How To Improve Concentration: Why Your Focus Keeps Slipping, And The Practice That Trains It
How to improve concentration: the short answer
If you want to know how to improve concentration, think of attention as a skill, not a fixed trait. Phones, worry, poor sleep and stress all pull it apart. What builds it back is practice at holding attention on one thing, again and again, with a calm body.
That is a fair description of a yoga class. In a UCLA trial, yoga matched gold-standard brain training for memory, and only the yoga group improved in planning and focus. Here is the article in short form:
- Attention is a skill, and it can be trained at any age.
- Yoga improved memory, planning, focus and attention in pooled trials.
- UCLA trial: only the yoga group improved in planning and focus.
- A balance pose is attention training you can feel.
- Stress and poor sleep scatter focus; yoga eases both.
- Even the in-breath through the nose helped a puzzle task.
A quick word on Iyengar yoga. Iyengar yoga is the style developed by Mr BKS Iyengar. In the 20th century he did more than anyone to set down traditional Indian yoga, and his teaching is known for its precision: every pose asks you to attend to many parts of the body at once. It is the style we teach at Flametree, in Darwin and live online.
Warrior 3. Balance poses leave no attention spare for anything else. That is the training.
Why can’t I concentrate any more?
Usually because something is pulling on attention all the time. Notifications break it into pieces. Worry keeps a second track running in the background. Poor sleep leaves the brain’s planner, the prefrontal cortex, short of fuel. Long stress keeps the body on alert, and an alert body scans for danger rather than settling on a task.
In perimenopause, many women also notice brain fog: lost words, forgotten reasons for walking into a room. It is real, and for most women it is a phase. The same things that help focus help it: better sleep, less stress and practice at attention.
Can yoga improve concentration and focus?
Yes, and the trials show it. In 2020, researchers in Florida pooled 12 studies of yoga in 912 older adults. Yoga improved memory, executive function (planning, focus and switching between tasks), and attention and speed of thinking, with no harms reported.
The UCLA team led by Professor Helen Lavretsky went head to head. In a 2017 trial, 81 people aged 55 and over with memory problems did 12 weeks of yoga or memory enhancement training, the gold-standard brain-training programme. Both groups improved their memory. Only the yoga group improved in planning, focus and switching tasks.
Pooled trials in older adults: yoga improved memory, planning and focus, and attention. Every bar is a real gain.
Why does a balance pose train attention?
Because it will not let the mind wander. In Tree Pose for the first time, you wobble. You look at a spot on the wall. You press the standing foot down. You wobble less. That loop, try, wobble, adjust, steady, is the brain learning. Next week the teacher gives you the next small step, and round you go again.
Leigh Milne, an American Iyengar teacher who studied in Pune, ran a twelve-week class for older people in rural Vermont, many of them retired farm wives in their eighties and early nineties. At first their attention was scattered. Over the twelve weeks, the focus that came to the group was striking. They could practise poses and breathing undisturbed by people coming and going around them. Their balance improved too.
Tree Pose: try, wobble, adjust, steady. That loop is the brain learning to hold attention.
Get the free ebook Sharper For Longer. New to Flametree, or away for 3 months or more? You get 2 free classes + 2 ebooks, only available via this offer. Already coming to class? You can still get the book.
Does breathing help concentration?
Yes. In a 2019 lab study at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, people did a visual puzzle better when it arrived on an in-breath through the nose. It fits the old yogic idea that breath and attention move together.
The calming side matters too. A slow, long out-breath presses the body’s brake, and a calmer body frees attention for the task. Every Flametree class opens and closes with simple attention to the breath, and our pranayama (breathing practice) classes go further.
Breathe through the nose and slow the out-breath. The simplest breath skills calm a scattered mind.
What does a class do for focus that a brain game does not?
It trains attention in a whole body. In a standing pose you attend to the feet, the knees, the chest, the arms and the breath, all at once, and hold it. Brain scans point the same way. A 2019 review of 11 studies found yoga linked with better structure and function in the prefrontal cortex (the brain’s planner), the hippocampus (the memory centre) and the brain’s alarm system, the very areas that shrink with age.
