Spoiler: it’s complicated. And that’s the point.
I still remember my first yoga class.
I was a teenager, drowning in the experiences of trauma and suicidality. A friend led me there. I went because I had learned to please people. I didn’t know what I was walking into.
In that quiet room, for the first time, someone asked me to listen to my body.
Not to control it. Not to shame it. And certainly not to escape it. Just to feel it.
I cried uncontrollably on the mat. A wave frozen, begging to crash. The teacher didn’t ask for my story or try to fix anything. After class, she offered tea and a single question:
“Will you come again tomorrow?”
That was the beginning.
But here’s what I didn’t know then: the safety I felt in that room wasn’t just the room. It wasn’t just her. There was something I was just starting to learn to build within myself. It took me twenty more years to truly understand that.
This is the part I think the research is trying to catch up to.
What We Learn When We Study Body Awareness
A systematic review published in early 2025 examined thirty-one studies on yoga and body awareness research [1]. The researchers wanted to know: does yoga actually change how we experience our bodies?
The short answer is: it trends that way.
Seventy-two percent of studies that looked at changes over time found that body awareness increased after a yoga intervention. Seventy-six percent of studies that compared yoga to a control group found that yoga performed better.
The longer answer is more interesting.
The researchers found that when body awareness was measured as a multidimensional construct—not just whether you can detect your heartbeat or sense your joint position, but how you relate to your body, how you trust it, how you interpret what you feel—the results were more consistent.
The Multi-dimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) is a measure that asks about noticing sensations, but also about whether you worry about them, whether you distract from them, whether you trust them. In study after study, yoga improved those things.
But here’s what you won’t see in the headline: the research is mixed. Some studies found changes. And, some didn’t. Some found changes on some measures but not others.
And honestly?
That tracks.
Because body awareness isn’t something you either have or don’t have. It’s not a destination. It’s a messy, layered, context-dependent relationship with your own nervous system.
And for so many of us, that relationship started with a rupture.
The Body We Learned to Distrust
If you grew up in a body that didn’t feel safe—whether because of trauma, neglect, systemic violence, or being told you were too much or not enough—you probably also learned to tune out how that felt.
Perhaps, you learned to override hunger, exhaustion, pain, and emotion. Or learned to perform. Maybe you learned that your body was a problem to be managed, not a partner to be listened to.
This isn’t personal failure. It’s survival.
And survival adaptations are brilliant. They kept us alive, they protected us when we needed it most. And, they also mean that when we step onto a yoga mat and someone says “listen to your body,” that might not feel like an invitation. It might feel like a demand. Perhaps it feels confusing. It might feel terrifying.
Because your body is the place where everything you’ve experienced lives.
This is why I’m dedicated and mindful about what kind of yoga I teach and what kind of yoga I train others to teach.
Not All Yoga Is the Same
Here’s something the yoga research review doesn’t always capture: yoga can be taught in ways that invite self-trust or in ways that reinforce self-abandonment.
A yoga class that says “push through the discomfort” or “just breathe through it” without acknowledging trauma, capacity, or the nervous system is not necessarily a healing space. It can become another place to perform. Another place to prove yourself. Another place to override what your body is telling you.
That’s not body awareness. That’s a new form of control.
The philosophy we teach at the Life of Wellness Institute—Viniyoga, a trauma-informed yoga lens, nervous system regulation education—exists because we believe that how we teach matters as much as what we teach. We start with the person, not the pose.
We don’t ask you to listen to your body so you can do the posture “right.” Instead, we ask you to listen so you can meet yourself where you are.
And that requires humility. It requires us as teachers to hold space without prescribing. To offer invitations, not instructions. To trust that your inner wisdom is the expert on your body.
That’s why philosophy matters. Why understanding the nervous system matters. That’s why studying yoga deeply—not just the postures really matters.
Because when we understand our scope of practice, when we understand our own patterns, when we understand the difference between holding space and imposing our ego—we can actually create conditions where people can begin to trust themselves again.
The Western Project of Measuring the Unmeasurable
There’s something about this research that makes me both grateful and wry.
Grateful, because it’s a credible glimpse into what happens when people practice yoga. It helps validate what so many of us have experienced. It gives language to something that can feel intangible.
Wry, because we’re trying to measure something that was never designed to be measured.
