Yoga is a form of mind-body fitness that involves a combination of muscular activity and an internally directed mindful focus on awareness of the self, the breath, and energy. Four basic principles underlie the teachings and practices of yoga's healing system.

  • The first principle is that the human body is a holistic entity comprised of various interrelated dimensions inseparable from one another, and the health or illness of any one dimension affects the other dimensions.

  • The second principle is that individuals and their needs are unique and therefore must be approached in a way that acknowledges this individuality, and their practice must be tailored accordingly.

  • The third principle is yoga is self-empowering; the student is his or her own healer. Yoga engages the student in the healing process by playing an active role in their journey toward health; the healing comes from within instead of from an outside source, and a greater sense of autonomy is achieved.

  • The fourth principle is that the quality and state of an individual's mind is crucial to healing. When the individual has a positive mind-state, healing happens more quickly, whereas if the mind-state is negative, healing may be prolonged.

There are many entirely different ways of “doing yoga,” but there is a way in which these different systems have been classified traditionally that leads to familiar terrain for psychologists. It is the trimarga, the three “paths” of bhakti, jnana, and karmayoga, the yoga of devotion, knowledge, and works, which is closely related to the division modern psychologists make between emotions, cognition, and volition.

In science and the new global civilization as a whole, it has become mainstream to look at the world as if it were primarily physical, with consciousness arising out of the complexity of the physical brain as if it were some kind of evolutionary afterthought. Though we tend to take this view of reality for granted, it is not only one-sided but also a rather recent development. Even in the West, till some time back the vast majority of well-known philosophers held that the universe was permeated with consciousness (‘panpsychism’ in European philosophy), and in Indian thought, the modern, physicalist conception of reality is mainly mentioned as a beginner’s error (Chhandogya Upanishad).

Most major systems of yoga take the centrality of consciousness for granted, doubt at least to some extent the relevance of the physical world, and have as their ultimate objective to achieve some aspect of pure consciousness: kailvalya, mukti, or nirvana.

Many yoga texts refer to the importance of mental health and the use of specific techniques in the treatment of mental disorders. Different concepts utilized in modern psychology may not come with contemporary ideas; instead, they seem to share a common root with ancient wisdom. One of the main consequences of yoga is to provide the necessary tools to help in the treatment of mental problems. But yoga says only the individual himself can do this. Even if one is seeing a shrink or a therapist, all these professionals can do is stimulate the individual and guide him during the process of removing the mental conflicts, which he has to do by himself. Hence, yoga is interested primarily in the practice, not words. The goal is to dig up the real cause of mental conflicts and eradicate conscious and unconscious problems.

Some sages or scholars affirm that one must overcome the unhappiness associated with mental conflicts before experiencing real equanimity. While yoga aims at emptying our minds, it doesn’t try to fill them up with new dogmas. The ancient practice affirms that every conditioning must be removed and never replaced by new ones, and that the mind must be clear from all the problems that cause conflicts. The same author said that this is not achieved through an isolated technique or after a specific number of “sessions.” Instead, the effects of meditation or yoga seem to be better experienced when we are not practicing.

According to yoga psychology, the most fundamental and recurrent mental problem is the lack of meaning. It has been said that the strongest drive in people's lives is the need to find meaning. Most mental problems are caused by the simple fact that people do not add value to their lives. Everything seems superficial, meaningless, and hopeless, resulting in powerful negative emotions that can cause a real breakdown of mental functions. This process has been recognized and stated: “When conscious life loses its meaning and promise, it's as if panic took over.” In fact, this is how many people live: empty lives without meaning. The method of yoga, not only the physical practices but especially the entire cognitive restructuring that this ancient discipline is capable of doing, seems to help people in this sense.

