Connecting Mind and Body through Yoga and Embodied Cognition

By neuroanth
Posted: May 19, 2014

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By Tess Standfast

Yogic postures

So, what is with all this talk about the “mind-body connection”? It pops up in
arenas all over the internet, within communities such as alternative medicine,
among health enthusiasts, and even amongst scholars such as psychologists and
neuroscientists.

Walk into any local health food-store and take a look at the bulletin board of
ads, and you will most undoubtedly come across ads for mind-body therapies
and practitioners. Browse through some of their publications and notice this
same phrase sprinkled throughout and highlighted as subject matter amongst
the articles.

Living on the Gulf Coast of Florida, I’ve also noticed a growing trend of more
and more yoga mats on the beach in the mornings and an influx of new studios
popping up around town. On the National Center for Complementary and
Alternative Medicine’s (NCCAM) website, Yoga is defined as “a mind and body
practice with origins in ancient Indian philosophy.”

Take a look at a yoga practitioner who can do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZWB-
DVdDUgI

Considering the definition of yoga mentioned above, what goes on in the

interplay of mind-body? And more specifically, how does the body, by way of
sensations and movements practiced in yoga, contribute to the workings of the
mind?
One way to talk about the workings of the mind is through a focus on cognition,
defined as “the mental processes associated with attention, perception, thinking,
learning and memory” by the INS Dictionary of Neuropsychology, (Koizol,
Budding and Chidekel 2012, 506). Embodied cognition goes a step further, and
recognizes that cognition is often based on the experiences, movements, and
structures of the body.

Movements and sensations by way of practiced postures and breath control in

yoga are a means of embodied experience. I will first describe the philosophy
and physical practice of yoga in this post as a way to understand how the body
can cultivate the mind. Then I will turn to embodied cognition and its attention
to perception-action systems of the body, and develop the argument that
sensorimotor experience in yoga creates and alters cognition.

Yoga cultivates the connection of body and mind

As a graduate of a 200-hour yoga teacher-training course, I can expand upon

the mind and body practice of yoga. By beginning to practice yoga, I began to
notice a heightened sense of my bodily awareness. In particular, I began to
notice my emotions and states of mind also correlated with bodily postures. For
example, when I felt bogged down by stress from work, I noticed that my
shoulders and neck would become very stiff and tight. When I was sad, I would
assume a position of folded arms and downcast face.

There are plenty of common associations we know of that connect mind states
of emotions to bodily movements postures. Being happy, one may find a “spring
in their step” or even become motivated to do a little dance. Also, being proud is
sometimes associated with “standing tall”, and being anxious may lead someone
to tap their foot or bite their nails. “Power posing” even leads to neuroendocrine
changes in the body.

It is widely known and taught in the practice of yoga that not only can the mind
influence the body as seen in the examples above, but the body may well
influence the mind, as work by Felicitas Goodman on body postures and trance
has shown. The postures and movements taught in yoga practice can help shape
the mind and its mental processes in cognition, specifically by directing
attention inward.

Teachers of physical yoga practices encourage students to pay attention to the

breath, linking breath to movement, and using this focus to observe oneself and
the workings of the mind, such as reactions one may have to a difficult pose.
Becoming more aware of the body and mind in practice can help one become
more aware of the body and mind in everyday life, which in turn influences our
perceptions, experience and overall cognition. Cultivating this inner-attention in
the physical practice then extends to inner-awareness in meditation, which
directly influences our brain’s cognition. Research has linked breathing,
meditation, and health together, showing how this impact on mind can then
affect the body.

Meditative pose
One of the most important texts of yoga, The Yoga Sutras, was written by
Patanjali who inherited his knowledge about yoga from the Vedas, the most
ancient records of Indian culture.

What is Yoga? Patanjali answers this question in sutra 1.2 with chitti vritti
nirodhah, Sanskrit that commonly translates to yoga being the “cessation of the
fluctuations of the mind.”

Practicing postures (asana) in yoga and breath control (pranayama) are a means
of preparing oneself to sit in meditation. In meditation the focus is on the
sensory awareness of the breath and when thoughts arise in the mind, they are
simply “let go” by bringing the attention back to the breath. This practice further
works towards the final stage of intense concentration in meditation, (samadhi)
where the practitioner and the object of meditation become one, which is what
yoga is all about.

The literal translation of yoga is “to yoke” which means “to join” or “to unite”.
Samadhi can also be described as total “absorption”, where the sense of the
physical body is absolved into the complete attention with the object of
concentration. We can then say in this state that the mind and body are united
into one, and it is this connection of mind and body that has recently
disseminated into health mediums and communities in the United States.

