Sexual Health Enhancement through Yoga Practice: Unveiling its Impact
Unbuttoning the Mysteries: Does Yoga Actually Boost Your Bedroom Game?
In this digital age, every corner of the web is teeming with wellness bloggers touting yoga as the secret sauce to a steamier sex life, backed by personal tales of enhancing intimate experiences. But is the research backing up these claims? Let's float through the realms of science and find out.
Yoga, an ancient practice that originated millennia ago, has been found to positively impact a multitude of health aspects, from mental health to physical fitness.
Conditions like depression, stress, anxiety, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and thyroid problems are just a few on the extensive list of ailments that seem to find relief with the practice of yoga.
Moreover, recent studies shed light on the intricate mechanisms through which yoga yields such benefits. It appears that the venerable exercise lowers the body's inflammatory response, reverses genetic predispositions to stress, reduces cortisol levels, and bolsters proteins that keep the brain young and healthy.
Besides these immense benefits, it's no secret that yoga feels fantastic. With the allure of the elusive coregasm, it's no wonder many tout yoga as an erotic elixir.
Delving deeper into our bodies can opt for replenishing, revitalizing, and undeniably pleasurable. But can yoga's tantalizing poses truly elevate our sex lives? Let's investigate.
Yoga: The Magic Bullet for Ladies' Beds
One of the most celebrated studies in the realm of sexuality and yoga was published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine. Over the course of 12 weeks, 40 women were put through 22 poses, or yogasanas, designed to strengthen their pelvic floors, improve digestion, fortify core abdominal muscles, and uplift mood.
Upon completion of the trial, the women self-reported that their sexual function had significantly improved across all sections of the Female Sexual Function Index, including desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain.
A staggering 75 percent of the participants confessed to better sex lives after yoga training. The poses ranged from trikonasana, the triangle pose, to ardha matsyendra mudra, the half spinal twist, with the full list of asanas accessible here.
Yoga: A Man's Best Friend with Benefits
Yoga's benefits aren't exclusive to the fairer sex. A like-minded 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.
Post trial, the participants declared a substantial improvement in their sexual function, as assessed by the standard Male Sexual Quotient.
Researchers found positive changes in all aspects of male sexual satisfaction, including desire, intercourse satisfaction, performance, confidence, partner synchronization, erection, ejaculatory control, and orgasm.
Also, a comparative trial orchestrated by the same team of researchers revealed that yoga serves as a viable, nonpharmacological alternative to fluoxetine (Prozac) for treating premature ejaculation.
The routine contained 15 yoga poses, from the relatively simpler Kapalbhati, involving sitting with a straight back in a crossed-legged position, chest open, eyes closed, hands on knees, and abdominal muscles engaged, to the more complex and mysterious Dhanurasana, or the Bow Pose.
The Yogic Blueprint for Better Beds
But what exactly is it about yoga that fuels our sex drives? A review of existing literature, led by researchers at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada, shed some light on yoga's sex-intensifying mechanisms.
Leading the charge was Dr. Lori Brotto, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at UBC.
Dr. Brotto and colleagues elaborate that yoga modulates attention and breathing, diminishes anxiety and stress, and serves as a regulator of the nervous system, activating the parasympathetic response, which slows the heart rate, lowers blood pressure,and sparks relaxation.
"All of these effects are associated with improvements in sexual response," write the reviewers, "so it is reasonable that yoga might also be associated with improvements in sexual health."
Psychological factors play a role as well. "Female yoga practitioners have been found to be less likely to objectify their bodies," explain Dr. Brootto and her peers, "and to be more aware of their physical selves."
"This tendency, in turn, may be associated with increased sexual responsibility and assertiveness, and perhaps even sexual desires."
The Potency of the Moola Bandha
Although tales of releasing blocked energy in root chakras and moving kundalini energy up and down the spine to induce orgasms without ejaculation lack rigorous scientific evidence, other yogic concepts may appeal more skeptics.