Conditioning turns the mind into a collection of rigid and stereotyped patterns instead of a reservoir of spontaneous ideas, representing an obstacle to real perception. This category also includes a tendency to accept ideas without personal experience. Blind susceptibility to ideas and too much attachment to preexisting ones represent a big mental problem in yoga. Moreover, yoga psychology proposes a three-point approach to this problem. First, one should try to avoid the occurrence of these disturbances (PYS1,2). To empty the mind of preexisting complexes and leave it open and susceptible to adverse impressions is useless. It is necessary to make the mind strong and flexible for the ups and downs of life. Second, one must drain all conscious problems. And third, one should find out and eliminate subconscious problems.

The three-stage process of approaching mental dysfunction described previously does not occur in sequence but simultaneously. The stages go along as part of an integral methodology that eliminates and prevents the arising of mental conflicts. Besides these concepts, yoga psychology offers another set of tools that should be used for the removal of conflicts. One of these tools is acceptance. Yoga teaches us to deal with and accept our feelings by not comparing them with the feelings of others. It shows that we should use our own qualities to act naturally, mindfully observing the emotions without ever suppressing them.

In this approach, it is vital to accept emotions and feelings without guilt, especially when it comes to past events, since many people live their lives with sorrow, regret, and guilt from past actions. If past resentments take over a person's life, they become deeply rooted in memory and hard to remove, except through the practice of meditation.

Living in the present is also very important and an essential part of both yoga and psychotherapy. Likewise, the relationship between acceptance and change is greatly discussed in psychotherapy today. Some authors suggest that acceptance involves “experiencing events integrally and defenselessly, just as they are.” Health professionals with empirical orientation might have contributed to the super emphasis given to eliminating negative symptoms without first accepting them. For example, a person that suffers from panic disorder develops unadaptive behavior as a way to prevent future attacks.

This behavior includes drug and alcohol abuse, avoidance of relevant activities, and excessive anxiety toward bodily sensations. By accepting that panic attacks or episodes of acute anxiety occasionally occur in a limited time space without representing a real threat, the individual becomes able to experience them with tolerance, acknowledging that these are just unpleasant feelings. So, on one point modern and ancient psychologies seem to agree: the importance of acceptance in the therapeutic process. Acceptance has also been described as one of the seven fundamental practices of mindfulness meditation, a Buddhist-based meditation widely employed in medical research.

After acceptance, yoga psychology says that the next step in the process of conflict removal is meditation. The more one meditates and learns to relax, the more he allows for suppressed emotions and problems to arise, even if they generate negative responses. During meditation, one should carefully observe conscious and subconscious manifestations and try to reduce the emotional response using just a contemplative posture. One should perceive and witness these manifestations without identifying with them. The simple fact of becoming aware of these manifestations with a detached attitude is a powerful tool in the process of withdrawing the power that thoughts exert in our lives. However, this confrontation of mental conflicts can only be carried out during a moment of deep relaxation or meditative practice.

Modern psychiatry and psychology also employ this technique and call it “desensitization.” It has been pointed out that the removal of mental problems is an expression since all information is permanently recorded in memory. What ancient texts say is that the practice of yoga causes the emotional reaction to internal conflicts as well as the elimination of the related memory.

All mental problems have two aspects: the object (a spider, for example) and the emotional reaction to the object (fear of spiders). Therefore, when a mental problem is removed, what actually happens is the neutralization of the emotional reaction. Hence, when one manages not to respond emotionally to subconscious information, it means he was able to remove that conflict. The real cause of many fears lies in the subconscious mind, and the practice of meditation can bring them to the surface, to the conscious mind, where they can be neutralized through desensitization. This method consists of:

  • Relaxation—one should be completely relaxed in their everyday life, which can be achieved through yoga practice, meditation, or corpse pose (shavasana).

  • One should imagine oneself confronting his object of fear, creating a mental image of this object. The more one practices, the less he responds emotionally to that object, reducing the fear progressively. This method should be practiced every day until no reaction is experienced. The ancient logic behind this technique is simple: people are less predisposed to react emotionally to an object of fear when confronting it during deep, relaxed states.

