Why should you care about the benefits of Yoga for mental health? Because Yoga for mental health is not a choice anymore. Looking at the state of mental health globally, I see it more as a necessity.
Here are some numbers for context:
- In 2019, 1 in 8 people or 970 million people globally were living with a mental disorder. As per WHO, these numbers have gone significantly higher after COVID-19.
- 1 in 5 adults in America experiences mental illness each year – breaking the myth that financial prosperity ensures mental health.
- Suicide is the second leading cause of death among Americans aged 10-14 & 25-34. Appalling, isn’t it?
- As per the 2024 Gallup State of the Global Workplace report examining the current state of employee mental health and wellbeing at the global level, 86% of Indian employees are ‘struggling or suffering’, against a global average of 34%.
You get the drift. Whether you are a teenager, full of youth, in a high-paying job, or living in the most economically abundant society in the world, mental illness is a high possibility.
We must be doing something really wrong to land us in such a sorry state of affairs and must take action to correct it now!
While other forms of medicine and treatment for mental health are intrusive on a scale of a little intrusive’ to ‘how is it even allowed’, Yoga for mental health is 100% non-intrusive. What is amazing is that even though it is absolutely non-intrusive, no other form of treatment even comes closer to the mental health benefits Yoga can provide.
And that is simply because the goal of Yoga is to touch something beyond the physical and mental dimensions. In a bid to awaken that inner bliss, the practice of Yoga has the most profound effects on your mental and physical health.
Let us look at some of those benefits no one ever discusses!
Benefits of Yoga for mental health
#1. Yoga makes your mind come alive
This may be one of the most powerful impacts of Yoga on your mind – it will come alive.
We talked about making conscious choices – once you start living your life consciously, it is not the same.
Conscious decisions take you out of the herd humanity has become and start your journey on a different level. This is because when you make a conscious choice for a consistent amount of time, it can literally rewire your brain and change the way it works – it is called neuroplasticity.
Image source: Driven Resilience App
For example, you are a compulsive eater but as a Yoga practitioner, you start making conscious choices – eating healthy food, twice a day, saying no to cruelty in your food. Over a period of time, your brain will re-circuit and the compulsive eating pattern will be gone from your brain.
Better than any rehab, right?
#2. Yoga unburdens your mind
Even if you are a beginner, you must have experienced surrender during Yoga.
Remember trying to go into a sitting forward bend, trying your best, stretching and stretching, but then giving up and accepting the status quo?
You may do a headstand forcibly, or even a handstand with some support, but you cannot go into a forward bend forcibly. It takes its own sweet time while the body and mind become flexible enough. So, you have to surrender.
This feeling of surrender must not be construed as a negative feeling or a feeling of helplessness. It is just a happy acceptance of the fact that everything is not in our control. And thank God it isn’t because we are still trying to figure out how to make a wholesome life out of the things that are in our control.
Surrendering to a bigger reality, whatever you name it – God, sitting forward bend, or the fact that you are not in a perfect relationship (no one is), is crucial to freeing our minds.
Unless we learn to be happy and content, no matter what, we are bound to make ourselves miserable, anxious, depressed, a total nut case sometimes!
And as you keep on climbing the ladders of Yoga and spirituality, you start realizing not just freeing but how beautiful this surrender is. Your focus slowly starts shifting from ‘Me and mine’ to ‘Everybody and everything’.
#3. Yoga increases your willpower
Every time you raise your hand in the Tree Pose and mentally dig your roots down into the earth with your feet firm, you are making a conscious choice. You make multiple conscious choices whenever you practice asanas, pranayama, or meditation – using your willpower strongly.
And when you consciously tell your mind you want to do something and continue the effort in that direction, you strengthen your willpower or the power of determining. It means that over time you develop:
- Self-disciplined
- Good habits
- Strength to not give in to old habit patterns
Even in the wildest of dreams, I couldn’t imagine getting up before sunrise for my practice. But I can do it today, thanks to making conscious choices, every day over a period of time.
