Ten years of research on yoga as a stress-reducing activity provides a clear answer: A little effort offers real health benefits.

“It was surprising how significant the stress reduction people experienced and reported was,” said Ingunn Hagen, a professor at the Department of Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). In two articles from 2023 and 2024, Hagen and her co-researchers investigated how teenagers and active professionals experience practicing yoga.

Her research shows that yoga contributes to reduced stress in the workplace and at school.

Rapid effect

The young people in the 2023 study attended yoga classes only 8 times. It was fascinating that so few hours made a difference. I knew on a general basis that yoga helps a lot with relaxation, but I was surprised that it was so pronounced, that they felt it so clearly.”

Ingunn Hagen, Professor, Department of Psychology, NTNU

The research on young people and yoga was part of a major European project that focused on intervention research in lower and upper secondary schools. The aim of the project was to promote mental health through yoga, with a particular focus on reaching disadvantaged young people.

Kept a diary

The young people were encouraged to keep a diary or log while attending the yoga classes. They were asked to write freely about what they were thinking and feeling before and after the yoga sessions, and how they experienced the practice of yoga.

“We noticed a focus on relaxation and less stress both in the questionnaires and in the qualitative interviews with the young people, but especially in the logs,” said Hagen.

The young people placed great emphasis on relaxation, reporting that yoga helped them with this. Even a limited period of yoga influenced how they coped with stress, making them more relaxed.

This in turn led to them experiencing greater well-being.

Yoga for job-related stress

Stress and stress management emerged as a clear theme in the research on the adults as well. Yoga helped reduce work-related stress.

“For many people, stress is strongly present in the workplace in a negative way. It affects their job performance, how they feel at work, and their work-life balance,” said Hagen.

Historically, stress, in the form of the ‘fight or flight’ reflex, is something humans needed to survive. Today, these mechanisms are activated often through work that demands high-level performance, through technology that we must master, and through life in the modern world.

When we analyzed the working adults who practised yoga, we were rather surprised by the significant impact yoga had on them.

We need to be constantly activated, alert and focused. This causes the sympathetic nervous system to be overactive.

‘Turning off’ the stress mechanisms of the sympathetic nervous system can be difficult, which is what yoga seems to help with. Yoga provides relaxation and thus enables us to activate the parasympathetic nervous system.

This is where the body rests, the stomach digests and the brain processes impressions. Yoga helps create a better balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic parts of the autonomic nervous system.

“Again, when we analyzed the working adults who practised yoga, we were rather surprised by the significant impact yoga had on them,” said Hagen. The informants described feeling greater well-being and that they were better able to cope with stress.

Breathing exercises before meetings

Yoga also changed how people performed at work. Several of the study participants mentioned that they used yogic breathing exercises when preparing for a meeting or when they wanted to relax and recover during their workday. Many of them also described how increased relaxation helped them ‘lower their guard’ a bit and become more approachable with colleagues.

“Stress reduction can therefore also have a potentially significant impact on the working environment,” said Hagen.

However, she emphasizes that it should not be used as a crutch or an excuse for not addressing stressful workplaces or learning environments.

If understaffing or other factors are causing stress in the workplace, then the workplace must be changed.

“For example, it would be wrong if employees are encouraged to practise mindfulness instead of employers providing good working conditions for employees,” she said.

Positive and negative aspects of yoga

At the same time, when stress is already present, yoga can be a useful practice that improves people’s quality of life and helps them feel a little better in themselves.

In this regard, it is important to establish and discuss when yoga contributes to relaxation and when it becomes just another thing to add to the to-do list.

“Yoga has become ‘big business’ and is very popular. This in itself makes yoga and the experience of yoga a phenomenon that should be explored scientifically,” Hagen said.

Yoga-related injuries have long been a taboo in the yoga world.

“And we should use all types of methods to identify both the positive and the negative sides of yoga, because there can be some downsides. For example, yoga can become too performance-oriented, and then there is a risk of adding yet another element of stress to people’s lives,” she added.

“We can see it in depictions of yoga on social media. In the West, it is typical to see images of a young, slim, white woman in a highly acrobatic pose. What does this contribute to? When yoga simply becomes acrobatics and something to show off about, I don’t believe it is health-promoting. I am interested in yoga from a more humanistic perspective,” she said.

Yoga-related injuries

Physical injuries can also occur if people go too far or deep into a specific pose and push themselves too much.

“Yoga-related injuries have long been a taboo in the yoga world and have not been extensively studied in yoga research either,” Hagen said.

Much of the research on yoga is done by people who practice yoga themselves and are enthusiastic about yoga as a form of exercise.

“There is a potential danger here: it could render the research field somewhat blind to the fact that there can also be negative aspects to yoga,” said Hagen.

Hagen suggests that research should focus on which forms of yoga contribute most to general good health.

“Our two projects are relatively small, and they don’t cover everything. For example, in our research project on yoga in working life, we didn’t focus on what type of yoga the participants practised, but this is something that should be studied and that research ought to be able to provide clear findings on.

Yoga in the workplace or in schools?

Hagen thinks the need for more research is especially relevant if yoga is to be recommended as an initiative in the workplace.

“I hope that yoga research is used to create a better life for people. I honestly believe that yoga can be a tool for people to improve their health and quality of life. And perhaps people will also become more in touch with themselves,”she added.

Hagen is fascinated by the overlap between psychology and yoga. Her ambition is to incorporate yoga and yogic therapy as part of the programme of professional study in psychology at NTNU.

“Both as part of the psychological therapy students learn to practice, so they can offer it to patients, but also for their own benefit in the future. As a professional group, psychologists are prone to burnout if they don’t take care of themselves,” she said.

“Yoga could serve as a tool for self-care,” said Hagen.

“It is a vision I have – to incorporate yoga into the programme of professional study in psychology before I retire. Even if I could just get the ball rolling, it would be worth it. There are several students who are already interested in yoga, both from a research perspective and as a personal practice. Then there is the idea of offering various yoga courses throughout NTNU, both for employees and students. That would be fantastic!” Hagen said.