Can Yoga and meditation increase size of your brain ?

Dr Dharma Singh Khalsa is the founding President and Medical Director of  Alzheimer's Research and Prevention Foundation (ARPF). His team performed  years of scientific research on a group of  people who performed singing Yoga meditation that they call Kirtan Kriya. His team’s studies utilized recognized methods to measure aspects of brain health and specialized scans such as SPECT and fMRI, as well as sophisticated memory and blood tests, to determine the results. He presented a summary of his research at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Boston.

Interestingly, he summarized the outcome of his research and the benefits of performing singing yoga mediation into three categories: mind, body, and spirit.

A. Positive influences on Mind:

1. Improved Memory: People with memory loss improved on important memory tests after practicing singing yoga mediation. 

2. Increased Healthy Brain Size: Compared to beginners, long-term meditators have a larger and healthier looking brain.

3. Reduced Stress: Studies show cognitive decline caused by both acute and chronic stress secondary to the hormone cortisol's brain cell-killing effect in the memory center of your brain, the hippocampus. Meditation reduces stress and lowers cortisol levels and, as seen above, can help reverse memory loss.

4. Enhanced Brain Blood Flow (also called cerebral blood flow or CBF): Patients with cognitive decline and stressed caregivers had increased CBF in critically important areas of their brain, including those well known to influence attention, concentration, focus, memory (hippocampus), depression, trauma and resiliency.

5. Improved Brain Chemistry: It is well known that people who have a decrease in brain energy and function have a reduction in certain brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. Practicing singing yoga mediation helps to increase neurotransmitters in a more natural way and improve communication between brain cells, thus enhancing brain and memory function.

B. Positive influences on Body:

6. Increased telomerase: Telomerase is the enzyme that controls the length of your telomeres, the cap of your DNA. Longer telomeres equal better health. Shorter telomeres equal Alzheimer's disease and accelerated aging and a shortened life. An increase of 44 percent in telomerase was shown in our study on highly stressed caregivers practicing singing yoga mediation for 12 minutes a day for eight weeks. This is the largest increase in telomerase ever seen.

7. Decrease in bad genes: 39 stressed caregivers utilizing singing yoga mediation for 12 weeks had what is known as down regulation of inflammatory genes, which signifies a reduction in the activity of the genes that cause inflammation. This is important because inflammation is a hallmark of many illnesses, including Alzheimer's.

8. Improvement of good genes including those that boost your immune system.

9. Improved Sleep: Sleep is critically important for optimal brain and body health. Disrupted sleep is a risk factor for Alzheimer's. Practicing  singing yoga mediation helps to improve sleep.

C. Positive impacts on Spirit:

10. Less depression: 65 percent of subjects showed improvement on Depression Scales. Depression may be a risk factor for cognitive decline.

11. Clarity of Purpose: Meditators discover clarity of purpose and other aspects of psychological well-being such as acceptance, personal growth, and positive relationships. This has been shown to improve overall health and lower Alzheimer's risk.

12. Spiritual Well-Being: Practicing singing yoga mediation creates peace of mind and spiritual well-being, which is something we all can use more of in today's incredibly hectic and fast paced world.

I thought I will share this info on my blog for more scientific oriented seekers. To read more about this topic, you can click here.