Refresh Body co-founder Logan Richardson joins Lunch Break with Tanya Rivero and explains how his company, Refresh Body, provides yoga, massage and Pilates to boardrooms nationwide to engage workers, improve productivity and improve retention rates. Photo: Refresh Body

The University of Adelaide and Flinders University study found that chronically stressed women who practised yoga once a week for eight weeks experienced biological changes as well as positive psychological benefits.

Yoga instructor Sue Czuchwicki. Picture: Bianca De MarchiSource:News Limited

Senior author of the study, Flinders University’s Dr Sarah Cohen-Woods, said researchers took blood samples from 28 South Australian women who were chronically stressed — half of whom participated in one yoga session a week for eight weeks, while the other half did not — and found that yoga had the potential to change the way the gene associated with inflammation could express itself.

Specifically, the scientists studied the gene associated with inflammation and immune response because chronic stress has been associated with elevated inflammation.

Dr Cohen-Woods said the results in the small number of women provided an impetus for further — and much bigger — studies into the biological mechanisms of yoga.

“Longer-term, by understanding the biological mechanisms of things such as yoga and other exercise, potentially we then perhaps have further avenues for treating stress-related illness,” she said.

“A lot of people are quite sceptical that eight weeks of yoga could make such a change, but we found evidence both cross-sectionally and longitudinally in the study that it does.”

Dr Cohen-Woods said this was a world-first study of yoga participants.

Yoga devotee, Sue Czuchwicki, who runs YogaFusion in Norwood, said she was not surprised by the findings.

“Yoga has a profound effect on a person’s levels of stress,” she said.

“Even just at the end of one class, I see them walking away a new person.”

Originally published as Unknown secrets of yoga unlocked