Can Yoga Boost Access to the Bodily and Emotional Self? Changes in Heart Rate Variability and in Affective Evaluation Before, During and After a Single Session of Yoga Exercise With and Without Instructions of Controlled Breathing and Mindful Body Awareness in Young Healthy Women

Abstract

Exercise is indispensable for a healthy lifestyle. Yoga exercise can have positive effects on well-being and on cardiac autonomic activity making it an ideal intervention for improving mind-body interactions and resilience to physical and mental stressors. Emotions trigger especially strong bodily and affective-cognitive responses because of their social relevance for the self and their biological relevance of mobilizing the organism for action. This study investigates whether changes in emotion processing related to self-other referential processing and changes in cardiac autonomic activity, reflected by heart rate variability (HRV), occur immediately after already a single session of yoga exercise when yoga postures are practiced with or without breathing- and mindful body awareness instructions. Women, all university students (N = 34, final sample: n = 30, n = 25 naïve to yoga practice) were randomly assigned to two experimental groups who performed the same yoga exercises with or without controlled breathing and mindfulness instructions. Emotional, self-other referential processing, awareness of bodily signals and HRV indicators were investigated before and after the exercise using standardized experimental tasks, standardized questionnaires, and mobile recording devices. Exercising for 30 minutes changed cardiac activity significantly. HRV measures showed adaptability of cardiac activity during the exercise as well as during the affective task post- to pre-exercise. Exercising with breathing instructions and mindful body awareness had no superior effects on cardiac, particularly parasympathetic activity, compared to practicing the same movements without such explicit instructions. Self-referential processing did not change; however, participants were faster and more accurate in their affective judgments of emotional stimuli [regardless of their reference (self/other)], and showed better awareness of bodily signals after compared to before the exercise session. The results support immediate, adaptive effects of yoga exercise on cardiac and affective-cognitive processing in an all-female healthy sample. Therefore, yoga exercise could be recommended as a physical activity for boosting cardiac and emotional resilience in this target group.

Brief mindful yoga intervention fails to prevent depression-related outcomes after a dysphoric affect induction

“…These findings suggest that our interventions may have been more similar than we intended them to be. This is in line with one other study comparing a short (30-minute) intervention of yoga postures with breathing techniques and mindfulness instructions to yoga postures without breathing techniques and mindfulness instructions (Herbert, 2021). Similar to our results, Herbert (2021) found no difference between the two groups on affect ratings and awareness of bodily signals.…”

Enhancing Mental Health, Well-Being and Active Lifestyles of University Students by Means of Physical Activity and Exercise Research Programs

“…Interestingly, four sessions of 22 min of ergometer exercises [cycling at moderate intensity, see ( 62 )] carried out with different attentional focus (internal vs. external) at moderate intensity seem not to have differential effects on cardiovascular activity during the exercise compared to a control condition (no cycling) in a sample of healthy women, however, the self-reported attentional focus during exercise seems to influence both, the degree of exertion from the exercise and the correlations with measures of cardiac activity [see Table 4 in ( 62 )]. In contrast to the cycling exercise used in study 4, the results of study 5 ( 64 ) found significant effects on indicators of well-being after a single session of mind-body exercise (yoga). In study 5, women (all university students) performed yoga exercises either with (exercise group 1) or without controlled breathing and mindfulness instructions (exercise group 2) for 30 min.…”

“…Thirty-five percentage of the university students reported to spend between 15 and 25 h/week at the university and akin to the participants of the study 1 and study 2, the participants of the study 3 reported to be physically active only about 62.86–137.96 min/day and 15% in total did not reach the WHO recommendations. Seventy-four percentage of the all-female sample of study 5 ( 64 ) reported to spend at least once a week in regular exercise activities such as jogging, swimming, cycling, dancing, team sports, martial arts, strength training, balance, or gymnastics.…”

“…In addition, even one session comprising a mix of low intensity exercise executed for 5–10 min on 1 day per week might motivate university students to adhere to an active lifestyle with participants taking part in this intervention showing higher overall physical activity and less sedentary behavior at the end of the intervention compared to the participants who engaged in a cognitive intervention of positive writing over the period of a semester [study 3, ( 61 )]. Moreover, the results of study 5 ( 64 ) investigating acute bouts of mind-body exercise (yoga) are particularly promising because they support immediate adaptive effects of low intensity exercise (yoga exercise) on both, physical and psychological health parameters. Although effects of additional exercise sessions were not investigated, the results of this experimentally controlled study demonstrate that mind-body exercise of low intensity such as yoga can not only be recommended as an exercise for mental and physical health prevention in the elderly or in certain vulnerable target groups but be recommended among university students as well.…”

“…The laboratory study 5 ( 64 ) used yoga exercises with and without controlled breathing and mindfulness instructions as mind-body exercise intervention and investigated the effects of the exercise after a single exercise session (see Figure 4 ). Moreover, akin to study 2, the laboratory study 4 and the laboratory study 5 included detailed psychophysiological assessment of cardiovascular improvements pre- to post intervention and a set of experimental tasks allowing first answers to the question of the role psychophysiological interactions play in the improvement of cognitive-affective processing, and body awareness after single sessions of low to moderate intensity exercise.…”