significantly higher levels of wellbeing and psychological flexibility, and lower levels of psychological inflexibility. All eight limbs of yoga correlated with wellbeing, flexibility, and inflexibility. Most of the individual yamas and niyamas correlated with wellbeing, flexibility, and inflexibility, except for isvara pranidhana for wellbeing and isvara pranidhana, savadhaya and saucha for inflexibility. Each of the eight limbs predicted wellbeing, flexibility, and inflexibility. Ahimsa significantly predicted psychological flexibility. While, satya significantly predicted psychological inflexibility. Limitations include the cross-sectional design and use of author design measure which is yet to be validated. While conclusions are tentative, a potential clinical implication is that yoga which focused on ahimsa and satya could influence psychological flexibility and inflexibility. Further research would benefit from well designed intervention studies which considers whether the eight limbs mediates psychological outcomes.

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ORCID for Alison Bennetts: orcid.org/0000-0003-2461-7868

ORCID for Alison Bennetts: orcid.org/0000-0003-2461-7868

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