For Yoga Teachers

56. How stress impacts the brain: A guide for yoga teachers

• Episode 56

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This episode looks at some of the ways that stress can impact the brain. In the interests of full disclosure - this episode might seem a bit doom and gloom, as it focuses on the impacts on the brain of stress. However, if you join the free workshop: Understand WHY yoga works: Yoga's role in stress reduction - that’ll be the light at the end of the gloomy tunnel!


In this episode, we cover:

  • A brief recap of what stress is
  • Then we’ll look at three main areas 1) the pre-frontal cortex 2) the amygdala and 3) the telomeres

All of this information is taken from, and inspired by our Yoga and the Neurobiology of Stress module coming up in June 2025 - so if you’ve had your eye on that training, or you wish you could have a sneaky peek in to our 300 hour training - well there you go!

See the shownotes here

The pre-frontal cortex

The pre-frontal cortex is a major brain structure that affects thought, insight and emotion. When it’s in full working order it helps to assess situations and suggest useful ways to plan and respond to these situations. However being in a stressed state can take the pre-frontal cortex offline, and even reduce the size of it. 


Amygdala

You might have heard the of the amygdala as the brain’s smoke detector and that’s exactly right. When a smoke detector detects smoke, it sets off an alarm. When the amygdala detects danger; i.e. a stressor, it sets of the internal danger alarms; the Sympathetic Nervous System and the HPA axis. 

In anxious states, and this is super important - the amygdala becomes enlarged and hypersensitive.


Telomeres

Our genetic information is stored in chromosomes, which duplicate again and again and again. At the end of the chromosomes are telomeres, which are there to protect the information. The thing is that stress can cause the telomeres to shorten, which then means that the information in the chromosome might be copied incorrectly, and the impa

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 [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to For Yoga Teachers. This podcast has been created to help yoga teachers teach with passion, avoid burnout and earn a fair living.

 this episode is looking at some of the ways that stress can impact the brain. Now, this is most certainly not, Hi, I have everything all figured out and I'm talking to you from my no stress paradise. You poor, poor people suffering with stress, don't you know, you shouldn't be stressed because it's bad for you.

Not at all. I have been in varying states of mild to quite impactful stress, like since early 2020 really. I had my eldest child while we were in. [00:01:00] Our first lockdown and my studio was closed as well. So there was all of the pandemic stress, all of the newborn learning and stress and the financial impact of having a studio that was closed and it was closed for many, many months.

 And since then, things have been a challenge, really, so, yeah. All that to say, I am most certainly not on my soapbox. if you have been struggling with stress, or you teach people who are, or both, we're in this together. But, I'm really, really fascinated by why yoga is such an incredible, impactful and arguably accessible tool.

 That helps with reducing stress on so many levels. And this is why I'm leading a free online workshop to break down and investigate yoga's role in reducing stress. so in the interest of full disclosure, this episode.

[00:02:00] Might seem a bit doom and gloom because it's focusing on the impact on the brain of stress However, if you join the free workshop, It will be the light at the end of the doomy and gloomy tunnel, I promise.

So book your space at the link in the show notes. Okay. Here's where we're going. We'll We'll have a very brief recap of what stress is And then we'll look at three main areas of the brain that are impacted by stress.

One, the prefrontal cortex. Two, the amygdala. And three, the telomeres. There's probably, and likelyly, many, many more things at play between stress and the brain. So, I've chosen, for want of a better word, these three. Because, A, I think they're reasonably understandable, reasonably easy to get your head around, and B, because I think understanding these can [00:03:00] really give you confidence teaching yoga because you understand that what you're offering is so incredibly beneficial on so many levels.

 All of this information is taken from and inspired By our yoga and the neurobiology of stress module coming up in June 2025. So if you've had your eye on that training Or, you wish you could have a bit of a sneaky peek into our 300 hour training. Well, there you go. Little present.

Okay, let's get cracking.

