Your Brain on Yoga – Movement as the Gateway for Lifelong Cognitive Vitality

Thursdays, June 5, 12, 19, 26 and July 3, 2025
1:30 pm Eastern / 10:30 am Pacific

Join Us Live or View the Recordings

What if you could enhance your brain health and potentially reduce your risk of cognitive decline through mindful movement practices? Modern neuroscience is revealing what yoga practitioners have long suspected: movement, breath, and body awareness are powerful tools for maintaining and enhancing cognitive function at any age.

In this comprehensive five-week course, you’ll discover how specific yoga-based practices can support brain health through multiple pathways – from enhancing neural connectivity through mindful movement to optimizing brain function through conscious breathing and refined body awareness. Each session builds upon the previous ones, creating a complete toolkit for cognitive wellness that you can maintain throughout your life.

Drawing on cutting-edge research and time-tested yoga wisdom, this course offers practical, accessible approaches to maintaining cognitive vitality. Whether you’re concerned about age-related memory changes, seeking to enhance your current cognitive function, or simply curious about the profound connection between movement and brain health, this course provides both the scientific foundation and practical tools you need.

Session 1: The Movement-Memory Connection – Why Movement is Your Brain’s Best Friend
The relationship between movement and memory is more profound than scientists ever imagined. In this foundational session, we’ll explore fascinating new research showing how physical activity – especially mindful, yoga-based movement – creates positive changes in your brain’s memory centers. You’ll discover why something as simple as coordinated movement can spark the growth of new neural pathways and enhance cognitive function at any age.

Through gentle yet powerful yoga practices, we’ll explore how to wake up the brain-body connection in ways that feel nurturing and energizing, not depleting. This session is specifically designed to help you develop sustainable movement patterns that support brain health while honoring your body’s current energy levels and needs. Whether you’re a yoga teacher looking to deepen your personal practice, or someone seeking to maintain cognitive vitality as you age, you’ll learn practical techniques that can be easily integrated into your daily routine.

We’ll conclude with simple yet powerful practices that combine gentle movement with mindful awareness – the perfect foundation for building a brain-healthy movement practice that you’ll actually look forward to maintaining. You’ll leave this session understanding not just the ‘why’ behind movement for brain health, but also practical, accessible ways to put this knowledge into action, even on days when motivation might be low or energy fluctuating.

This session lays the groundwork for our entire journey together, offering a blueprint for bringing more mindful movement into your life in ways that support both brain health and overall wellbeing.

Session 2: Balance for Better Brain Function – The Surprising Link Between Balance and Memory
Did you know that your sense of balance is intimately connected with your ability to form and retain memories? Recent neuroscience research has revealed that the same parts of the brain that process balance and spatial orientation also play crucial roles in memory formation and cognitive function. As we age, maintaining and challenging our balance becomes increasingly important not just for physical stability, but for keeping our minds sharp and clear.

In this fascinating session, we’ll explore how your vestibular system – your body’s internal balance mechanism – communicates directly with your hippocampus, the brain’s memory center. Through carefully designed yoga sequences, you’ll experience firsthand how mindful balance practices can wake up neural pathways and enhance brain plasticity – your brain’s remarkable ability to form new connections throughout life. We’ll progress from simple standing poses to more challenging balance sequences, always offering modifications to ensure everyone can participate safely and effectively.

You’ll learn how to work with your body’s natural balance mechanisms in ways that feel both challenging and nurturing. We’ll explore how combining breath awareness with balance poses can deepen their impact on brain function, while also making the practices more accessible and enjoyable. Special attention will be given to understanding age-related changes in balance and how to work with them proactively through your yoga practice.

This session provides practical tools for maintaining and enhancing both physical stability and mental clarity as you age. You’ll leave with a deeper understanding of the balance-memory connection and a toolkit of practices that you can easily incorporate into your daily routine to support both physical stability and cognitive vitality.

Session 3: Breath and Brain Clarity – Breathe Your Way to Better Brain Health
The ancient yogis understood something profound that modern science is now validating: the way we breathe directly impacts how we think, feel, and function. Research has shown that specific breathing patterns can actually change our brain waves, reduce stress hormones, and enhance cognitive function. In this transformative session, we’ll explore how conscious breathing practices can create an optimal environment for brain health and mental clarity.