A Brazilian study scanned 21 older women who had practised yoga for at least 8 years, and 21 matched women. The yoga practitioners had a thicker prefrontal cortex, the part used for planning, attention and memory.
Half Moon Pose with a block. Legs, arms, chest and breath all at once: this is where attention training happens.
How long does it take to improve concentration?
In the trials, gains came with 12 weeks or more of regular practice. Many people notice they feel clearer after a single class, because the body is calmer and the mind has had one job for an hour. Keep coming and it builds.
What research has shown, what is still being studied, and what long practice already knows.
Where can I improve my concentration in Darwin?
To improve concentration in Darwin, come to class at Flametree’s Woolner or Coolalinga studio, or join live online from anywhere in Australia. Every beginner class trains attention through standing and balance poses, and our pranayama classes train the breath. Feel free to check with your professional advisers if you wish, but also give yoga a try.
See also How To Improve Memory After 50, How To Stop Overthinking and Dementia Risk Factors.
Sharper For Longer, our free ebook on memory, focus and the ageing brain.
Your free copy of Sharper For Longer is waiting. New to Flametree, or away for 3 months or more? You get 2 free classes + 2 ebooks, only available via this offer. Already coming to class? You can still get the book.
Frequently asked questions
What is the fastest way to improve concentration?
Calm the body and give the mind one job. A slow, long out-breath settles the nervous system, and a balance or standing pose asks for full attention. Many people feel clearer after a single class, and the trials show bigger gains over 12 weeks.
Why is my concentration so bad lately?
Common reasons are stress, poor sleep, constant notifications and worry running in the background. In perimenopause, hormone changes add brain fog. Each of these can be eased, and attention itself can be trained.
Does yoga improve focus better than brain games?
In a 2017 UCLA trial, 12 weeks of yoga matched gold-standard memory training for memory, and only the yoga group improved in planning, focus and switching tasks.
Can breathing exercises help you concentrate?
Yes. A slow out-breath calms the body so attention is freed for the task, and a 2019 Weizmann Institute study found people solved a visual puzzle better on an in-breath through the nose.
How long does it take to improve attention span?
In the pooled trials, gains in memory, focus and attention came with 12 weeks or more of regular practice. Many people notice a clearer head sooner.
Is brain fog the same as poor concentration?
They overlap. Brain fog, common in perimenopause, includes lost words and forgetfulness as well as poor focus. For most women it is a phase, and better sleep, less stress and attention practice help both.
Can you improve concentration in your 60s and 70s?
Yes. The pooled trials were in older adults, many in their 60s and 70s, and Leigh Milne’s Vermont students, in their 80s and 90s, grew strikingly more focused over twelve weeks of yoga.
Where can I improve my concentration in Darwin?
Flametree Yoga Studio teaches Iyengar yoga at Woolner and Coolalinga in Darwin and live online. Every beginner class trains attention through standing and balance poses, and our pranayama classes train the breath.
Where to next
- New to yoga, or coming back? Start with our half price 10 class pass with 2 classes free, in Darwin or live online.
- For a workplace, team or group: book private yoga classes for groups, online, at a Flametree studio or at your venue.
- Want to see class times first? Look at the beginner timetable.
Flametree Yoga Studio, Darwin and live online. This article is general information, not medical advice. Feel free to check with your professional advisers if you wish, but also give yoga a try.
Sources: Bhattacharyya KK, Andel R and Small BJ, yoga-related mind-body therapies and cognitive function in older adults (12 studies, 912 people), Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 2020; Eyre HA, Lavretsky H and colleagues, yoga versus memory enhancement training in mild cognitive impairment (81 adults), Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 2017; Gothe NP and colleagues, yoga effects on brain health (11 studies), Brain Plasticity, 2019; Afonso RF and colleagues, greater cortical thickness in elderly female yoga practitioners, Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 2017; Perl O and colleagues, cognition phase-locked with inhalation, Nature Human Behaviour, 2019; Suza Francina, The New Yoga for Healthy Aging. Further reading: Bhattacharyya and colleagues, 2020. Full references are in the Sharper For Longer ebook.
