How Might Yoga Help Depression? A Neurobiological Perspective

Abstract

Depression is a prevalent mental health condition worldwide and is the leading cause of disability in adults under the age of 45. Most individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) report only a 50% decrease in symptoms with the use of the standard allopathic treatments for depression. The mechanisms underlying depression remain poorly understood even though stress and its correlates contribute to multiple aspects of the phenomenology of depression. Thus, stress and depression are clearly linked, as stress may precipitate or exacerbate depressive symptoms and depression may be a cause and/or outcome of acute or chronic stress. Therefore, use of additional therapeutic approaches to address stress and depression, such as complementary therapies including yoga, may contribute importantly to symptom reduction. Based on an emerging picture of how stress and mood are regulated within the nervous system, and considering the Executive Homeostatic Network concept that we have recently advanced, we provide an integrative overview of biological mechanisms and substrates that may mediate depression, which should be targets for research to evaluate how the practice of yoga can mitigate depressive symptomatology.

Neurobiology and the Changing Face of Eating Disorder Treatment: Healing the Eating Disordered Brain

“…Trauma-informed yoga has been shown to mitigate stress responses via both botom-up (accessing the primitive brain and emotions) and top-down (psychological reappraisal) methods. Top-down cortically mediated techniques can be harnessed to observe and facilitate sensorimotor processing [56]. Controlled studies have demonstrated that certain "yoga practices decrease symptoms in PTSD, obsessive compulsive disorders, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and anxiety after natural disasters…reducing the stress-induced allostatic load in the autonomic nervous system," [57] It has also been reported that in yoga practitioners, brain volume is larger in areas that: contain a mental map of the body, direct atention, control vision, reduce stress, and deine the concept of self [58].…”

Developing a Small Theory of Treatment of Yoga

“…examined the mechanism of action of yoga [7,[11][12][13] have come very close to articulating the missing causal pathway. However, neither ancient literature nor modern scholarship has explicitly identified the foundational premise, leaving scope for general misinterpretation.…”

“…Kinser et al expound neurobiological mechanisms of yoga. Their model elaborates on various neurobiological substrates or circuits in order to explain how yoga works [12]. Similarly, Streeter et al base their theory on neurophysiology and suggest that yoga reduces allostatic load in the stress response system [18].…”

Yoga for Chronic Depressive Symptoms in Pregnancy: A Commentary and Call to Action

“…However, individuals with depressive symptoms have reduced self-regulation and self-efficacy related to PA and report great difficulty following-through with PA behaviors [47,48]. Negative perseverative self-talk (ruminations), a hallmark symptom of depression in women, can lead to further Yoga for depression in pregnancy 5 reductions in PA and reinforce already low levels [49,50]. This is problematic because a depression-related sedentary lifestyle during pregnancy is associated with continued depressive symptoms, risk for poor pregnancy outcomes, and additional chronic illness [51].…”

“…Finally, yoga provides an opportunity to be mindful of symptoms and adapt the practice according to those symptoms; for example, specific gentle breathing practices and movements may be advisable when one is experiencing predominantly depressive symptoms (e.g., lethargy, anhedonia) and others are more appropriate when anxious symptoms are predominant (e.g., ruminations) [50,56,70].…”