At the heart of this exploration is the vagus nerve – your body’s master regulator of the rest-and-digest response. Through specific yogic breathing techniques (pranayama), we’ll learn how to activate this crucial nerve pathway, helping to reduce mental fog, enhance focus, and create the kind of mental clarity that supports better memory and cognitive function. You’ll discover how simple adjustments to your breathing pattern can shift your nervous system from a stress response to a state of alert calm – the perfect condition for learning and memory formation.

We’ll explore a variety of breathing practices that optimize oxygen delivery to your brain while activating your body’s natural relaxation response. These include traditional yogic techniques adapted for modern lifestyles, combining gentle movement with breath awareness to enhance their cognitive benefits. Special attention will be given to practices that you can easily incorporate into your daily routine, whether you’re at your desk, in traffic, or preparing for an important meeting.

By the end of this session, you’ll understand why breath awareness is such a powerful tool for brain health, and you’ll have practical techniques to help you maintain mental clarity and cognitive function throughout your day. These practices offer a natural, accessible way to support your brain health while creating a greater sense of ease and well-being in your daily life.

Session 4: Memory Enhancement Through Movement – Move More, Remember Better
In this culminating session, we’ll bring together everything we’ve learned about the movement-memory connection while exploring cutting-edge research on how specific movement patterns can enhance cognitive function and potentially slow age-related memory decline. Recent studies have shown that mindful movement practices don’t just maintain brain health – they can actually help create new neural pathways throughout our lives, offering hope and practical solutions for maintaining cognitive vitality as we age.

We’ll explore progressive movement sequences that challenge your brain in novel ways, combining cross-body movements, balance challenges, and breath awareness into a comprehensive approach to brain health. These carefully designed yoga-based practices work to enhance neural connectivity while being gentle enough to practice regularly. You’ll learn how to sequence movements in ways that challenge your memory and coordination while maintaining the mindful awareness that makes yoga so powerful for brain health.

This session provides practical strategies for incorporating brain-healthy movement into your daily life, no matter how busy your schedule might be. We’ll explore how to turn ordinary daily activities into opportunities for enhancing cognitive function, and you’ll learn to recognize the signs that your brain is benefiting from these practices. Special attention will be given to creating sustainable habits that can serve you for years to come.

As we conclude our journey together, you’ll receive a practical blueprint for maintaining cognitive vitality through movement, bringing together all the elements we’ve explored – balance, breath, bilateral coordination, and mindful awareness. You’ll leave with a clear understanding of how to maintain and enhance your brain health through regular movement practices that are both effective and enjoyable.

Session 5: The Inner Compass – Interoceptive Awareness for Brain Health
Recent neuroscience has revealed a fascinating connection between brain health and our ability to sense and interpret internal bodily signals – a skill known as interoceptive awareness. This concluding session explores how developing a refined awareness of our body’s internal landscape can enhance cognitive function and create greater resilience against age-related cognitive decline.

Think of interoceptive awareness as your body’s internal GPS system – one that’s intimately connected with memory, emotional regulation, and cognitive processing. Through carefully guided yoga practices, we’ll explore how to strengthen this vital sense that helps us navigate not just our physical well-being, but also our mental clarity and emotional balance. You’ll discover how enhanced body awareness can help reduce stress, improve decision-making, and support overall brain health.

In this session, we’ll work with gentle, mindful movement practices specifically designed to enhance your ability to sense and interpret subtle internal signals. You’ll learn how to recognize and respond to your body’s messages more effectively, creating a stronger bridge between body awareness and cognitive function. We’ll explore how this enhanced internal awareness can help you make better choices about movement, rest, and stress management – all crucial factors in maintaining brain health.

As we conclude our five-week journey, you’ll understand how developing stronger interoceptive awareness can become a powerful tool for maintaining cognitive vitality. The practices we’ll explore offer a natural way to enhance the mind-body connection while supporting both immediate and long-term brain health. You’ll leave with practical techniques for cultivating this important skill in your daily life, adding another powerful dimension to your brain-health toolkit.

This final session brings together all the elements we’ve explored – movement, balance, breath, and internal awareness – into a comprehensive approach to brain health that you can maintain throughout your life. The combination of these practices offers a holistic strategy for maintaining cognitive vitality while enhancing your overall sense of well-being and body-mind connection.

Thursdays, June 5, 12, 19, 26 and July 3, 2025
1:30 pm Eastern / 10:30 am Pacific

Join Us Live or View the Recordings

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Eva Norlyk Smith is co-founder of YogaUOnline & creator of the Healthy Back, Healthy Body program, aimed at restoring posture integrity. Lynn Crimando serves as teaching mentor for YogaUOnline’s Wellness Educator Program.

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