Your Nervous System and Yoga: A Path to Balance and Healing
How Ancient Practices Affect Your Modern Neurobiology
When the ancient yogis developed practices to calm the mind and energize the body, they didn't have MRI machines or knowledge of neurotransmitters. Yet somehow, they created a sophisticated system that modern science now confirms directly influences our nervous system in profound and healing ways.
Understanding this relationship between yoga and your nervous system not only validates these ancient practices but also helps you practice with greater intention and effectiveness.
Understanding Your Nervous System: A Yogi's Perspective
Your autonomic nervous system—the part that functions without conscious control—has two main branches that yoga works with directly:
The Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS): Often called "fight-or-flight," this system activates when we're stressed, threatened, or need quick energy. It increases heart rate, blood pressure, and stress hormones while diverting blood away from digestive and reproductive functions.
The Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS): Known as "rest-and-digest," this system promotes relaxation, healing, and restoration. It slows heart rate, lowers blood pressure, and enhances digestion and reproductive functions.
In our modern world, many of us live with chronically activated sympathetic systems—our bodies responding to emails, deadlines, and traffic as if they were life-threatening emergencies. This chronic stress takes a devastating toll on physical and mental health.
How Yoga Practices Influence Your Nervous System
Different yoga practices affect your nervous system in specific ways:
Practices that balance an overactive sympathetic system:
Slow, deep breathing (pranayama) activates the vagus nerve—the main component of the parasympathetic system—inducing a relaxation response throughout the body. Research shows that extending your exhale longer than your inhale particularly strengthens parasympathetic response.
Forward folds and gentle inversions create a physiological shift toward parasympathetic dominance, lowering blood pressure and heart rate while calming the mind.
Meditation and yoga nidra reduce stress hormones like cortisol while increasing feel-good neurotransmitters like GABA, directly countering the biochemistry of chronic stress.
Practices that strengthen a weak sympathetic response:
Dynamic practices like sun salutations can appropriately activate the sympathetic system, building capacity for healthy stress response and resilience.
Breath practices like kapalabhati temporarily activate sympathetic arousal in a controlled way, teaching the nervous system to move between states with greater ease.
Cold exposure (a practice found in traditional yoga) stimulates the sympathetic system in measured doses, improving its responsiveness.
The Yoga of Nervous System Regulation
The most powerful aspect of yoga for nervous system health isn't just about activating one branch or the other—it's about developing the capacity to move skillfully between them. This is what neuroscientists now call "autonomic flexibility" and what yogis might have called balanced prana.
In practice, this looks like:
Developing awareness of your nervous system state (Is your jaw tight? Breathing shallow? These are sympathetic indicators)
Learning which practices help you shift states when needed
Building capacity to rest deeply in parasympathetic states
Cultivating resilience in your stress response system
Putting It Into Practice
Next time you come to your mat, consider what your nervous system needs:
If you're feeling wired, anxious, or overwhelmed—prioritize slow breathing, gentle forward folds, and longer holds that activate your parasympathetic system.
If you're feeling sluggish, depressed, or immobilized—incorporate more dynamic movement, stronger backbends, and energizing breath practices to appropriately engage your sympathetic system.
End all practices with sufficient time in parasympathetic-dominant poses like supported heart openers or savasana to integrate the practice.
By approaching yoga with this understanding, you transform it from mere physical exercise into a sophisticated tool for nervous system regulation—exactly as the ancient yogis intended. Your practice becomes a conversation with your neurobiology, a path to balance that extends far beyond the mat into every aspect of your life.
