We come from different departments (UCL Research, Innovation & Global Engagement, UCL South Asia Regional Network and the UCL Arts and Sciences) to celebrate International Yoga Day. This blog brings you perspectives of lived experience, living through yoga, and a scientific account of the positive effects of ‘pranayama’, or yogic breathwork. Our aim is to open evidence for how practicing yoga works, and encourage a deeper understanding, to stimulate wider practice.

Katherine Liddell (MASc Creative Health) and yogi

Katherine Liddell (MASc Creative Health student, yogi):

This is HAPPENING. Yoga is HAPPENING. Yoga is always in the background, offering constant, non-judgmental support. It’s been happening for several thousand years – first written about in the Upanishads and the Vedic texts that underpin sister traditions of Ayurveda and yogic philosophy. It is a free knowledge exchange: available for anyone who wants to partake, whenever they want to, starting from where they are. It doesn’t require knowledge, experience, or bendiness. It asks you to leave your ego at the door and sit on your mat and allow the experience of a practice to carry you away into internal exploration and focus during your stay. From 20 minutes to 3 hours, it’s what you can give, no more no less, no questions.

I have been practicing for decades but I still can’t stand on my hands away from the wall. Well, I can, for a limited amount of time, but the older I get the more fear of falling I have. Which is kind of a metaphor for my life too. But yoga has always supported me, since I found her (I will call yoga ‘her’ as, for me she typifies my existence of my feminine goddess form: outwardly I am seen to be one thing but internally, I have many qualities, unshared with the world, kept for me, but who make me the person I am). Yoga has made me strong, meditation and breathwork has partnered with her to bring a roundedness to my practice. For me, sometimes yoga invokes Kali, the goddess of death and transformation. She is fierce and strong, but compassionate and love also. Death is not the end, but a transformation, a reincarnation. Kali is the essence of Freedom and pushes boundaries, reminds me to calm my mind and focus.

The point for me to practice yoga is to calm the ‘chitta vritta’ – the monkey mind. By focusing on the breath during a yoga practice we are able to calm the chatter of the mind and be present, in the moment. Calm the mind, calm the breath. Calm the breath, calm the mind. In the Vedas, Patanjali defined yoga through the Sutras: if you can be in the moment, then you are in yoga.

We could consider the mind to be the chatter that constantly invades our thoughts. And our intellect is fact. What we know to be true, the rest, the chatter is just that: noise. If we aim to bring our breath to our consciousness whilst on the mat, we can calm the chatter and the intellect for just a moment. But a moment that will feed our wellbeing, our essence and return us to our spiritual self.

As with many things that have existed for centuries, many people want to OWN it, say it was they who first discovered x, y or z. Does it matter? If in the longer term, there is spill-over and others benefit exponentially? Western science would say they discovered certain health benefits from meditation and mindfulness as a modern phenomenon. Religions of all colours have practiced meditation and mindfulness for centuries: being self-aware, humble, accepting. Where we actively listen to others and try to be the best version of ourselves. Does it need to be ‘owned’ by some noun when historically, the knowledge has been shared freely. We don’t need to appropriate other cultures, but accept that Others can teach us, sometimes more than we already know, and honour and be grateful for that knowledge. In Western culture we have striven for evidence-based research: Ayurveda and yoga have known the intangible value of yoga, which is why it has lasted. It is written, evidenced, if you want to look. Passed down through the centuries. Perhaps it is a time when we can recognise the goodness that other cultures bring to the table.

Tori Bate (MASc Creative Health) and Yogi

Tori Bate (MASc Creative Health student, yogi):

‘Pranayama’ is an overarching name for multiple breathwork practices. ‘Ayurveda’ translates from Sanskrit to ‘the knowledge of health’ (1). Yoga disciplines have derived from ancient Vedic texts that aim to bring about physical, mental and emotional health. Here, yoga shall be used to encompass both asana (postural) and pranayama (breathwork). We examine the impact and efficacy of pranayama practices.

One study found Bhastrika Pranayama (translated as ‘breathing practice’) had a 1.3% increase in VO2Max (Maximum Oxygen Consumption) over a six-week Bhastrika Pranayama intervention where p= 0.05 (1). Plotting pre-post low-frequency heartrate variability, a tendency toward a normalisation state in both naive and experienced cohorts yoga practitioners (2). Normalisation implies yoga asana and pranayama can promote homeostasis of the cardiovascular system.

