In the event you’ve ever entered your yoga class feeling slightly, um, backed up, you may be shocked to understand that you just don’t stroll out of it the identical means: There simply may be one thing concerning the observe that—whereas calming your thoughts and soothing your muscle groups—additionally revs up your digestive system.

“It’s very seemingly that yoga college students will expertise results on the GI tract, and it’s utterly regular and pure,” Valerie Lucas, registered yoga trainer and YogaSix senior grasp coach, tells SELF. She is aware of the sensation all too nicely, which is why she says she skips the pre-class breakfast burrito so she doesn’t find yourself operating out in the course of it.

All this explains why yoga could be a useful selection for folk coping with constipation, too. Whereas there’s not a complete lot of analysis on the subject, there’s some proof to recommend that it may possibly assist ease the signs of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), Jill Deutsch, MD, director of the Yale Useful Gastrointestinal Issues Program and a registered yoga trainer, tells SELF. In keeping with a small 2014 examine, when younger adults with IBS took a few yoga lessons every week, they reported enhancements in constipation (plus in different signs like ache) over the course of six weeks.

It’s tough to pinpoint a specific characteristic of yoga that’s accountable, Dr. Deutsch says. “It’s seemingly a mix of issues,” she says, stating that the observe can embrace each asana (motion) and pranayama (breathwork).

The primary half is clearly big. For one, motion basically can pace up your intestine motility, or how shortly waste strikes by your GI tract. “We perceive {that a} physique in movement implies that all of its components are in movement,” Dr. Deutsch says. This may clarify why you all of a sudden must poop after taking your canine for a stroll within the morning, or for those who typically have to go on to the lavatory after getting back from a future.

Digging slightly deeper into yoga particularly, “there’s no information to say that there’s one explicit pose you need to be doing for intestine well being basically,” Dr. Deutsch says. However, she says, yoga practitioners and academics and people who work in ayurvedic medication level to some particulars that they are saying can “enhance total intestine well being, perform, and motility,” she says.

For instance, “twisting poses might be useful,” Dr. Deutsch says. “The GI tract strikes from the proper decrease stomach up and round to the left decrease stomach in a circle, so it makes logical sense {that a} twist or round movement can probably assist stimulate or enhance motion by the GI tract,” she explains.

Different poses that contain folding or bending ahead can gently compress and launch the abdomen and colon, Kelly Turner, registered yoga trainer and vice chairman of coaching and expertise at YogaSix, tells SELF. “This inside therapeutic massage can assist transfer issues alongside, so to talk, which is why it isn’t unusual to listen to the occasional flatulence in a yoga class,” Turner tells SELF.