Body awareness is relational. It’s embodied. Our experience of it is shaped by culture, by trauma, by privilege, by the systems we live in. It’s not a neutral, universal thing that you can quantify and compare across populations.
The researchers acknowledge this. They note the lack of racial and gender diversity in the studies. They note the cultural and ethical considerations—the ways yoga has been decontextualized from its Eastern roots, the commodification of the practice, the way white women have been centered in the research while so many others have been excluded.
These are not small issues. They’re actually a key part of the whole story.
Because how we experience our bodies is shaped by how the world treats our bodies. Abilism. Racism. Capitalism. Colonialism. The relentless demand to be productive, to be pleasing, to be small, to be strong, to be enough.
If we don’t name those things, we’re not really talking about body awareness. We’re talking about a narrow, privileged version of it that doesn’t apply to people’s lives.
So yes, the research is useful. But it’s also incomplete. And that’s okay. Good research cultivates curiosity, not certainty.
What the Research Actually Teaches Us
Here’s what I want to hold onto from this review:
The research itself is honest about its limitations. The studies were small. The samples were homogeneous. The definitions of body awareness were inconsistent. The researchers recommend more rigorous trials with larger, more diverse samples.
And still, something showed up.
In study after study, people who practiced yoga reported changes in how they experienced their bodies. Not everyone. Not every time. But enough that it’s meaningful.
The measures that captured multidimensional body awareness found the most consistent results. That’s important because it suggests that yoga isn’t just changing whether we notice sensations. It’s changing how we relate to them. Whether we worry about them. Whether we trust them.
The research validates what many of us already know: bodies are messy. Healing is slow. Patterns are learned over time. There’s no quick fix.
It also validates that yoga can be part of the process—when it’s taught with care, with humility, with an understanding of trauma and the nervous system.
The Invitation (Not the Prescription)
This brings me back to where I started.
That first yoga class, that first teacher, that cup of tea. She wasn’t trying to “fix” me. And, she wasn’t selling me anything, including her experience or skills. She was there with me, as a human being with another human being. Quietly, steadily, holding space.
And through that, I began to feel something I had never felt before: safe in my own body. Not all at once. Definitely no perfectly. Not permanently. But enough to keep coming back, and trust the pace I needed to find my home in my body again.
That’s what yoga can offer. Not because it’s a panacea. Not because it solves everything. But because it creates conditions for something to shift.
It invites us into a relationship with ourselves that many of us were never offered.
But the invitation works differently for everyone.
Perhaps you want to deepen your own practice without teaching.
Maybe you’re curious about teaching but not ready to commit to a full training.
You might already teach and feel like something is missing.
Or maybe you’re a therapist, counsellor, or helper looking for tools that actually support the nervous system and how to apply them within your client’s window of tolerance and capacity.
Perhaps you’re just tired of performative yoga and want something that feels real.
Wherever you are, you don’t have to know the whole path. There is no such thing as being “ready.” Even the yoga sutras says that yoga beings now, meaning it starts in the present moment. And, you definitely don’t have to have your body “figured out.”
A Practice to Sit With
Before you close this, I want to offer you something. A gentle practice to lean into.
Bring your attention to your body. Not to change anything. Not to fix anything. Just to notice what you notice. Pause along the way, listen with curiosity.
Where do you feel tension? What about ease? And is there anywhere you feel nothing at all?
Let the sensations be information, not catastrophe or something to solve.
And if you notice yourself wanting to push something away or hold onto something, that’s okay, notice that too. With curiosity. Without judgment.
That’s the beginning.
Not of fixing. Of tending.
Because healing isn’t about acquiring more tools. It’s not about becoming more flexible or more enlightened or more impressive.
It’s about the slow, courageous practice of remembering how to inhabit your own nervous system with agency and compassion.
About learning to trust that your body won’t abandon you when you feel like shit.
And about coming home to yourself—not once, but again and again and again.
And if you want to do that with others, in community, with guidance that doesn’t demand performance or perfection, you are welcome here.
And, we’ll do this together.
Reference
[1] Garnsey, C. L., Gnall, K. E., Osherow, E. K., & Park, C. L. (2025). Changes in body awareness in yoga interventions: A systematic review. Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, 59, 101977. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctcp.2025.101977
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