Pranayama-based studies (3)(4) have shown statistically significant decreases within cardiovascular measures, with greater improvement seen within slow-pranayama exercises. Research highlights yoga’s therapeutic qualities and low expense with recommendations to introduce pranayama as a blood-pressure management technique within the medical profession. A yoga-lifestyle based intervention saw a reduction in blood glucose in both sexes whilst lipid profiles significantly improved only within females (5). Fast pranayama significantly improves cognitive performance over slower technique. An increase across all Audio and Visual Reaction Times (ART) were seen with statistical significance within ART and VRT-Red where p<0.05, and VRT-Green at p<0.01 (6). Studying the practice of chanting. Ramamoorthy et al. (2020) evaluated the effect of Sudharshan Kriya Pranayama (Ujjayi, Bhastrika and chanting). Results showed favourable oral and gut health with 1/3 improvement in microbiome (7). One study illustrated experienced practitioners had preferential levels of anxiety, fatigue and tension with HRV also showing significantly higher autonomic variability, vagal tone and ability to recover from mental arithmetic stress (8). One study showed those engaged in mindful walking were 53.1% less Depressed than the control group when using the BDI (9). Blood sample analysis demonstrated an increase in neuroplasticity and psychosomatic communication biomarkers post 12 weeks, CI=95% (10).

As my friend says, if you don’t bring something to the table, what’s the point? No matter how small or insignificant, bringing yourself to the mat is committing to a better you, a better version of yourself, a calmer, stronger, healthier, person. How wonderful.

References

1. Bal BS, Kaur P, Singh D, Bhardwaj M. Effects of 6-weeks Bhastrika Pranayama Intervention on health-related components of physical fitness. Physical Education of Students. 2021;25(4):230-8.

2. Shinba T, Inoue T, Matsui T, Kimura KK, Itokawa M, Arai M. Changes in Heart Rate Variability after Yoga are Dependent on Heart Rate Variability at Baseline and during Yoga: A Study Showing Autonomic Normalization Effect in Yoga-Naïve and Experienced Subjects. Int J Yoga. 2020;13(2):160-7.

3. Sharma VK, Trakroo M, Subramaniam V, Rajajeyakumar M, Bhavanani AB, Sahai A. Effect of fast and slow pranayama on perceived stress and cardiovascular parameters in young health-care students. Int J Yoga. 2013;6(2):104-10.

4. Bhavanani AB, Sanjay Z, Madanmohan. Immediate effect of sukha pranayama on cardiovascular variables in patients of hypertension. Int J Yoga Therap. 2011(21):73-6.

5. Yadav RK, Magan D, Yadav R, Sarvottam K, Netam R. High-density lipoprotein cholesterol increases following a short-term yoga-based lifestyle intervention: a non-pharmacological modulation. Acta Cardiol. 2014;69(5):543-9.

6. Sharma VK, M R, S V, Subramanian SK, Bhavanani AB, Madanmohan, et al. Effect of fast and slow pranayama practice on cognitive functions in healthy volunteers. J Clin Diagn Res. 2014;8(1):10-3.

7. Ramamoorthy A, Mahendra J, Mahendra L, Govindaraj J, Samu S. Effect of Sudharshan Kriya Pranayama on Salivary Expression of Human Beta Defensin-2, Peroxisome Proliferator Activated Receptor Gamma, and Nuclear Factor-Kappa B in Chronic Periodontitis. Cureus. 2020;12(2):e6905.

8. Tyagi A, Cohen M, Reece J, Telles S, Jones L. Heart Rate Variability, Flow, Mood and Mental Stress During Yoga Practices in Yoga Practitioners, Non-yoga Practitioners and People with Metabolic Syndrome. Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback. 2016;41(4):381-93.

9. Schuver KJ, Lewis BA. Mindfulness-based yoga intervention for women with depression. Complement Ther Med. 2016;26:85-91.

10. Bisht S, Chawla B, Tolahunase M, Mishra R, Dada R. Impact of yoga -based lifestyle intervention on psychological stress and quality of life in the parents of children with retinoblastoma. Ann Neurosci. 2019;26(2):66-74.

Sara Azzi and Vega Osman Bisschop from UCL Arts and Sciences share their reflections on ‘The Night of Ideas’

Vega: I’m a first-year undergraduate studying Arts and Sciences with a major in Societies and a minor in Health and Environment. Having grown up in a French-English bilingual environment in Geneva, Switzerland, going to the French Institute’s Night of Ideas, felt, in some ways, like coming home. In our piece, we decided to reflect on the way that lessons from the past can aid us in the attempt (that was the subject of wide-ranging discussions throughout the evening) to ‘build back together’.

Sara: I’m also a first-year undergraduate student at UCL studying Arts and Sciences and majoring in Societies. As a Lebanese, the idea of the importance of memory felt very close to my country and its current situation. A crisis of remembrance and commemoration has definitely played a big role in the crisis which Lebanon finds itself drowned in. The Night of Ideas was very enlightening as it made us think of our roots and pushed us to focus the piece on the importance of remembering our past and finding a balance to rebuild a better future together.

