The Shala Daily

l

Last week we looked at research showing that sustained practice reduces the brain’s fear center. Today, a different direction: what practice builds.

A 2017 study compared brain images of 21 female yogis aged 60 and older to a control group. The finding: yogis had thicker left prefrontal cortexes—the region that typically thins over time, leading to impaired memory and attention.

The women in the study had practiced for an average of eight years. The researchers concluded that the longer you practice yoga, the more you protect your brain.

🧠 The Architecture of Attention

The prefrontal cortex governs executive function—working memory, attention, decision-making, the ability to hold something in mind while doing something else. It’s what allows us to stay present rather than scattered.

It’s also one of the first regions to deteriorate with age.

But here’s what struck me: the researchers attributed the cognitive preservation specifically to the concentration required for yoga. Not the stretching. Not the strength. The sustained, directed attention.

This is dharana—the sixth limb of yoga, often translated as concentration or single-pointed focus. Patanjali placed it after the physical practices for a reason. The body settles so the mind can gather.

⏳ Eight Years of Showing Up

Eight years. Not eight weeks. Not eight months.

The study adds to a growing body of research on yoga’s structural effects on the brain, and the timeline matters. These women didn’t protect their prefrontal cortexes through intensity. They did it through duration.

This is tapas expressed across years—the steady discipline that transforms not through force but through faithful return. The brain responds to what we ask of it repeatedly.

Every time we practice dharana—holding attention on breath, on drishti, on the felt sense of a pose—we’re asking the prefrontal cortex to work. And tissue that works, grows.

🪷 Building and Unbuilding

Together with the Rotterdam study on amygdala reduction, a picture emerges: yoga simultaneously builds what serves us and reduces what doesn’t.

The prefrontal cortex—seat of presence and clarity—thickens. The amygdala—seat of fear and reactivity—shrinks.

The eight limbs describe this dual movement. The external practices (yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara) clear away obstacles. The internal practices (dharana, dhyana, samadhi) cultivate what remains.

What the yogis mapped philosophically, the neuroscientists are now imaging physically. Different languages for the same truth.

🧘 The Practice Itself

An additional review cited in the research found that yoga may alter DNA and reduce inflammation, having positive impacts on stress response, weight control, and disease prevention. The benefits of meditation compound in ways we’re only beginning to measure.

But measurement isn’t the point. The 60-year-old women in this study didn’t practice yoga to thicken their prefrontal cortexes. They practiced because practice is what practitioners do.

The protection came as a byproduct of presence. The brain changed because they kept showing up.