Moola bandha is one such concept. "Moola bandha is a perineal contraction that stimulates the sensory-motor and the autonomic nervous system in the pelvic region and, as a result, enforces parasympathetic activity in the body," write Dr. Brootto 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 the practice of pelvic floor muscles.
Several studies mentioned by the researchers have suggested that practicing moola bandha may alleviate period pain, childbirth pain, and sexual difficulties in women, in addition to controlling testosterone secretion in men.
Interestingly, moola bandha is similar to the modern, medically recommended Kegel exercises, which are believed to prevent urinary incontinence in women and help both men and women sustain sexual encounters for longer periods.
In fact, many sex therapy centers advocate this yoga practice to help women cultivate the sensation of arousal in the genital area, thus heightening desire and sexual pleasure.
Another pose that champions the pelvic floor muscles is Bhekasana, or the Frog Pose. In addition to enhancing the sexual experience, this pose may aid in easing signs and symptoms of vestibulodynia, pain in the vaginal vestibule, and vaginismus, involuntary vaginal muscle contractions that impede penetrative sex.
The Reliability of Evidence
While it's easy to get swept up in the potential sexual blessings of yoga, it's worth considering the disproportion between the amount of empirical, or experimental, evidence available and that of anecdotal evidence.
The web buzzes with the latter, but the studies that have genuinely tested the effects of yoga on sexual function remain comparatively scarce. Furthermore, most of the aforementioned studies, which found improvements in sexual satisfaction and function for men and women, have relatively modest sample sizes and didn't incorporate control groups.
However, more recent studies focusing on women with sexual dysfunction in conjunction with other conditions have presented stronger evidence.
For instance, a randomized controlled trial examined the effects of yoga on women with metabolic syndrome, a population at a higher risk of sexual dysfunction in general.
For these women, a 12-week yoga program led to significant improvement in arousal and lubrication, whereas such enhancements were not observed in the women who did not practice yoga.
Improvements were also noted in blood pressure, leading 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 study focusing on women living with multiple sclerosis (MS) found that participants who underwent 3 months of yoga training, consisting of eight weekly sessions, demonstrated improvement in physical ability and sexual function, while women in the control group displayed worsened symptoms.
"Yoga techniques may improve physical activities and sexual satisfaction of women with MS," the trial concluded.
While it's high time to excite ourselves about the potential sexual benefits of yoga, it's crucial to keep in mind the need for more scientific evidence to definitively affirm the effectiveness of yoga in our nocturnal activities.
Until future research can ascertain whether "yogasms" are a tangible, attainable reality, we deem it prudent to incorporate yoga into our daily routines. Given that our pelvic muscles won't be complaining, it might not be such a bad idea.
In the realm of sexual health, yoga has emerged as a practice with potential benefits for both men and women, according to various studies. The practice of yoga, known for enhancing mental and physical health, may also boost sexual satisfaction. A study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine found that 40 women who practiced 22 yoga poses for 12 weeks Experienced significant improvement in their Female Sexual Function Index scores. In another study led by Dr. Vikas Dhikav, men reported improved sexual function after a 12-week yoga program.
Moreover, a review of existing literature suggests that yoga's impact on sexual health could be due to its ability to reduce stress, enhance mood, and control the nervous system, thereby fostering better sexual response. The Moola Bandha technique, a perineal contraction practiced in yoga, is thought to have a direct effect on the gonads and perineal body/cervix, potentially alleviating sexual difficulties in women.
Yoga poses like Bhekasana, or the Frog Pose, may aid in easing signs and symptoms of conditions such as vestibulodynia and vaginismus. While the anecdotal evidence for yoga's sexual benefits is abundant, more empirical studies with larger sample sizes and control groups are needed to definitively confirm these claims. However, given the potential benefits for overall health and well-being, incorporating yoga into daily routines seems like a prudent choice.