I realize that to someone who does not practice yoga, these may be foreign
concepts, but I believe as an example it is a way to understand how the
kinesthetic and sensorimotor aspects of a practice can work to influence and
even control mind and cognitive functioning.

Embodied cognition theory: the body creating cognition

Recently, there has been a reaction to the widely held notion of dualism between
the mind and body within the fields of neuroscience, psychology and
anthropology to name a few. This reaction has been coined under the term
“embodied cognition” which basically holds that cognition is grounded in the
body. The case for embodied cognition draws on a range of research from
behavioral curiosities of hand gestures during spatial reasoning, studies that
show certain motions can help or hinder tasks, the navigation of robots as
constituted by the engineering of their forms, (Shapiro 2011, 1-2) and the fact
that abstract cognitive states are grounded in bodily states, which is explored in
a book published by two of embodied cognition’s darlings, George Lakoff and
Mark Johnson.

There are many different ways of construing embodied cognition, including six
co-existing notions and constructs documented by Wilson and Golonka (2013).
For an introduction to embodied cognition and its current research and figures
check out this blog post by Samuel McNerney:A brief guide to embodied
cognition: why you are not your brain. The Neuroanthropology blog has covered
embodiment before, including this piece on embodied cognition and cultural
evolution and another on distinguishing metaphorical uses of embodied
cognition (it’s good to think with) from actual research on neuroscience and
embodiment. And Wilson and Golonka want people interested in embodied
cognition to go much further in how we understand embodiment:

Embodiment is not the weak claim that you can see small effects of the
behaviour of the body in our mental representations of the world. Embodiment
is the radical hypothesis that the brain is not the sole resource we have
available to us to solve problems. Our bodies, and the meaning-filled
perception of the world they allow, do much of the work required to achieve
our goals, and this simple fact changes utterly what our theories of ‘cognition’
will look like.

Not only is embodiment a challenge to mind-body dualism by holding that the

body and mind are connected and the body’s processes can influence the mind,
but it is also a reaction to standard cognitive science’s interpretation of the
brain, with a mind that functions computationally in the brain as does a
computer program in the hardware of a computer. Standard cognitive science
holds a commitment to cognition as being abstract and functioning by
“algorithmic processes across symbolic representations” (Shapiro 2011, 2) also
known as mental representations and without much regard for the context of
the environment or sensory input of the body.

In fact when the concept of mental representations was being developed in

standard cognitive science, research on perception showed perceptual systems
to be flawed, impoverished and probabilistic (Wilson and Golonka 2013, 2).
Therefore, in this view, perceptual systems could not be relied on to solve higher
cognitive problems, which also discounted the environment (since it is accessed
by way of perceptual systems) and put sole responsibility of thought on the
brain. The brain then has to optimize sensory input in combination with
internal representations of knowledge in order to solve tasks. (Wilson and
Golonka 2013, 2).

Advanced work on perceptual systems, particularly by J.J. Gibson and his

theory of vision, has shown in fact the opposite of this notion, in that perceptual
systems are not critically flawed but are highly functioning to give us direct
access to the world (Wilson and Golonka 2013, 2). Gibson uses the analogy of a
perceptual system to that of a radio, in which the brain doesn’t need to further
process information from perceptual systems, but needs only to “resonate” with
it, such as a radio tunes into radio-waves, the perceiver “self-tunes” (Shapiro
2011, 36).

So if our perception then is accurate, the need for internal concepts and mental
representations then goes away and is replaced by perception-action systems
associated with sensorimotor action within the environment (see our previous
post on vision as sensorimotor, or something we do). This is now known as the
replacement hypothesis within embodied cognition, and as Andrew D. Wilson
and Sabrina Golonka put it in their 2013 article: “Our bodies and their
perceptually guided motions through the world do much of the work required to
achieve our goals, replacing the need for complex internal mental
representations…Embodied cognition (in any form) is about acknowledging the
role perception, action and the environment can now play” (1-2).

Embodied cognition in anthropology

This view of embodied cognition certainly resonates with anthropology, since

our field has long considered the role of bodies in the context of their
environment and the interaction between them. Inquiries into how people
shape, modify, adapt, symbolize and identify with their environment across
space and time are central questions to anthropology (Wilk and Haenn 2006,
3).

