Is Yoga a Cold Prevention Remedy?

For the past couple years, I've barely had a cold. I've been feeling clever thinking that my yoga routine has been keeping the colds at bay. Many yoga practitioners swear by the benefits of yoga for preventing simple diseases (like colds) - and even in helping to alleviate more complex things like asthma. When I'm not traveling, I try to go to yoga 4 times a week.

But then last week, I started getting a cold. Since I've been travelling, I haven't been going to yoga as regularly as I normally do, so I'm left wondering if my drop off in yoga left me more vulnerable or if it was just my imagination that yoga was keeping the colds at bay. Certainly, since I've returned home and re-started my yoga routine, I seem to be doing better again (that is until yesterday when I felt the full-on return of aches). That could also be because I went to the water park on Friday in brisk windy 70 degrees. Who's to know.

There are two poses that are supposed to be particularly good at helping your immunity.

The shoulder stand (no, this is not a picture of me) is called the "queen of poses". As you do this pose, you are tucking your chin into your chest and massaging your thyroid gland. This is supposed to help release a lot of toxins from your thyroid - which can only be good, right? When I first started doing this pose, I'd actually get a bit claustrophobic because having my chin tucked in so far made it more difficult to breathe. So, you do have to figure out how to breathe a bit differently, which forces air into new parts of your lungs - also helping to clear areas of your lungs that don't normally get much air.

If you're good at this pose, you should hold it for 1-3 minutes. Usually, I end up holding it for about 1 minute in my classes (or some variation of the pose).
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One word of warning, this pose requires some warm up - so don't just try it - first do some full-body stretches beforehand..
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The headstand is another great pose for helping your immunity. Yoga theory holds that there's great benefit in being upside down (inverted). It helps to direct blood into different parts of your body and forces different breathing (as in the shoulder stand). The headstand is particularly great for helping to deliver blood to your head - specifically to your pituitary gland. This gland helps regulate several hormones in your body and can be a great source of benefit for many different symptoms. But specifically for colds, it helps to clear your chest of congestion and directs a different pressure onto your diaphram to breathing into different areas of your lungs.

This pose doesn't require much warm up - but you may want to do it against a wall if you're worried about falling over.


So, the next time you feel a cold coming on, give these two poses a try for a couple of days and see if they help.