Hot yoga may reduce depression symptoms, clinical trial shows

Heated yoga could be a solution if you’re dealing with moderate or severe depression, according to a new study.

A randomized controlled trial led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) that was published in Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, compared depression levels in people doing hot yoga to those who didn’t take part in it. People who participated in hot yoga had significantly greater reductions in depressive symptoms compared with those who didn’t.

For the study, researchers split 65 people into two groups. Thirty-three people took part in two 90-minute hot yoga classes per week for eight weeks. At the same time, 32 people were waitlisted for the classes (and wound up getting them later). The average age of the study participants was 32.7 years old.

People in the yoga group, on average, took 10.3 classes over the eight-week span. 

Researchers used the Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (IDS-CR) scale to assess depression symptoms in the yogis after the eight weeks. They found that 59.3% of yoga participants had a 50% or greater decrease in symptoms, compared with 6.3% of the people on the waitlist. Plus, 44% in the yoga group had such low IDS-CR scores that their depression was considered in remission, compared with 6.3% on the waitlist. 

Even in those who took only one yoga class a week, symptoms improved. Translation: You may not have to go twice a week to get the feel-good benefits.

“Yoga and heat-based interventions could potentially change the course for treatment for patients with depression by providing a non-medication-based approach with additional physical benefits as a bonus,” Maren Nyer, PhD, director of Yoga Studies at the Depression Clinical and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said in a statement.  

The authors say they’re developing new studies with the goal of determining which factors specifically ease depression: Heat, yoga, or the combination of both. Personally, I wish the researchers had compared hot yoga to yoga not in a heated room, because not everyone can easily tolerate the heat. (The researchers say they’d like to see more studies on that, too.) But the scientists found none of the study participants had adverse effects to the heat.

Curious if hot yoga is right for you? Be sure to ask your doctor before starting any new exercise program. Hot yoga may not be suitable for pregnant people or those who were recently pregnant.