Realizing “that bodies cannot be divorced from their lived experiences (Mascia-
Lee 2011, 1), much work on embodiment in anthropology has already been
undertaken, stemming from questions of power and oppression in the social
sciences to consider constructs such as sex, gender and racial differences, paid
close attention to by medical anthropologists (Mascia-Lees 2011, 1) as well as
the “variable social meanings and political uses of the body, self, anatomy, and
physiology” (Shepard 2004, 253).

In addition, a new approach within anthropology called sensory anthropology,

calls for the attention to how cultures experience the world through the senses,
the cross-cultural variation in sensory experience that exists and the interplay
between culture, cognition and sensory physiology (Shepard 2004, 252-253).
Considering Wilson and Golonka’s previous statement mentioned above and the
role of perception, action and environment in cognition, perhaps an
engagement of sensory anthropology can enhance the work on perceptual-
motor systems as embodied cognition in neuroanthropology.

In neuroanthropology, we recognize that even into adulthood the brain retains a

certain degree of malleability, or what is called ‘neuroplasticity’, being that the
processes in the brain can change throughout life and are not immutable after a
point in development. Culture is viewed as an inseparable part of brain
development, shaping the underlying neurological and biological processes, so
that our brains are ‘encultured’. Culture can be a guiding factor for those who
engage in physical training practices that engage sensorimotor perceptual
systems, and in turn alter the physiological functioning of them.

Returning to Gibson’s work on perceptual systems, he attributed vision not only

to the eyes that serve it, but also as an entire perceptual system that is active and
dependent upon the mobility of the body (Downey, 2007, 227). A turn of the
head can bring about changes in the visual field as well as can an auditory sound
from the ear can serve as a guide for the eyes focus. Considering vision as a an
entire perceptual system, the Brazilian martial art Capoeira can serve as an
example of embodied learning and how culture can determine the biology and
physiological functioning of the visuomotor perceptual system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z8xxgFpK-NM

In Capoeira, special emphasis is placed on the ‘sideways glance’ or peripheral

vision in order to defend against adversaries. This tactic involves much
“distinctive scanning patterns of rapid saccades, or eye movements” (Downey,
2007, 229) and actually is a restructuring of visual processes by suppression of
the visual reflex of the eye to “intercept a visual transient with the fovea”
(Downey, 2007, 229).

Properly developed perceptions such as the sideways glance in capoeira allow a

capoeirista an extended field of vision with the sense of being able to see
everything at once (Downey, 2007, 225). “Learning how to move ones eyes or
shifting one’s habitual scanning pattern can profoundly affect how one sees”
(Downey, 2007, 229). This idea is reflected in studies on athletes who differ in
their visual search routines based on skill level (Downey, 2007, 229-230). In a
related post, check out how varying trance postures as well as meditative states
can lead to distinct cognitive experiences and neurophysiological outcomes.

We can see through this example how culture has the possibility to shape our
perceptual systems, such as vision, and given the attention to sensorimotor,
perceptual-action systems and environments in embodied cognition, has the
possibility to affect our cognition and minds!

We can then say that our perceptual systems are ‘encultured’, with culture
determining and shaping the biological processes central to their functioning.
Furthermore, neuroanthropology should investigate if training programs such
as yoga and capoeira undertaken by adults can be understood as ‘biologically
embedded’ in neural processes as certain social conditions and experiences do
early in life, getting under the skin, and altering developmental and biological
processes and states (Hertzman, 2012, 330).

Yoga and embodied cognition

So, returning to our investigation into yoga as a mind-body therapy, which uses
postures and breath exercises to influence the mind, we can see how this may be
possible under the view of embodied cognition, particularly within the
replacement hypothesis, giving affordance to bodies perceptual and
sensorimotor systems to produce the mental processes in the brain, and by
extension create our experiences. Practicing postures and breath exercises, and
paying attention to the breath within the poses in yoga, are sensorimotor
experiences based on perception-action systems aimed at creating awareness of
mind and body and union between the two. And mind and body, we now know
by way of embodied cognition, are already intricately linked.

In yoga, one perceives the sensations of physical actions of the body in postures
and breath control:

In order to increase self-awareness, we might think of that process as

interoception, or attention directed inwards, remembering attention as being
one of the mental processes associated with cognition. A heightened self-
awareness creates focus in meditation, which works to join the body and mind
with the object of its meditation.

Under the analogy of Gibson as the perceiver who “self-tunes”, yoga as

sensorimotor experience of interaction with the external (through bodily
postures) and internal (through breath control) environment creates self-
awareness, which heightens attention to perceptions and actions in order to
further refine this “self-tuning” process affecting cognition.

