By: Emma Kandel

In modern Western society, yoga can often be overlooked as and thought of as primarily as a form of physical exercise that can improve flexibility, build strength, or provide a moment of relaxation. However, yoga encompasses much more than physical postures. Traditional yoga incorporates movement, breath regulation, concentration, meditation, and intentional awareness, bringing together aspects of both physical and mental practice. This broader understanding of yoga raises an interesting question: could a practice that engages both the body and the mind also support the aging brain?

This question sits within a much larger body of research on physical activity and aging. Physical inactivity has been identified as an important risk factor for earlier cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease, but exercise appears to offer some protection against cognitive decline. Importantly, some evidence suggests that becoming physically active later in life may still be beneficial.

Yoga is particularly interesting in this context because it occupies an important space between physical exercise and mind-body practice. Yoga involves movement, strength, flexibility, and balance, but many forms of yoga also incorporate breathing, focused attention, meditation, and a heightened awareness of all senses. Thus, it can be inferred that potentially combining these components might provide benefits that extend beyond physical fitness (Youkhana et al., 2016). Existing research on such topics is promising, but it is also more complicated and nuanced than you might expect.

What is Yoga?

Before considering its effects on aging, it is worth defining what researchers often mean when they study “yoga.” Yoga is often understood in today’s western society as a form of physical exercise, but its origins and scope are much broader. In The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, yoga is described as an eight-limbed system encompassing ethical principles, habits, physical postures (asana), breathing practices (pranayama), withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditation, and enlightenment (Loewenthal et al., 2023). Contemporary yoga practices typically emphasize a smaller subset of these components, particularly physical postures, breathing, relaxation, and meditation, and different schools of yoga can vary drastically in how much emphasis they place on each. 

This is important to consider when interpreting research on yoga: Researchers are rarely studying the entirety of the traditional eight-limbed system mentioned above. Instead, most modern interventions incorporate particular components of yoga, making the term “yoga” somewhat general. As Büssing and colleagues (2012) note, studies have varied considerably in yoga style, intervention duration, frequency, comparison groups, and outcome measures, making it difficult to draw universal conclusions about its effects. Nevertheless, reviews have identified potential benefits across several aspects of mental and physical health, while emphasizing the need for larger and more rigorous trials.

One reason yoga often attracts particular interest among older adults is likely that it combines several forms of physical and cognitive engagement. Physical postures challenge strength, flexibility, balance, coordination, and mobility, while breathing and meditative practices engage attention and psychological regulation. This combination makes yoga different from, and seemingly complementary to, other forms of exercise.

Exercise and Cognitive Aging

The relationship between physical activity and cognitive aging provides an important foundation for understanding why researchers are interested in yoga. Physical inactivity is associated with an increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia (Norton et al., 2014), while exercise has been linked to stronger cognitive function (Ahlskog et al., 2011; Wirth et al., 2014; Prakash et al., 2015). 

Düzel, van Praag, and Sendtner (2016) examined exercise in relation to the hippocampus, a brain region critical for learning and memory. Their review discussed evidence that exercise may influence vascular and metabolic health as well as structural and neurochemical processes involved in hippocampal plasticity. At the same time, they emphasized that it remained unclear whether exercise consistently enhances brain function beyond preserving existing function. The effects of exercise may depend on factors such as intensity and duration, vascular and metabolic health, genetic differences, and the presence of preclinical Alzheimer’s disease pathology. In other words, exercise appears promising for brain health, but the science is more nuanced than simply saying that “exercise makes your brain younger.”

One particularly compelling line of research examines hippocampal volume. The hippocampus tends to shrink during late adulthood, and this reduction is associated with poorer memory. However, this decline may not be entirely inevitable. In a randomized controlled trial, Erickson and colleagues (2011) assigned 120 sedentary older adults to either an aerobic exercise program or a stretching and toning control group. After one year, participants in the aerobic exercise group showed an approximately 2% increase in hippocampal volume, while hippocampal volume declined in the control group. This increase was accompanied by improvements in spatial memory, and increases in hippocampal volume were associated with higher levels of circulating brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein involved in neuronal growth and plasticity. These findings are striking because they suggest that exercise may be associated not only with better performance on a memory task, but with measurable changes in the structure of a brain region that supports memory.

