Enhanced Sexual Wellbeing through Yoga Practice: Insights into its Potential Advantages
Getting down to the nitty-gritty of it all, the interweb is bustling with wellness blogs that sing the praises of yoga for a mind-blowing sex life. personal anecdotes of how the practice has escalated their bedroom game to new heights. But does science back up these claims? Let's delve into it.
In the world of modern research, yoga is just starting to reveal its wide array of health benefits. From helping with issues like depression, stress, and anxiety, to working wonders for metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and thyroid problems, yoga's list of positive impacts is growing.
Recent studies have gone even further, uncovering the intricacies behind these health benefits. It turns out that yoga helps lower the body's inflammatory response, counters stress-related genetic expression, reduces cortisol levels, and increases the production of a protein that keeps the brain young and healthy.
But does yoga's feel-good factor translate to better sex? Let's examine the research.
Yoga takes women's sexual function to new heights
One often-cited study, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, found that yoga can indeed boost sexual function - particularly for the 45+ women who participated.
After 12 weeks of yoga, these women saw a significant improvement across all sections of the Female Sexual Function Index, including desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain.
An impressive 75% of the women reported improvements in their sex life after their yoga training, which included practicing 22 poses, such as the triangle pose, snake pose, and half spinal twist. You can find the full list of asanas here.
Men also reap the benefits
Yoga doesn't only benefit the fairer sex. A study led by Dr. Vikas Dhikav, a neurologist at the Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi, India, examined the effects of a 12-week yoga program on the sexual satisfaction of men.
By the end of the study, the participants reported significant improvements in their sexual function across all aspects, as measured by the standard Male Sexual Quotient. The researchers also found that yoga is a viable and nonpharmacological alternative to fluoxetine (Prozac) for treating premature ejaculation.
How yoga enhances your sex life
But how exactly does yoga boost your sex life? A review of existing literature led by researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) School of Nursing helps unravel some of these mysteries.
Dr. Lori Brotto, a professor at UBC, is the first author of the review. She and her colleagues explain that yoga regulates attention and breathing, reduces anxiety and stress, and modulates the nervous system to induce relaxation.
These effects are associated with improvements in sexual response, leading the reviewers to suggest, "it is reasonable that yoga might also be associated with improvements in sexual health."
The researchers also highlight psychological mechanisms at play. "Female practitioners of yoga have been found to be less likely to objectify their bodies and more aware of their physical selves," they note, which could in turn promote sexual responsibility, assertiveness, and perhaps desire.
Moola bandha: the secret sauce?
Stories about unleashing blocked energy in root chakras and moving "kundalini energy" up and down the spine to induce ejaculation-free male orgasms may lack robust scientific evidence, but other yogic concepts could make more sense to the skeptics among us.
Moola bandha, for one, is worth a closer look. "Moola bandha is a perineal contraction that stimulates the sensory-motor and autonomic nervous system in the pelvic region, and therefore enforces parasympathetic activity in the body," write Dr. Brotto and her colleagues in their review.
"Specifically, moola bandha is thought to directly innervate the gonads and perineal body/cervix." The video below incorporates the movement into a practice for pelvic floor muscles.
Some studies quoted by the researchers have suggested that practicing moola bandha relieves period pain, childbirth pain, and sexual difficulties in women, as well as treating premature ejaculation and controlling testosterone secretion in men.
Moola bandha shares similarities with movements recommended by modern medicine, like Kegel exercises, which are thought to prevent urinary incontinence and help both women and men enjoy sex for longer. In fact, many sex therapy centers recommend this yoga practice to help women become more aware of their sensations of arousal in the genital area, thus improving desire and sexual experience.
Another yoga pose that strengthens the pelvic floor muscles is bhekasana, or the "frog pose." Apart from enhancing the sexual experience, this pose may help ease symptoms of vestibulodynia, a condition causing pain in the vestibule of the vagina, as well as vaginismus, an involuntary contraction of vaginal muscles that prevents women from enjoying penetrative sex.
Thestate of the evidence
While the potential sexual benefits of yoga are exciting, it's essential to remember the vast difference between the amount of empirical, or experimental, evidence, and anecdotal evidence.
While the Internet is awash with the latter, the studies probing the benefits of yoga for sexual function remain few. Additionally, most of the studies mentioned above – which found improvements in sexual satisfaction and function for both men and women – have small sample sizes and didn't include control groups.
However, more recent studies, focusing on women with sexual dysfunction in addition to other conditions, have yielded stronger evidence. For example, a randomized controlled trial examined the effects of yoga in women with metabolic syndrome, a population with a higher risk of sexual dysfunction overall.
For these women, a 12-week yoga program led to "significant improvement" in arousal and lubrication, whereas such improvements were not seen in the women who did not practice yoga. Impressive improvements were also found in blood pressure, prompting the researchers to conclude that "yoga may be an effective treatment for sexual dysfunction in women with metabolic syndrome as well as for metabolic risk factors."
Another randomized trial looked at the sexual benefits of yoga for women living with multiple sclerosis (MS). The participants undertook 3 months of yoga training, consisting of eight weekly sessions.
Crucially, women in the yoga group "showed improvement in physical ability" and sexual function, while women in the control group "manifested exacerbated symptoms."
"Yoga techniques may improve physical activities and sexual satisfaction function of women with MS," the study concluded.
While we need more scientific evidence to support yoga's benefits for our sex lives, the foundation is undeniably there. Until further research clarifies whether "yogasms" are a real, achievable thing, we think that giving yoga a go could prove incredibly rewarding – and our pelvic muscles will definitely appreciate it.
- The Journal of Sexual Medicine published a study showing that yoga can boost sexual function, especially for women aged 45 and older, as they experienced significant improvements in desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain after 12 weeks of practice.
- Science has started to explore the effects of yoga on sexual health for men, with a study led by Dr. Vikas Dhikav finding that a 12-week yoga program significantly improved the sexual function of male participants.
- Research from the University of British Columbia suggests that yoga regulates attention and breathing, reduces anxiety and stress, and modulates the nervous system to induce relaxation, which are associated with improvements in sexual response, making yoga a possible contender for improving sexual health.
