Kundalini Yoga: Good for Your Brain

It's clear: Fitness is no longer just about being slim or muscular. These days, brain fitness is the new objective.

If you're like most Americans, you're overtaxed, overworked, and overstressed. Maybe you're even finding it hard to remember the countless details in your life. Games like Sudoku, brain teasers, books, Web sites, and even brain gyms dedicated to improving your memory, seem to crop up everywhere you look. Strangely enough, we're now learning that ancient techniques can also keep your brain fit.

A yoga technique practiced and recommended by Dharma Singh Khalsa, a mind-body physician, works out your brain and enhances your memory, in only 12 minutes a day!

Kundalini Yoga, a physical practice that includes breath work and "mantra" (or chanting) was introduced in the United States by Yogi Bhajan in 1969.

For more than 20 years, Khalsa has studied the effects of meditation, which is said to lower stress and cortisol and thus to prevent memory loss. His book on brain longevity has attracted many supporters, who call on him for his prescription to nourish the brain.