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If you have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), you’re familiar with its uncomfortable and often unpredictable symptoms—including bloating, stomach pain, diarrhea, and constipation—not to mention the endless frustration of dealing with them on a day to day basis.
You’re not alone. Research suggests that approximately 11 percent of the global population experiences IBS. It’s a common condition that can significantly impact quality of life, particularly when it can be difficult to find symptom relief.
Treating IBS presents a unique challenge because there is no identifiable physical or structural abnormality in the gut of those affected. That’s why scientists are trying to find answers elsewhere. Specifically, they’re exploring the link between stress and IBS and how holistic health practices, such as yoga, can help people manage the condition.
How Stress Affects Your Gut
Stress is known to worsen symptoms of IBS because it can trigger your nervous system into a “fight-or-flight” survival mode. When your nervous system perceives a threat, your body no longer focuses on “non-essential” functions such as digestion. The goal becomes to survive the threat, not digest your previous meal.
Although that argument with your coworker or the car that cut you off in traffic doesn’t necessarily threaten your survival, the nervous system often can’t tell the difference between a true threat and a perceived threat. In chronic survival states, stress hormones such as cortisol are released. These hormones are directly linked to disruptions in gut health. When the gut experiences chronic stress, the result can be increased inflammation, changes in gut motility, and alterations in the gut microbiome.
Yoga is a practice that not only eases tension in the body but soothes stress in the mind. So can yoga help with IBS?
How Practicing Yoga Can Help Manage IBS Symptoms
One study found that people with IBS who practiced asana (physical postures) and pranayama (breathwork) not only reduced IBS symptoms but improved quality of life for patients through its calming, restorative effects. A more recent study noted that yoga helped reduce stress and improved the health of the gut microbiome, an important component of gut health.
Science is still exploring the ways in which yoga affects IBS. However, research suggests what many who live with the condition already know—that they experience benefits from taking the opportunity to slow down and turn their attention inward, especially when stress levels are high. Practicing yoga offers a chance to do this, calm the stress response and, in some cases, help improve gut function.
Yoga for IBS: Poses and Breathwork to Help Symptoms
The types of poses below support improved circulation, which helps the heart and organs function at their best. In addition, stretching the torso stimulates the vagus nerve, which can help relieve stress, calm the nervous system, and manage IBS symptoms.
Of course, it isn’t just the physical postures or the breathwork that can offer IBS symptom relief—it’s how you practice them. The goal is not to push your limits, but instead allow your body to take a break from tension and, as you do so, notice what you’re experiencing in your body and mind with curiosity and compassion. This helps deepen your mind-body connection which may help you better observe patterns in your symptoms.
1. Supine Spinal Twist (Supta Matsyendrasana)
Lie on your back, reach one or both knees across your body, and extend the opposite arm to the side. Learn more about this pose.
2. Seated Forward Bend (Paschimottanasana)
Sit with your legs extended, and reach forward gently, keeping your spine long. Learn more about this pose.
3. Bridge Pose (Setu Bandha Sarvangasana)
Lie on your back with knees bent, and lift your hips. Learn more about this pose.
4. Legs Up the Wall Pose (Viparita Karani)
Lie on your back with your legs resting against a wall. Learn more about this pose.
5. Breathwork to Support Gut Health
Some forms of pranayama, the ancient practice of breath control in yoga, have also been found to activate the “rest-and-digest” parasympathetic nervous system which counteracts the “fight-or-flight” sympathetic nervous system. For example, Alternate Nostril Breathing, or Nadi Shodhana, was found to activate the parasympathetic system by reducing heart rate and blood pressure.
Other breathing techniques, such as the Humming Bee Breath (Bhramari), are shown not only to calm the nervous system but also increase nitric oxide, a compound that reduces stress and improves oxygenation. Simply humming is thought to increase nitric oxide production by 15 times compared to normal nasal breathing. Nitric oxide has anti-inflammatory properties, which may help reduce inflammation commonly seen in IBS.
Through these intentional practices, we can begin to attune to moments of nervous system dysregulation, cultivating more awareness of and balance within our bodies.
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