The hippocampus may also remain responsive to exercise through changes in its vascular system. Maass and colleagues (2015) examined healthy adults between 60 and 77 years old following a three-month aerobic exercise intervention. Improvements in physical fitness were associated with changes in hippocampal blood flow and volume, which were in turn related to improvements in recognition memory and recall. These findings provide evidence that the aging hippocampus retains some capacity for vascular plasticity, (the ability of its blood supply to adapt in response to changes in physical activity and fitness).

Together, these findings challenge a more simplistic view of brain aging. Aging undoubtedly involves changes in brain structure and function, but the older brain is not necessarily static. Some aspects of the brain retain a capacity for adaptation and plasticity, and exercise may be one way of engaging that capacity.

Mindfulness and Aging

There seems to be something distinctive about practices that deliberately combine movement, breathing, and attention. This combination is particularly relevant to aging because cognitive and physical changes do not occur in isolation: older adults may simultaneously experience changes in attention, memory, emotional regulation, mobility, and physical health. Mind-body practices such as yoga and meditation engage several of these domains at once. In their review of the neural mechanisms underlying meditative practices, Acevedo, Pospos, and Lavretsky (2016) found that both mindfulness-based and active practices such as yoga engage brain systems involved in attention, memory, learning, emotional regulation, and self-awareness. They also found some differences between practices: mindfulness practices were associated with neural systems involved in body awareness and attention, while active practices (such as yoga) also engage regions involved in self-control, sensorimotor integration, and motor function. This suggests that yoga may provide more than the physical benefits of movement alone, but rather the deliberate attention to breathing, bodily sensations, and movement may simultaneously engage cognitive and emotional processes that are important for healthy aging.

Benefits of Yoga

A 2019 systematic review and meta-analysis by Sivaramakrishnan and colleagues examined 22 randomized controlled trials of yoga in older adults. Compared with inactive controls, yoga significantly improved balance, lower-body flexibility, and lower-limb strength. The review also found improvements in several aspects of health-related quality of life. These findings make sense when we consider what yoga actually requires of its participants. Holding a standing posture requires strength and balance, moving between positions requires coordination and motor control, and many poses challenge flexibility while requiring participants to maintain awareness of their body position. These physical abilities are not just fitness metrics. Strength, balance, flexibility, and mobility are all relevant to maintaining independence as people age.

Frailty provides another way to think about this. A 2023 systematic review by Loewenthal and colleagues examined 33 studies involving 2,384 adults aged 65 and older. The researchers found evidence that yoga could improve several markers associated with frailty, particularly gait speed and lower-extremity strength and endurance. 

The potential benefits of yoga extend beyond physical performance. Tulloch and colleagues (2018) conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 12 randomized controlled trials involving 752 adults aged 60 and older. They found that yoga produced a medium effect on health-related quality of life and a small effect on mental well-being.

This is an important outcome because aging is not just about maintaining physical capabilities. How people feel, function, sleep, and participate in their daily lives makes a significant impact on the aging brain as well. In fact, the 2019 review by Sivaramakrishnan and colleagues found improvements in several health-related quality-of-life outcomes, including perceived physical and mental health, sleep quality, vitality, and depression when yoga was compared with inactive controls. Some effects, particularly for depression, were also observed relative to active controls. Together, these findings suggest that yoga may influence several dimensions of well-being at once. But what about cognition?

Yoga and Cognition

This is where the evidence becomes particularly interesting, but considerably less certain. A 2021 systematic review by Hoy and colleagues examined randomized controlled trials of yoga-based interventions in healthy adults aged 60 and older. The review identified only six studies representing five unique trials. Four of the six studies reported significant positive effects on cognition, including measures of overall memory functioning and executive function. While that sounds encouraging, there is an important catch: the researchers judged the overall risk of bias to be high across the included studies. The interventions and cognitive assessments also varied considerably. So while the findings suggest that yoga may improve aspects of cognition, they do not yet provide definitive evidence.

