Meditation, yoga might affect your genes
Researchers have discovered how meditation and yoga improve health, reports The Washington Post. "It's not all in your head," said Dr. Herbert Benson, president emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor...
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Researchers have discovered how meditation and yoga improve health, reports The Washington Post. “It’s not all in your head,” said Dr. Herbert Benson, president emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “What we have found is that when you evoke the relaxation response, the very genes that are turned on or off by stress are turned the other way. The mind can actively turn on and turn off genes. The mind is not separated from the body.”
“We all are under stress and have many manifestations of that stress,” Benson added. “To adequately protect ourselves against stress, we should use an approach and a technique that we believe evokes the relaxation response 20 minutes, once a day.”
I’m sure many yogis out there are not surprised by this news, but did you ever think yoga might actually be affecting your genes?
