Supporting Your Immune System With Yoga

by Nina

Last week Brad and I got our flu shots—senior strength—because we know that as we age our immune systems become weaker, both increasing our chances of getting sick and slowing the recovery process when we do get sick.  So we’re all for taking advantage of what modern medicine has to offer us to help us increase our immunity to various diseases.

But we also know that at the same time we’re taking advantage of what modern medicine has to offer, we can also use yoga to support our immune systems in general. There is actually a surprising number of techniques you can use! Because we’re all in the same boat these days as we enter flu and cold season (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), I thought today would be a good time to review why and how yoga can bolster your immune system.

First, I’ll provide a brief overview of what your immune system is and how it works. This will help you understand why yoga is beneficial supporting your immunity and to choose the right practices for you. I’ll follow that overview with a section that provides information about which yoga practices can help.

About Your Immune System

Briefly, your immune system maintains your health by identifying and, if possible, eliminating foreign invaders in your body, including viruses, bacteria, and parasites that make it past the skin, lungs, and gut lining of our bodies, as well as foreign bodies, such as dirt or slivers, that get under our skin. It also scans your body fluids for early cancer cells and eliminates many of them. To do this work, the immune system consists of five basic components:

Bone Marrow. Your bone marrow produces a variety of cells, some of which your immune system uses to protect you.

White Blood Cells. Both your bone marrow and thymus gland produce the various specialized white blood cells, such as T cells, that are used to protect you.

Circulatory System. This system moves white blood cells around your body to where they are needed.

Lymphatic System. This system reclaims body fluids that have escaped from your capillaries, as well as any unwanted molecules or organisms that might be in that fluid. The lymph nodes filter the lymphatic fluid flowing through your lymph vessels and trigger your immune response when it detects infectious organisms, dirt molecules, or cancer cells.

Digestive Tract. Specialized immune tissue along your digestive tract, such as the tonsils and Peyer’s patches in the small intestines, screen your food and water for foreign invaders and trigger your immune response when appropriate.

Your immune system also interacts with several other systems in your body. From our perspective as yoga practitioners, the most important is its relationship with the nervous system because your nervous system has a direct effect on how well your immune system functions.

When you’re in immediate danger, your nervous system triggers your Fight, Flight, or Freeze response. At this time, it also temporarily suppresses your immune system because your body needs resources to deal with immediate threats (you might need to fight, run, or hide). Once the immediate danger you’re in has passed, your nervous system switches to the Rest and Digest state. In this state, your immune system returns to normal and can once again provide its protective services.

Because you were possibly in danger of being physically harmed, immediately following your stressful experience, you actually get a boost in immune function However, even though your immune system is initially stronger after a period of acute stress, if, instead of relaxing, your stress continues and becomes chronic, your immune system starts functioning much less efficiently.  That’s because your body is always diverting some of its resources to prepare for fight, flight or freeze actions on your part.  So being in a state of chronic stress increases your risk of developing serious infections and possibly, as some evidence suggests, autoimmune diseases. Furthermore, chronic stress alone can cause life-threatening conditions from heart disease to high blood pressure.

On the other hand, when you’re in the state of relaxation we call Rest and Digest, your immune system is functioning optimally. And this is why stress management—something that yoga excels at—is so beneficial for supporting your immune system.

Supporting Your Immune System with Yoga

In general, regularly practicing active yoga poses for exercise promotes your overall health, keeping your body strong and flexible and helping your cardiovascular system, digestive system, and respiratory systems to function optimally. But you can also focus specifically on supporting your immune system through any or all the ways I’ll describe below.

You can use these techniques to help prevent illnesses during cold and flu season or to build up a depleted immune system during recovery from an illness or a long period of stress. You can also use these techniques while undergoing treatments for more serious illnesses that negatively impact your immune system, such as cancer treatments.

Stress Management. Because your immune system works most effectively when you’re in Rest and Digest state, spending as much time as possible in that state will bolster your immune system, whether you are healthy or ill.

You can think of it as being like supporting your child in doing their homework by turning off the TV, giving them a peaceful space to work in, taking their phone away, etc. They’re going to be more productive during that time without distractions!

See Stress Management for When You’re Stressed for a list of different techniques you can use to trigger the Relaxation Response. Because it can take up to 10 or 15 minutes to trigger the Relaxation Response, be prepared to spend a significant amount of time practicing yoga for stress management. Trust me, spending a lot of time in the Rest and Digest state is worth it—not just for your immune system but for a whole host of other benefits.

Yoga’s stress management tools can also help reduce stress eating and other unhealthy stress-related behaviors that negatively impact the immune system. While none of the stress management techniques are more effective than others, you may find that one or two work best for you. So, if possible, try all of them so you can see which ones you prefer. You can practice any of these stress management techniques as a part of your regular asana practice or alone, at a different time of day.

Circulatory and Lymphatic Systems. Exercise in general improves the circulation of your blood and lymphatic fluids. The movements you make as you exercise pump your muscles, and that pumping action assists the flow of blood and lymphatic fluids throughout your body.

In your asana practice, if you want to focus on improving your circulation, you can practice dynamic poses and flow sequences for your asana practice. Moving in and out of poses with your breath really pumps your muscles. Although not as effective as moving dynamically, you can even use static poses to improve circulation by rhythmically contracting and relaxing as many muscle groups as possible while in the poses.

Inverted poses also have beneficial effects on your circulatory and lymphatic system. When one or both of your legs are higher than your heart, gravity encourages the return of blood and lymphatic fluids from your lower body to your heart. Some inverted poses you can practice for this purpose include:

1. Legs Up the Wall pose with a support under your pelvis or your back flat on the floor, or the version with a support under your pelvis and your feet and calves resting on the seat of a chair.
2. Relaxation pose with your back flat on the floor and your feet and calves resting on a chair seat or a blanket stack.
3. Reclined Cobbler’s pose with your back flat on the floor and your feet and calves resting on a chair seat or a blanket stack.

A bonus is that these inverted poses are all stress reducing poses as well. You could also try Reclined Leg Stretch pose, giving each leg a good amount of time in the inverted position.

Digestion. Because your digestive system interacts with your immune system, if you have digestive problems, consider using yoga to address those problems, which will have the added value of support your immune system. See Friday Q&A: Yoga for Better Digestion for some ideas. In addition, a healthy diet is important for supporting your immune system. If maintaining a healthy diet is difficult for you, see Yoga for Healthy Aging: An Overview  for some tips.

Sleep. Sleeping well is very important for helping you stay healthy and keeping your immune system functioning optimally. If you’re having sleep problems, yoga can be really helpful. See When You Can’t Sleep: Yoga Solutions for Insomnia for lots of helpful tips.

For more information on specific techniques for using yoga to support your immune system, see Techniques for Supporting Your Immune System.

 

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