While there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that practicing yoga asanas (postures) can change your mood, scientific research to understand how and why remains scarce. As it turns out, the link between the poses you’re practicing in Restorative Yoga and how you feel on the inside might just come down to your breath.

A simple moment in time might seem a surprising catalyst for celebrations that sometimes last several days in countries like Iceland, but imagine the impact of the apex of light combined with the midpoint in the growing season (halfway between spring’s planting and autumn’s harvest) for our forefathers as they emerged from a long, cold winter. Even with today’s technological advances making winter easier to cope with, the solstice can still provide ample opportunity to ignite feelings of peak energy, positivity and manifestation.

While meditation practices span many cultures and traditions across the globe and have been subject to a fair amount of research, techniques to cultivate a deeper breath (Pranayama) are largely exclusive to the yoga tradition and mostly unexplored scientifically. As a result, Pranayama has retained an air of secrecy that might be about to be unlocked by science. Emerging science has identified a link between breath control and the Vagus Nerve that might explain why Pranayama can be so effective for your nervous system, and how it works to balance your physiology.

In a results-driven lightning speed world where more is being asked of us than ever before, it’s no longer about “finding time” to recover, but recognizing that without preemptive rest we’ll get less done, fall further behind, and feel more overwhelmed than ever.

A University of Auckland study identified a direct correlation between modern posture and increasing emotional stress. The book Breath in Action asserts that simply paying more attention to your breath can help. In Yoga, we take it one step further with practices to deepen, extend or conserve the breath, known as “Pranayama”.

Many of us have experienced greater mobility through stretching, but as it turns out, that is mostly your nervous system adapting to larger ranges of motion through repetition. The sensation that we call a “stretch” is your nervous system detecting unfamiliar ranges of motion and bracing against potential injury. But go there again and again and your nervous system will start to detect it as familiar, and may allow for more range of motion through what is called increased muscle extensibility.