Systematic desensitization is a very effective technique utilized in the process of extinction of conditioned reflexes. It consists of a set of techniques that expose the individual to the traumatic experience. It involves three basic stages: physical relaxation, the establishment of a hierarchy of anxiety (regarding the phobic stimulus), and counter-conditioning of relaxation as a response to the stimulus. This method of desensitization begins with the exposure to less anxiogenic elements, that is, stimuli that evoke less intense responses. Gradually, the magnitude of exposure increases until it reaches the original conditioned stimulus. In vivo exposure is preceded by imaginary exposure, from the least to the most feared situations.

Meditation encourages people not to remove their attention from fear, pain, or negative thoughts but instead to make them the center of attention, admitting a noncritical attitude toward these experiences and their related cognitions, emotions, and impulses. The ability to observe these sensations without judging or criticizing them seems to reduce associated distress, just as does continuous exposure to certain feelings.

The constant and controlled exposure to pain, for example, in the absence of catastrophic consequences, might lead to desensitization and gradual reduction of the associated emotional responses. In the same way, the practice of meditation and the development of meditative skills increase our ability to experience these feelings without reacting emotionally to them. In relation to the desensitization technique, modern psychology and ancient writings describe a similar mechanism for the effects of meditation on mental disorders.

The sustained and noncritical observation of anxiety-related sensations, for example, without the attempt to avoid it at any cost, is capable of significantly reducing the emotional reactivity induced by anxiety symptoms. This approach is also very similar to the interoceptive exposure strategy or the nonjudgmental awareness development exposed by. The difference is that meditation does not include a deliberate induction of panic attack symptoms. Instead, individuals are instructed to witness these feelings as they arise.

Another technique, known as self-suggestion, has also been employed since ancient times. Today, the power of suggestion is recognized. It is so effective that people can actually heal or get sick by suggestion—the famous placebo effect. People are continuously “self-suggesting” themselves in different aversive situations. The results depend on the intensity of this suggestion. During the first stages of this practice, one should try to convince oneself that the fear and the anxiety experienced are essentially unjustified. According to yoga psychology, this happens initially at an intellectual level, but gradually the autosuggestion becomes deeper and stronger. Ideally, this technique should be practiced after yoga or any systematic method of relaxation.

It is believed that only during periods of relaxation does the mind become truly receptive to suggestion. Indeed, neuroimaging studies show that the brain reaches a state called spontaneous concentration during yoga nidra (controlled relaxation). This means that the subjects are deeply relaxed while focused on the task and controlling brain activity. Based on observations of brain electrical activity (alpha and theta waves increase), the authors concluded that the relaxation response generated by yoga produces what is called a hypnagogic mental state (not awake, not rapid eye movement sleep, or deep sleep). During this mental state, consciousness seems to be more open to external and internal aspects, such as self-suggestion.

Deconditioning

One of the goals of the psychological processes of yoga is the removal of conditioning (basic processes formed by associations), habits (higher forms of learning), and dogmas (cognitive processes), turning the individual into a more adaptive one and open to new experiences. Most individuals live an automatic life with stereotyped answers to different situations and people. But a non-rigid and clear mind has great power of perception and decision. On the other hand, a conditioned mind can respond according to its unreal interpretation of the world. Most conditionings are the habits of thought and action deeply rooted in the mind or fundamental processes of associations.

These ancient ideas are very similar to the modern concepts of schemas. Schemas are cognitive structures that form and give meaning to objects, situations, people, etc. Schemas are developed very early in life and help us understand the world around us. A schema is a cognitive structure that filters, codifies, and evaluates all stimuli to which an organism is submitted. This matrix of schemas guides the individual in time and space and helps to categorize and understand experiences in a meaningful way. Schemas are formed in early childhood when the first relationships with the environment and parental figures are also being developed. Then, the schemas serve as models for processing all subsequent experience.