#4. Yoga balances your mind
Yogic sciences aim to take care of human issues in their entirety. That is why all Yoga tools and techniques are built not just around the body we see, but 4 more bodies that we cannot –
- The energy body
- The mental body
- The intellectual body, and
- The bliss body
A backbend and a forward bend, for instance, affect all the four aspects given above, plus the body. Through the mental body, a backbend makes your mind more resilient, a forward bend makes it more open and gentle, and so on and so forth.
Om chanting, one of the most powerful yogic techniques of balancing the mind works through sound touching the subtler aspects of who we are.
Even from an Ayurvedic perspective, Yoga techniques balance an individual’s essential nature – what is called Prakriti in Ayurveda. To understand its balancing effects, some simple examples are:
- Those who struggle with focus will become more focused (I have!)
- Those who are lazy will start becoming active, and (I have)
- Those who simply need to calm down will start to calm down (Also, I have)
So, your mind will attain balance as per the condition it is in.
#5. Yoga trains your mind to be single-pointed
If you have ever attended a Yoga class, you know how important it is to keep your attention on the breath. The teacher will repeatedly guide your focus there while doing Asanas and also during other practices.
One of the main reasons to do this is to train the mind to be one-pointed. Other benefits include calming the mind, distracting the mind from the physical effort and channeling it towards opening the body, and much more.
Maintaining constant awareness is one of the key tools in Yoga to train the mind. Normally it is done with the breath, but also with a sound or your moment-to-moment awareness, the entire discipline of Yoga is telling you to do one thing at a time.
On a spiritual level, single-pointedness takes you to self-realization. And on a mental level, it makes you alert and involved – keeping all worries at bay and letting you thrive in whatever you do – one thing at a time.
For me, the practice of single-pointedness has transformed my entire personality, from an ever-wandering mind to a calm and stable one. I still cannot believe it!
#6. Yoga makes you mentally fit to deal with everyone
Yoga propagates the knowledge of unity in diversity not as a politically correct statement, but as a matter of fact. Yoga said thousands of years ago what science is saying today – the whole of the Universe is nothing but energy, expressing itself in different forms.
We all are one eventually – not just human beings, but all animate and inanimate life.
The knowledge of the 7 chakras that is part of the Yogic science, also tells you how each of us is essentially one, only making different choices because of the predominance of different chakras.
Once you know this and start keeping these things in your conscious awareness, you start being more understanding towards others. You become more tolerant, more giving, and less bitter even when people aren’t fair to you.
You can still say no, be angry, and express yourself honestly but you do that without any malice or hurt in your heart. You do it with the understanding that the person in front of you is just on a different page than you are.
#7. Yoga makes you mentally strong to go through any situation in life
Having a free, balanced, and focused mind means you are more capable of handling social situations and even thrive in them.
Being sociable in turn improves your chances of having stable and supportive relationships enabling you to make healthy choices. Healthy choices lead to better mental and physical health, and in turn make you capable of coping better with hard times, stress, anxiety, and depression.
I have made deeper and more long-lasting friendships with my co-learners in Yoga TTCs than in my entire lifetime. And that is because when people are connected through pure intentions and spiritual learning, they are bound to give their best and be more accepting of each other.
But even if the whole world is against you, or you need to take an unpopular stand, Yoga gives you enough mental power to do that. An advanced practitioner of Yoga who knows the power of Karma (action), Bhakti (surrender), and Gyana (knowledge) looks at life as it is.
He has the power to do what is needed with an equanimous mind and leave the result to the Universal force. It takes a lot of practice and life to come to this stage, but I hope you arrive here sooner than expected!
Conclusion
Mental illness has become the plague of our times, despite such technical and medical advancements.
It is time we change our viewpoint and look at it from a different angle.
Rather than focusing on correcting the outside, we need to look inside deeply and engage in techniques like Yoga to find our fountain of bliss within.
Get up and join a Yoga class today or deepen your practice if you are already into Yoga.
Between the Lotus offers a course in Yognidra and meditation to give you a head start in this direction.
Note: If you are taking any kind of medication for your mental illness, please do not stop it without consulting with your Doctor.