This post is written by Branches teacher Alissa Firth-Eagland. She is passionate about spreading awareness around brain injury, and helping those who have suffered one continue to grow. Alissa can also be found teaching drop-in classes at the Branches, and in our new series, Be Nice to Your Neck & Noggin. You can learn more about her approach on her website.
Yoga helps your brain function at its best: as a networked system.
Each time you step on the mat, slow down intentionally, or sit with mindfulness, you strengthen your brain to its best advantage. As a holistic set of practices, many aspects of yoga (such as mindfulness, gentle movement, and attention to the breath) lend themselves particularly well to supporting the healing and growth of your brain. No matter what is going on with it – whether you are hoping to bolster concussion recovery or calm agitated nerves – yoga is brain medicine.
More good news: any accessible movement, breath work, or meditation is adaptable to a range of brain health challenges and situations: concussion, stroke recovery, mental health challenges, dementia, and chronic pain management.
Concussions are common – and don’t always come from hitting your head.
166, 455 Canadians are impacted by brain injury in Canada each year. That’s one person injured every 3 minutes. Among all types of Traumatic Brain Injuries, concussions are the most common, accounting for approximately 80% to 95% of such injuries.
Concussions are those quick jolts to the brain. People get concussions in all sorts of ways: getting hit in the face by a toddler, walking into a door, fainting, getting bonked on the back of the head by a server carrying drinks by their table. A good shake of the skull and neck can do it. So if you are dealing with a concussion, it doesn’t matter how it happened. It matters only how your body responds to it. For the 10 – 30% of people who develop Post Concussion Syndrome (PCS), the injury typically affects every area of their life. Symptoms may persist for days, weeks, months, or even years after the initial jolt. And to complicate matters, they fluctuate over time.
Concussions often result in widespread brain tissue tearing at the cellular level. After a concussion, sheared neurons never entirely reconnect. But your brain is plastic, and always changing in response to input. Your brain finds ways to make new connections and detours: this is the incredible power of brain plasticity. The more you ask of it, the stronger it gets.
Yoga Requests Your Brain’s Plasticity (a Concussion Countermeasure)
Yoga asks your brain for more positive plasticity, and therefore, increased brain power. Here are just two quick examples of how yoga requests your brain’s plasticity – in movement and in stillness:
- learning new things – yoga is a vast, potentially lifelong practice with endless learning opportunities.
- focusing your attention – meditation is scientifically proven to thicken the prefrontal cortex, which is our centre of attention, impulse inhibition, memory, and cognitive flexibility.
Yoga is also an attainable way to access your breath, which can calm the fight or flight response and settle you into the calmer state of the parasympathetic nervous system. Plus, as a physical activity, yoga boosts neurochemicals that promote brain cell repair and increases blood flow to the brain, prompting growth of new blood vessels. It truly is incredible how many aspects of yoga support the brain.
But, by far the most important aspect of yoga as it relates to brain health is how adaptable it is to your individual situation and intention. It is accessible to all kinds of people, bodies, environments, and lived experiences.
Want to practice yoga with post-concussion symptoms? Let’s find a way.
The best style of yoga for you depends on your unique response to your concussion. So if you decide to try yoga to support your brain health, consider your symptom severity, level of dizziness, and how challenging it might be to leave the house and travel to practice. Your symptoms may fluctuate over time, even from minute to minute. Self assessment is the foundation of all self care.
Pro Tip #1: You can ride the wave of sensation and symptoms a little, but be aware of how your body responds to avoid triggering a flare up. As your pain shifts, increases, or decreases, take care to honour that and dial the practice up or down accordingly.
Key aspects to consider as you decide what style of yoga for concussion that you want to try:
- Are you symptomatic right now? If it does not exacerbate your symptoms, sit quietly and breathe through your nose or try some chill moves where you flow slowly and gently from one pose to the next.
- Do you get dizzy easily? If so, you will probably feel worse practicing traditional vinyasa which affects blood pressure. Vinyasa is a popular form of yoga where you flow from one pose to the next including transitions where the head is well below the heart, then quickly brought back up. Rapidly shifting the blood flow from and to the brain can be incredibly disorienting and can cause vertigo or fainting in some people.
- Are you having trouble leaving the house (for any reason)? Try a gentle live class you can do virtually or find a pre-recorded video. This will help you practice without having to drive somewhere, face a group of people, or navigate a new environment while you are recovering.
Pro Tip #2: If you are practicing with a video, choose one where the instruction is so clear and well-paced that you don’t even need to look at the computer screen and can simply rest your eyes and listen. If the audio is low quality or hard to listen to, it is probably not going to have the beneficial effects you hope for.
Remember that whether you have had zero concussions or multiple brain injuries, anytime you practice yoga with presence and intention, you are giving your brain a boost.
Practice with Us
If you’re living with post-brain-injury or the fatigue and tension of overworked eyes and neck, we highly recommend our new series, Be Nice to Your Neck & Noggin featured in Branches On Demand.
The Branches 
Thank you for the very well written article. Alissa. It is obvious that you understand the working of the brain, very well.
Keep up the good work.