Consequently, they become the central structures of meaning construction that self-perpetuate and remain extremely resistant to change. Likewise, one of the many tools employed by yoga is deconditioning. The yogic method teaches the individual to thoroughly evaluate their actions. When performing an action or having a thought, one should inquire about that specific behavior and its related conditioning. It is essential to realize if our conditioning is legitimate or if we’re attached to our own beliefs without real conviction or reason. What the ancient writings call deconditioning (by meditation practice) is represented in modern psychology by the cognitive changes produced by some forms of psychotherapy, such as cognitive behavioral therapy. Many authors noticed that meditation can lead to changes in thought and action patterns.

The nonjudgmental observation of thoughts associated with pain or anxiety helps the individual to understand these as “thoughts only,” instead of reality, and not try to avoid them at any cost. Similarly, the attitude of observing and labeling one's thoughts and feelings helps to understand that they are not precise representations of reality. For example, being afraid does not necessarily mean that the danger is imminent, and thinking “I’m a failure” does not make it true.

Some authors suggest that the decentralized and noncritical view of one's thoughts practiced during meditation seems to interfere with the so-called ruminative patterns typical of mental disorders such as anxiety and depression, resulting in positive cognitive changes. Furthermore, this perspective (of one's thoughts) is described as “metacognitive insight.” A practical advantage of acquiring these skills is that they can be practiced anytime, anywhere, including periods of remission (of the disease).

Disidentification

Yoga psychology states that disidentification helps the mind to become more resistant to external influences. However, he says that this has nothing to do with the individual avoiding the ups and downs of life or evading interpersonal relationships. It means that feelings, sensations, outer activities, and roles must all be seen as something outside the individual. This way, external actions do not affect a person deeply. According to the yogic method of disidentification, one should observe life situations as if they were external. It should be necessary, therefore, to unidentify with one's own body and emotions and let the mind act as a witness without identifying completely with these aspects.

As a result, the painful events of life cannot leave such strong impressions on the mind. When someone can separate the mind from his center of identification (this can be achieved through meditation), he can reach a state of relaxed concentration in which it is possible to observe his psychological processes with complete detachment and freedom.

Although yoga practice and the techniques mentioned above come from eastern culture and philosophy, which describe a particular way of behaving and perceiving the world, the references discussed here reflect another aspect of the practice, indicating its potential as an integrative practice with relevant outcomes in the field of mental health. These techniques generate some physical and psychological responses that can help prevent and treat different conditions, especially those related to mental disorders. From this point of view, therapy can be defined as the possibility to access self-knowledge, allowing us to change what we consider dysfunctional.

Physiological effects

One of the main goals of yoga is to achieve tranquility of the mind and create a sense of well-being, feelings of relaxation, improved self-confidence, improved efficiency, increased attentiveness, lowered irritability, and an optimistic outlook on life. The practice of yoga generates balanced energy, which is vital to the function of the immune system. Yoga leads to an inhibition of the posterior or sympathetic area of the hypothalamus. This inhibition optimizes the body's sympathetic responses to stressful stimuli and restores autonomic regulatory reflex mechanisms associated with stress. Yogic practices inhibit the areas responsible for fear, aggressiveness, and rage and stimulate the rewarding pleasure centers in the medial forebrain and other areas, leading to a state of bliss and pleasure.

This inhibition results in lower anxiety, heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and cardiac output in students practicing yoga and meditation. Consistent yoga practice improves depression and can lead to significant increases in serotonin levels, coupled with decreases in the levels of monoamine oxidase, an enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters and cortisol. Additionally, when practicing yoga, a fundamental emphasis is placed on accepting one's moment-to-moment experiences, creating mindfulness, and not forcing the body past its comfortable limits.

Stress harms the immune system, and prolonged exposure increases disease susceptibility and leads to physical and mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. Practicing yoga and meditation as a means to manage and relieve both acute and chronic stress helps individuals overcome other co-morbidities associated with diseases and leads to increased quality of life.