A second systematic review and meta-analysis paints a somewhat broader picture. Bhattacharyya, Andel, and Small (2021) examined 12 studies involving 912 older adults, 11 of which were randomized controlled trials. Across these studies, yoga-related mind-body interventions were associated with significant improvements in memory, executive function, and attention and processing speed. These findings are intriguing because they suggest that the potential cognitive effects of yoga may not be limited to one specific ability. Memory, executive function, and attention all involve different cognitive processes.

However, there is another important distinction: this review examined yoga-related mind-body therapies, rather than yoga alone. The included interventions varied, although they generally incorporated physical postures, breathing, and meditative practices. That makes it difficult to determine whether the effects are specifically attributable to yoga, or to the broader combination of physical activity and mind-body practices.

Yoga is interesting because it is more than exercise. Traditional forms of exercise can affect the body in ways that may benefit the brain. Exercise has been shown to improve cardiovascular and metabolic health and can influence cerebral blood flow and neuroplasticity. The hippocampus, in particular, has received considerable attention because of its role in memory and its sensitivity to aging. Yoga includes physical activity, but it also requires someone to maintain balance while controlling posture and coordinating movements, focus attention on the body, regulate breathing, monitor physical sensations, follow sequences of movements, and often sustain attention over time. Some practices also explicitly incorporate meditation.

This means that it is possible for yoga’s effects to emerge through multiple pathways simultaneously. It is possible that physical activity contributes to cardiovascular and brain health, while balance and motor control provide additional cognitive engagement. Perhaps breathing and mindfulness influence stress and emotional regulation. Or maybe the benefits are simply the result of consistently engaging in a form of exercise that people enjoy and are willing to maintain. 

Other Types of Mindful Exercise

Chan and colleagues (2019) conducted a meta-analysis of 41 studies involving 3,551 adults aged 60 and older. The interventions included meditation, Tai Chi, Qigong, and yoga. Overall, these mind-body interventions produced a small-to-moderate positive effect on cognitive performance. Interestingly, the researchers found that cognitive benefits were associated with interventions lasting more than 12 weeks, occurring three to seven times per week, or involving sessions lasting approximately 45–60 minutes. These findings suggest that amount seems to matter. A single yoga class is unlikely to transform someone’s memory, but if cognitive effects are real, they may require consistent practice over time.

Since the meta-analysis combined several different mind-body practices, it cannot tell us whether yoga itself is responsible for the observed effects, but taken together, these findings make yoga an intriguing candidate for supporting cognitive health in older adulthood. We already have evidence that physical exercise can benefit memory and hippocampal function, while mindfulness and other meditative practices have also been associated with changes in brain systems involved in attention, memory, and emotional regulation (Erickson et al., 2011; Maass et al., 2015; Acevedo et al., 2016). It is therefore reasonable to ask whether a practice that combines physical movement with breathing, attention, and mindfulness might provide benefits across several of these domains. 

Concluding Statements

Exercise provides the broader foundation. Physical inactivity is associated with poorer cognitive aging, while physical activity may protect against cognitive decline and may influence the biological systems that support brain health. Yoga is one particularly interesting form of physical activity because it combines movement with balance, flexibility, strength, breathing, attention, and, in many forms, meditation. The evidence for physical benefits is relatively strong: yoga can improve balance, flexibility, strength, and aspects of quality of life in older adults. Evidence for mental well-being is also encouraging. 

The cognitive story is more preliminary. Several reviews suggest improvements in memory, executive function, attention, and processing speed, but the number of high-quality yoga-specific trials remains small. Perhaps the most reasonable conclusion, then, is not that yoga is a miracle intervention for aging. It is that yoga may be a particularly accessible and multidimensional way of staying physically and mentally engaged across the lifespan. The goal of exercise in older adulthood does not necessarily have to be to make the brain “younger.” It may be to help preserve the abilities that allow people to remain mobile, independent, cognitively engaged, and connected to the activities they value. In sum, moving your body and engaging your mind matters for healthy aging, and yoga may be one meaningful way to keep moving.

References

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