Study shows Hot Yoga Helps Ease Depression

The Original Hot Yoga might help reduce moderate-to-severe depression, according to a randomized controlled trial published online Oct. 23, 2023, by the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Harvard Medical School researchers randomly assigned 65 adults with depression (ages 18 to 60, some on antidepressants) to one of two groups.

People in the first group were told to attend at least two 90-minute hot yoga sessions (in local hot yoga studios) per week, for eight weeks. People in the other group were placed on a waiting list for eight weeks.

Compared with people on the waiting list, people in the yoga group had significantly reduced depression symptoms by the end of the study, even if they averaged only one yoga class per week. For example, symptoms eased by 50% or more for about 60% of the yoga participants, compared with 6% of the wait-listed people.

The study suggests that hot yoga can be used alone or in addition to medications to treat depression. The study didn’t investigate whether hot yoga was better than other types of yoga for treating depression. But heat has been proven to increase seratonin levels and this could also have been an influencing factor.

Read about the main benefits of Hot Yoga including a nervous system reset.