 A reminder of the two stress responses. The sympathetic nervous system and the HPA axis. And these are both survival mechanisms that want to keep you alive. That's it. That's their main purpose is to keep you alive. Part of this is sending energy to structures that facilitate this immediate survival and [00:04:00] deprioritizing structures that are not required for immediate survival.

 Whilst this is incredibly useful in the jungle, when a sabre toothed tiger might jump out at you, it's actually not super useful in our modern day environment, where stressors are more likely to need a cool head, rational thought, and for you to not run away from them. So as people, and as yoga practitioners, and as yoga teachers, We want to understand the many mechanisms that yoga has in place to reduce the impact of stress and this is what we'll cover in the workshop.

 For now, let's look at the impact of stress on the brain. The prefrontal cortex. Funnily enough, we just talked about the prefrontal cortex a lot on our Yoga Nidra and Yoga Wisdom training. Do you know, I absolutely love [00:05:00] it when everything links together. I really do. The prefrontal cortex is a major brain structure that affects thought.

Insight and emotion. When it's in full working order, it helps to assess situations and suggests useful ways to plan and to respond to the situations. However, being in a stressed state can take the prefrontal cortex offline, as it were, and can even reduce the size of it. When you think about it, this makes sense.

 When the body senses a stressor, it will prioritize survival, and the prefrontal cortex isn't in the response to survival. So in the interest of the body spending energy to give us the best chance of survival, we don't need the prefrontal cortex. So let me just recap on that briefly.

 The [00:06:00] prefrontal cortex is an important area for assessing situations and suggesting appropriate responses, but in times of stress, it's taken offline and it can even reduce in size. The amygdala. You might have heard of the amygdala as the brain's smoke detector, and that's exactly right. When a smoke detector detects smoke, it sets off an alarm.

When the amygdala detects danger, i. e. a stressor, the internal danger alarms, the sympathetic nervous system and the HPA axis. Check out last week's episode if you're just not sure what I'm on about here. In anxious states, and this is super important, the amygdala becomes enlarged and hypersensitive.

 I'm just going to repeat that. The amygdala becomes bigger and more sensitive in anxious states. [00:07:00] So, essentially, when a stressor appears in your life, your amygdala will respond by getting bigger and increasing its sensitivity. which then means that you're more reactive to the next stressor, which then potentially makes you even more reactive to the following stressor, which under other circumstances might not have been something that you even noticed, but the smoke alarm is on super duper high alert, looking for anything that could be construed as danger.

 Let me just recap on what we've covered so far. So firstly. The two stress responses are survival mechanisms, and they only want to keep you alive. Part of this keeping you alive is sending valuable energy to survival structures, so the amygdala, the smoke detector, And not to the prefrontal cortex, the home of assessing situations well and suggesting useful relevant behaviours.

 Okay, now it's time to move on to the telomeres. [00:08:00] Telomeres. Apart from being a word that sounds quite awful with a Yorkshire accent, telomeres are potentially a touch tricky to explain and understand. So, at the risk of stating the blind and obvious, you don't need to know or remember any of these terms.

Just listen and let what needs to go in.

Our genetic information is stored in chromosomes, which duplicate again and again and again. At the end of the chromosomes are telomeres, which are there to protect the very important information. a bit like the plastic end on your shoelace. If you tie your shoelaces five times, no problem.

But if you tie them 5, 000 times, you'll need something on the end of the shoelace to protect it from fraying. And that is exactly the job of the telomeres in the chromosomes. The thing is, that stress can [00:09:00] cause the telomeres to shorten, which then means that the information in the chromosome might be copied incorrectly.

And the impact of this on a person's health could be huge. Okay. So I did say that it might be a bit diggum and gloom. So please yoga teacher come and join me for the light at the end of the tunnel. I promise it's just absolutely amazing. It's super inspiring and absolutely mind blowing how much yoga helps mitigate the impact of stress.

The workshop is totally free. It's a sneaky peek into the neurobiology of stress module of our 300 hour training and it's free. I've said that already. So I really look forward to seeing you then and until then, happy teaching. [00:10:00]