From an ABC news article (cited below): Medical studies show the poses, along with meditation and specific yoga breathing techniques, reduce stress responses, which significantly influences health.
“There are specific areas of the brain that have been shown to change with advanced yoga and meditation practitioners. These areas of the brain are those areas that deal with the control or the ability to self-regulate emotion, the ability to maintain attention,” said Harvard Medical School assistant professor of medicine Sat Bir Khalsa. “And so if you put these practitioners in the brain scanner, you can see that these areas of the brain light up more than other areas of the brain.”
