Techniques for Supporting Your Immune System with Yoga

by Baxter and Nina

Jean Marie, Age 58, by Melina Meza

Now that we've convinced you to care about your immune system (see Friday Practical Pointers: You Should Care About Your Immune System), we're ready to share our recommended techniques for supporting it with your yoga practice. Use these techniques to help prevent illnesses during cold and flu season or to build up a depleted immune system following recovery from an illness or a long period of stress. You can also use these techniques while undergoing treatments for more serious illnesses that negatively impact your immune system, such as cancer treatments. 

Before practicing, consider your current condition. If you are presently in good health, we recommend that you practice a well-balanced yoga sequence that includes active poses, (both dynamic and static), restorative poses, gentle supported inverted poses, meditation, breath work, and guide relaxation. The active poses will foster both physical and stress hardiness while the restorative poses, meditation, and breath work will allow you to spend more time in Rest and Digest mode, which turns on your immune system.

If your immune system is compromised, you are out of shape physically, or you are generally unhealthy, we recommend that you start with much more gentle practices, emphasizing the restorative and quieting practices of yoga. These practices will allow you to spend more time in Rest and Digest mode, which turns on your immune system. As you start to feel more rested, you can gradually add in more physical challenges in a step-wise fashion. Start with dynamic standing poses, as they are less demanding than static standing poses and eventually add in static poses when you’re ready.

How Often to Practice. If you are healthy, we recommend that you practice 5-6 times a week. If your immune system is compromised, depending on your stamina, start with 3-4 times a week, and work to up 5-6 practices a week as dictated by your body’s response. For both groups, practice your active sequences every other day and practice restorative or gentle sequences on alternate days.

Balance Your Practice. We recommend that your practices include a mix of active and restorative poses, as well as relaxation practices, breath work, and meditation. If you are healthy, include poses from all the basic categories (back bends, forward bends, side bends, twists, standing poses, balance poses, seated poses, and reclined stretches), practiced both dynamically and statically, as well restorative poses and Savasana.

If your immune system is compromised, include gentle reclined and seated poses, and chair variations of standing poses, gentle inversions, focused relaxation, calming breath practices, and Savasana. Because a compromised immune system can lead to slower healing of fractures, we recommend you add in balance poses to prevent falls. Start with the supported versions of these poses, such as Tree or Warrior 3 poses at the wall, and gradually work your way up to the full poses.

Dynamic Poses & Flow Sequences. Moving between poses with your breath naturally pumps your muscles, which assists the immune system’s lymphatic system in working efficiently. If you are healthy, we recommend you include dynamic poses and/or flow sequences in your active practices. Suggestions for dynamic poses include dynamic versions of Warrior 2 pose, Cobra pose, and Cat/Cow pose. If your immune system is compromised, start with gentler dynamic poses, such Cat/Cow pose and dynamic Arms Overhead pose. When practicing dynamic poses, start with one set of 6 repetitions, and when you’re ready, try two sets. 

Static Poses. Although a lower priority, you should also include static poses in your practice to round out your sequences. While holding a static pose, try rhythmically contract and relax as many muscle groups as you can to create a pumping action on the those muscles. This will improve lymphatic circulation, although not as strongly as dynamic poses. If you are healthy, start using this technique for holds of 30-60 seconds and gradually work up to 2 minutes. If your immune system is compromised, start with shorter holds of 10-15 seconds and gradually work up to longer holds, with an eventual goal of reaching 2 minutes. 

Restorative Poses & Focused Relaxation. Practicing restorative poses with a mental focus or using focused relaxation techniques, such as body scans, for 7 to 10 minutes will shift your nervous system to Rest and Digest mode, which turns on your immune system. So we recommend that you integrate 1-2 restorative poses into your active practices, either at the very start or finish the practice, and add focused relaxation practices at or near the end of your practice. 

We also recommend that you practice a full restorative sequence periodically to rest yourself completely and spend more time with your immune system functioning fully. Try this once a week to start with. If you enjoy it, do it more often.

For restorative poses, if you are newer to yoga, hold the poses for 1-2 minutes and gradually lengthen your time in the poses, working up to 7 to 10 minute holds or that amount of time in two poses. For experienced practitioners, use your present practice times as a starting point and, if it works for you, gradually increase your time in the poses, aiming for holds of at least 10 minutes or that amount of time in two poses.

You may need to experiment a bit to refine your timing for these poses. For some restorative poses, such as Supported Child’s pose (Balasana) or a supported twist, you’ll find that 4-5 minutes is long enough and that you become uncomfortable after that. However, for Savasana and Reclined Cobbler’s pose, which are typically very comfortable for longer holds, we recommend that work toward 10-minute holds to trigger the Relaxation Response. And if you are still completely comfortable, feel free to stay in poses even longer. For example, some experienced yoga practitioners will stay in Reclined Cobbler’s pose (Supta Baddha Konasana) for 45 minutes (Baxter does!).

For focused relaxation, start by listening to a recorded version of the body scan, preferably one 10 or more minutes long. Eventually, you can guide yourself by memorizing the relaxation sequence.

Gentle Inverted Poses. We recommend that you regularly practice these poses because of their beneficial effects on your lymphatic system (which is part of the immune system). When your leg or legs are higher than your heart, this encourages the return of lymphatic fluids from your lower body to the heart via gravity. Poses we recommend include Legs Up the Wall pose, Supported Bridge pose, Easy Inverted Pose, and Reclined Leg Stretch pose, version 1. Hold them from 2-10 minutes, and include at least one of them in every practice. 

Stress Management. One of the most effective ways to influence your immune system over time is to practice stress management techniques, including meditation, pranayama, restorative yoga, and focused relaxation, as often as you can manage, every day, if possible. Reducing stress levels improves the functioning of your immune system. It also helps reduce stress eating and other unhealthy stress-related behaviors that negatively impact the immune system. While we can’t say that any of the stress management techniques are better than others, you may find that one or two work best for you. So, if possible, practice all of them periodically to be familiar with all of them. You can practice any of these stress management techniques as a part of your regular asana practice or alone, at a different time of day.

Meditation. While meditation is an effective way to spend time in the Rest and Digest mode and therefore support your immune system, a regular meditation practice can also improve immune function is by strengthening your will power to change unhealthy habits, including unhealthy eating habits, smoking, and drinking too much alcohol. 

You can use any of our recommended meditation techniques (see Yoga Meditation Techniques). If you are newer to meditation, start with a 5-minute practice and gradually work your way up to 10-20 minutes. If you already have an established practice of at least 10 minutes or more, just keep it going. And if your immune system is compromised, you can meditate in reclined position and gradually work your way to sitting. 

Better Sleep. Because getting good sleep is so important for your immune system, if you’re having trouble sleeping, use our recommended techniques for improving sleep. See 5 Tips for Better Sleep.

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