For us, the French Institute’s Night of Ideas was not only one of ‘rebuilding together’, as the title of the event put it, but one of ‘remembering together’. The poet, Anthony Anaxagorou, opened each talk that night with a poem linked to the topic of each discussion. His words immediately grounded the discussions that followed and that looked to the future in the feelings and sentiments at the heart of the various topics at hand. These feelings, transmitted in his poetry through metaphors and tone, evoked a sense of the importance of memories. Rebuilding and innovating, it seemed, starts by re-grounding and re-rooting.

Poet Anthony Anaxagorou (above) performs one of his poems before the last debate of the night.

So, for example, when discussing how to creatively take apart and reconstruct the economy, Philippe Aghion touched on exactly this concept of remembrance and acknowledgement of the past: in order to rebuild effectively currently dysfunctional economies, it is crucial to comprehend the way in which they were originally built and why they look the way they do now. Despite seeming obvious, such an idea may get easily forgotten in our striving for innovation. Rather than causing stagnation, thinking about the past can accelerate the action in the present that is urgently needed to address climate change. Learning from what past actions and practices went wrong, as well as which went right, can be invaluable. We cannot undo the unfolding of climate change – as Aghion put it, we cannot plan to ‘degrow’ the economy – and therefore only have the option of moving forward and growing innovatively.  In the same debate, UCL economist, Marianna Mazzucato, pointed out how societies have rapidly mobilised at previous moments in history. Governments have launched huge military operations within days and civil movements have rallied nation-wide support to shape police. In times of national crisis, countries have been able to put in the urgent effort needed to face an emergency.

Today, we might be tempted to view what is commonly termed the ’emergency’ or ‘crisis’ of climate change as a new and exceptional moment in history. But economists Mazzucato and Aghion, as well as panellists speaking later, drew parallels between this ‘crisis’ and the 2008 financial crisis. Not so much a moment of complete surprise, the financial crisis was the result of sustained financial instability. UCL academic and chair of this session ‘A Guide To Living In An Apocalypse’, Tim Beasley-Murray, drew a literary link, noting the way that the moment, when we suddenly recognise how disastrous the circumstances are in which we have long been living, is similar to the moment of anagnoris in Greek tragedy.  Likewise drawing on Ancient Greek thought, the Parisian philosopher, Olivier Remaud, reminded us of the way that, for the Greeks thousands of years ago, this moment of crisis and insight was essentially seen as moment of decision. Opposed to the paralysis that may often be understood as synonymous with crisis, this rediscovery of the essential meaning of crisis might offer hope.

In order to take an informed decision, we need to engage in a ‘processus d’apprentissage’, to use Remaud’s original French words. The essence of this ‘process of learning’ lies in lessons from the past: remembering and making sense of the historical plot of humanity. And similar to a tragic hero in literature, humans being are – as UCL professor, Jack Stilgoe, reminded us in the same discussion – simultaneously agents of the ‘crisis’ of climate change and also agents of the solution to it. Nonetheless, it is easy to forget the fact that some inhabitants of the planet have both contributed less to the tragedy climate change than others, but also bear its burden more heavily.  So, UCL anthropologist and Africanist Hélène Neveu Kringelbach urged us to ask: whose perspective are we discussing here? Perhaps listening to those in the Global South, who have lived more sustainably and in greater harmony and symbiosis with their environment, can provide us with the lessons we need to reshape and rebuild. To us, this is what rebuilding together really looks like. And this importance of togetherness extends to the connections between generations: connections, through rituals and traditions, for example, that are also crucial to humanity’s apprenticeship and learning. Intergenerational transmission allows us to remember for the sake of the future.

Discussion of this sort of about the role of memory in building a better future characterized other sessions during the evening, for example novelist, Elif Shafak’s reflections on ‘what is essential’.  Lessons learned from our individual or collective past are crucial to build a better future and avoid past mistakes. But, as Shafak reminded us, memory is also important in recognizing past tragedies and victims’ sufferings and ensuring accountability of people who are responsible. We can give the example of unresolved historical memory about France’s historical role in Algeria that leads to continuous political tension between the two societies in contrast to the historical accountability and memory in the case of the Nuremberg trials that brought Nazi war criminals to justice.

Memory plays an important role in bringing people together, by creating common ground to build on. But that does not necessarily mean it is always crucial. In some cases, forgetting can be as useful as memory, where historical memory only preserves and fixes the past, rather than helps build a future. Collective memory would in that case lead to an increase in resentment instead of reconciliation and might not be beneficial.

In sum, this is what the discussions of the Night of Ideas led us to conclude: it is important to find a balance between remembering and forgetting.  On one hand, it is crucial to have some sort of common sense of our past to learn from, to have something that brings people together. However, we still need to distance ourselves from the past to be able to embrace a present that is evolving and to allow room for progress – to build back together.

Find out more about the Night of Ideas – Institut Français du Royaume-Uni