Yoga Bliss & Brain Waves

 

Are you jumpy and anxious? That’s because your brain is spiking with high beta waves (18-40 Hz). Are you engaged, energized, and focused? That’s because your brain is spiking with mid-range beta brain waves (15HZ to 18HZ), present during waking and driven by dopamine. Are you relaxed and meditative? That’s because your brain is spiking with alpha brain waves (8Hz to 12Hz).

Brain waves are electrical flows that pass between the cranial nerves. Change your brain waves, change your mental state.

Yoga will do this for you.

Change in Brain Waves During Yoga Practice

As you move through asanas, mid-range beta brain waves give you the mental focus and alertness needed for movement.

These mid-range brain waves combine with the slower, relaxing, alpha brain waves, the state between awake and asleep. Needed for sensory perception, alpha brain waves enable us to pay attention to certain sensations and ignore others. When you focus on shifting your body in Warrior III to staying balanced on one leg while tuning out the horn honking outside, your brain is alight with alpha waves.

The result of the combined beta and alpha brain waves is feeling both energized and calm. If this doesn’t happen and you remain wired during practice, blame it on an excess of very fast beta waves, drowning out the slower alpha waves. If you remain sluggish during practice, beta brain wave activity is too low (12-15 HZ).

Yoga and Meditative Brain Waves

During meditation at the end of class, alpha combines with the slower, meditative theta brain waves (4Hz to 7Hz), the brain waves we experience in the state of sleep, dreams and REM (Rapid Eye Movement). You know theta waves are present when all thought ceases, you’re barely aware of your body and the last time you took a breath, and a sublime peace descends upon you.

To awaken out of this euphoria and back to reality, the teacher will say, “Slowly return your body by wiggling fingers and slowly stretch arms and legs. Slowly turn your body to the right. Slowly make your way to Easy Pose.”

In Easy Pose, you sit, eyes closed, still deep under.

Only after inspiring words from the teacher and “Namaste” (Hindu for ‘I bow to the divine in you’) do you open your eyes and slowly move your body to shift brain waves from alpha to beta, awakening you. Now alert, you roll up your mat, give sisterly hugs, laugh, and chatter in a love fest as, blissed-out, you saunter out the door.

Scientific studies support changes in brain waves during yoga practice. One study published in 2015 in Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice by Desai and colleagues examined and reviewed fifteen articles on the effects of yoga on brain waves and structural changes and activation. It concluded that breathing, meditation, and posture-based yoga increased overall brain wave activity.

Excerpted from Yoga Bliss, How Sensory Input in Yoga Calms and Organizes the Nervous System. 

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