Yoga through embodied cognition is a practice that works towards a goal of

mind and body union based upon the perception-action system of the body from
which cognition arises. Perception and action are used as the means to its
meditational and mind-cultivating end. There are added benefits as well: Many
studies have already shown how yoga affects the mind by way of mood
enhancement and stress reduction, and can act as an effective treatment of
anxiety and depression (Impett, Daubenmier and Hirschman 2006, 40).

So don’t take my word for it. Pay attention to the cognitive science (and there is
much, much more of it.). And give yoga a try, for the betterment of both body
and mind!

References:

Downey, G. (2007). Seeing with a ‘sideways glance’: Visuomotor ‘knowing’ and

the plasticity of perception. In M. Harris (Ed.), Ways of knowing:
Anthropological approaches to crafting experience and knowledge. New York:
Berghan Books.

Hertzman, C. & Boyce, T. (2010). How experience gets under the skin to create
gradients in developmental health. Annual Review of Public Health, 55, 329-
347. doi: 10.1146/annurev.publhealth.012809.103538

Impett, E. A., Daubenmier, J. J., & Hirschman, A. L. (2006). Minding the body:
Yoga, embodiment, and well-being. Sexuality Research & Social Policy: A
Journal Of The NSRC, 3(4), 39-48. doi:10.1525/srsp.2006.3.4.39

Koziol, L., Budding, D., & Chidekel, D. (2012). From movement to thought:
Executive function, embodied cognition, and the cerebellum. Cerebellum, 11(2),
505. doi:10.1007/s12311-011-0321-y
Newman, J. L., Mueller, U., & Overton, W. F. (2008). Developmental
perspectives on embodiment and consciousness. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.

Mascia-Lees, F. E. (2011). Introduction. In Frances E. Mascia-Lees, A

companion to the anthropology of the body and embodiment [electronic
resource] (1-2). Chichester, West Sussex, U.K. ; Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell,
2011

Shapiro, L. A. (2011). Embodied cognition [electronic resource]. New York:

Routledge, 2011.

Shepard, G. (2004). A sensory ecology of medicinal plant therapy in two

Amazonian societies. American Anthropologist, 106(2), 252-266.

Wilk, R. R., & Haenn, N. (2006). The Environment in Anthropology : A Reader

in Ecology, Culture, and Sustainable Living. New York: New York University
Press.

Wilson, A. & Golonka, S. (2013). Embodied cognition is not what you think it is.
Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 1-13. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00058

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10 Responses to Connecting Mind and Body through Yoga and Embodied
Cognition
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Embodied Cognition – PLoS Blogs (blog)
Mark Flanagan says:
May 19, 2014 at 4:28 pm
Wonderful post, Tess! The body doing processing work to achieve goals
( replacement hypothesis) is such an important concept for therapeutic practice.
As you highlighted, power dynamics, interpersonal conflict, and stress are all
can be “stored” in the body. However, conventional therapeutic modalities such
as talk therapy or problem analysis only go so far in restoring mental health. In
contrast, yoga, body psychotherapy, and even things like gardening can have
dramatic healing effects in relatively small amounts of time. You, and others
engaged in sharing embodied cognition are extremely valuable to clinicians and
public health workers looking for new ways to improve individual and
population health. Thank you.

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Becky Zarger says:
May 19, 2014 at 4:32 pm
This is a really interesting post that I can appreciate as a practitioner of yoga.
Another important part of making the connection between mind and body in
yoga is learning through bodily movement that becomes ritualized, similarly to
other examples described here. As the body ‘takes over’ for the mind, it becomes
easier to become aware of those links. Another idea is that in shared practice,
the individual also particpates in distributed cognition, as movements are
reproduced by the group. So embodied cognition is not just mind+body, it’s also
mind+body+others(mind+body), often inherently social. Great post!

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Petra Joost says:
May 22, 2014 at 5:36 am
It is a nice post on Yoga and truly nothing can be a better option than yoga to
have piece of mind and body. Yoga helps to make a person physically fit as well
as at the same time mentally strong. There are a number of benefits yoga
provides whether it is related to any of the problems like related to hairs, blood
pressure, cancer or any thing else.

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ItsYogaNica says:
May 29, 2014 at 10:18 am
Yoga is a perfect method to connect your body & mind. This blog is really
helpful. As a yoga lover, I like it. A well researched blog, containing lots of
information. Through this blog, I came to know about the hidden truths of yoga.
If you want to have the specific knowledge of yoga, then have a look at this blog
& get a chance to enhance your knowledge.

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