This is a thing. Yoga and meditation work -- and they work quite well. The science is young, but the research shows definitive results.
Some of these results include:
1. Increased size and activity in the areas of the brain responsible for attention and emotion regulation, higher order cognition, interoception, and memory extinction
2. Decreased activity in areas of the brain areas responsible for mind-wandering, memory retrieval, and emotional reactivity
3. Increased telomere size and a younger looking brain. One researcher from UCLA (Dr. Luders) used an AI program to guess the age based on MRIs of different brains. Meditators were significantly younger.
4. People who meditate regularly require less sleep.
This is just a small slice of example research. Most of the research is based on meditation. In my opinion, meditation is a tremendous part of Yoga, although not necessarily what we see in the Western World. Also, its important to note that there are many different ways to meditate and branches of Yoga. Each of these require different studies to understand the impact.
