Your Brain on Yoga

The Alzheimer’s Society of Canada predicts that by 2030, nearly 1 million people will be living with dementia.  You might be thinking, “Well, not me.”  And I wish that for you.

However, a proactive approach would be to adopt some daily habits that reduce the chances of developing it.  There are Yoga techniques that have been proven to: *

• improve sleep
• increase our wellbeing
• enhance mood with less anxiety and depression
• reverse memory loss
• enhance executive function (mental skills that enable us to plan, focus attention, juggle multiple tasks)
• improve memory in those with mild cognitive impairment, and early Alzheimer’s Disease

* from the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation

How do I know that Yoga works to help the brain?

A few years ago, I started to notice some changes, like nouns disappearing when I was in the middle of a sentence.  If you’re over 60, you might be familiar with this phenomenon.  Then I started noticing issues with short-term memory, and my ability to retain information for more than a second or two.  This retention ability was decreasing, and I found that alarming.

I increased my cardio-vascular exercise, added a B-12 supplement after hearing that 40% of people with dementia are deficient in B-12, and recently I eliminated sugar from my diet.  (It wasn’t that hard, because of the delicious replacements that I found.)  I started taking  a mushroom supplement. The nouns came back, but the short-term memory problems persisted.

Then I started a specific Yoga movement/breathing technique called Kirtan Kriya. After practicing this 12-minute meditation for 10 consecutive days, there was a noticeable improvement in my ability to retain a list of information, long enough to transfer it by hand from one paper to another.
I was thrilled!

I’m so impressed with this technique that I’ve decided to offer a series of Chair Yoga classes in April:  Your Brain on Yoga, to help people create positive changes in their brain.  These classes will have various Yoga breathing practices, hand positions, and the special technique that has dramatically improved some of my brain functions.