Improved Sexual Health Through Yoga Practice: Insights on Its Advantages
Improving Sexual Health Through Yoga: More Than Just a Fad?
The internet is brimming with testimonies and blogs advocating for yoga as a means to heighten sexual experiences. But are these claims supported by scientific evidence? Let's delve into the research.
Today's scientific community is increasingly discovering the multifarious health benefits of yoga, a millennia-old practice. Addressing conditions ranging from stress and anxiety to metabolic syndrome and diabetes, yoga has caught the attention of researchers, who seek to understand its underlying mechanisms.
Recent studies have unveiled that yoga can modulate the body's inflammatory response, suppress the genes predisposing individuals to stress, reduce cortisol levels, and stimulate a protein crucial for brain development and maintenance.
While these benefits are noteworthy on their own, it is also worth mentioning that practicing yoga simply feels good. In some instances, it can even induce a phenomenon known as the "coregasm," a sensation that is seemingly more than just pleasurable.
Connecting with one's body through yoga can evoke a sense of replenishment, restoration, and physical pleasure. So, does this ancient practice have the power to enhance our sexual lives? Investigating further, we find that the research supports such claims.
Yoga Benefits Women's Sexual Function
One study, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, has found a correlation between yoga and improved sexual function in postmenopausal women. Over the course of 12 weeks, these women attended yoga sessions and reported significant improvements in all aspects of the Female Sexual Function Index, including desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain. An impressive 75% of the women reported an enhancement in their overall sexual experience.
The yoga poses or asanas practiced during this study were believed to improve core abdominal strength, digestion, pelvic floor strength, and overall mood. Trikonasana, or the triangle pose, bhujangasana, or the snake, and ardha matsyendra mudra, or half spinal twist, were among those included.
Yoga Benefits Men's Sexual Function
It is not only women who can benefit from yoga's sexual health benefits. A study led by Dr. Vikas Dhikav, a neurologist at the Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi, India, found that men who underwent a 12-week yoga program experienced a significant improvement in their sexual satisfaction, as evaluated by the Male Sexual Quotient. Improvements were observed in the aspects of desire, intercourse satisfaction, performance, confidence, partner synchronization, and orgasm.
Another trial performed by the same research team found that yoga is a viable alternative to pharmacological treatments for premature ejaculation, such as fluoxetine (Prozac). The 12-week program comprising 15 yoga poses, ranging from the relatively simpler Kapalbhati to the more challenging dhanurasana (bow pose), demonstrated promising results for this common sexual health concern.
Understanding the Mechanisms
Yoga's positive impact on sexual health has been explained by researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. Dr. Lori Brotto, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at UBC, believes that yoga has the ability to regulate attention and breathing, lower anxiety and stress levels, and activate the part of the nervous system responsible for relaxation. These effects, according to Dr. Brotto and her colleagues, are closely linked with improvements in sexual response.
Moreover, the yogic practice is known to foster a heightened self-awareness and reduced tendency to objectify one's body, traits that are potentially associated with increased sexual responsibility and assertiveness.
The Power of Moola Bandha
Although tales of releasing blocked energy in root chakras and producing ejaculation-free orgasms through the movement of "kundalini energy" may seem far-fetched, other yogic concepts have garnered more credibility among skeptics. Moola bandha is one such concept.
According to Dr. Brotto and her team, moola bandha is a contraction of the perineal muscles that stimulates the sensory-motor and autonomic nervous system in the pelvic region, thereby enforcing parasympathetic activity in the body. This contraction has been shown to directly affect the gonads and perineal body/cervix, potentially alleviating period pain, childbirth pain, and sexual difficulties in women. Moola bandha is also thought to aid in controlling testosterone levels in men and treat premature ejaculation.
Incorporating moola bandha into pelvic floor muscle exercises can help women become more aware of their sensations of arousal in the genital area, leading to improved desire and overall sexual experience.
The Reliability of the Evidence
While the potential sexual benefits of yoga may evoke excitement, it is essential to consider the vast discrepancy between empirical, or experimental, evidence and anecdotal evidence available online. Nonetheless, several studies have demonstrated improvements in sexual satisfaction and function for both men and women, although most of these have small sample sizes and lack control groups.
However, more recent studies, focusing on women with conditions such as metabolic syndrome, have yielded stronger evidence. For instance, a randomized controlled trial found that a 12-week yoga program led to "significant improvement" in arousal and lubrication for these women, while no such improvements were noted in the non-yoga group. Improvements in blood pressure were also observed, strengthening the argument that yoga could be an effective treatment for sexual dysfunction in women with metabolic syndrome.
Another randomized controlled trial reported improvements in sexual function and physical ability for women living with multiple sclerosis, whereas women in the control group experienced worsening symptoms.
While the body of research supporting yoga's benefits for sexual health is growing, additional research is required to fully ascertain the extent of these advantages and whether "yogasms" are a real and achievable phenomenon. For now, incorporating yoga into daily routines may very well prove to be a valuable step towards enriching our sexual lives and pelvic floor health.
Yoga, with its potential to modulate the body's inflammatory response and stimulate brain development, may have an impact on sexual health beyond just enhancing sexual experiences. In a study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, postmenopausal women who practiced yoga for 12 weeks reported significant improvements in all aspects of the Female Sexual Function Index. For men, a 12-week yoga program led by Dr. Vikas Dhikav demonstrated improvements in sexual satisfaction as evaluated by the Male Sexual Quotient. The mechanisms behind these benefits are believed to include yoga's ability to regulate attention, lower stress levels, and activate the nervous system responsible for relaxation, which are closely linked with improvements in sexual response. However, more research is needed to fully understand the extent of yoga's advantages on sexual health and the effectiveness of yogic practices like moola bandha for treating sexual dysfunction.
