Yoga For Schizophrenia: What Mr Iyengar, The Yoga Doctors And The Research Say

Low energy, flat feelings, and a mind that will not settle: can yoga help? For people living with schizophrenia, a review of 19 randomised trials says yoga is well worth adding to the care you already have. This guide brings together what Mr BKS Iyengar’s teaching, the yoga doctors and the research say about yoga, pranayama (yogic breathing), meditation and mindfulness for schizophrenia and psychosis. Last updated: 9 November 2026.

By Chris Lalor, Certified Senior Iyengar Yoga Teacher and certified Yoga Therapist, Flametree Yoga Darwin.

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Does yoga help schizophrenia? The short answer

Yes. Yoga for schizophrenia is one of the best-studied add-ons there is. In trial after trial, people living with schizophrenia who added yoga to their usual care had fewer negative symptoms (low drive, flat feelings, pulling away from people), better quality of life, and sharper thinking skills such as attention and reading other people’s faces. Several reviews that compared many kinds of exercise ranked yoga first for negative symptoms. Mindfulness courses adapted for psychosis point the same way, and they count as evidence for yoga, because yoga and yogic breathing produce mindfulness. In every trial, yoga was added to people’s usual care, not used instead of it.

One thing to keep in mind as you read: every schizophrenia yoga trial so far tested yoga in general, most often a hospital programme developed in Bangalore, India, taught by yoga instructors with very different training from ours. No trial has yet tested Iyengar yoga for schizophrenia. Not yet tested is not the same as does not work. Iyengar teachers train for years and are assessed by a panel of senior teachers, and in our view as certified Iyengar teachers, well-taught Iyengar yoga is likely to go further than the average. Why the kind of yoga matters.

The bottom line: five key moves for schizophrenia

1. Go to a yoga class at your level, two or three times a week, and keep going. The trials that helped most used a month of regular classes, then months of steady practice, alongside people’s usual care.
2. Add breath work (pranayama). A slow, smooth breath calms the mind and brings stress, worry and anger down. Every hospital yoga programme in the trials included gentle breathing.
3. Give your attention one job. Holding a pose, or following the breath, trains steady attention. That is mindfulness, and yoga and yogic breathing both produce it. It showed up in the trials as better attention and better reading of other people’s faces.
4. Keep the practice steady and gentle. Poses, breath and supported rest, learned with a teacher. Flametree classes and retreats build yogic skills, mindfulness and yogic breathing step by step, with a teacher and without long silences. Long, intensive, silent retreats are the one thing case reports link with episodes of psychosis, so leave those out.
5. Start now. New to Flametree, or away 3 months or more? 2 free classes, then 10 at half price, in Darwin or LIVE online.

Who was Mr BKS Iyengar? Iyengar yoga is the style we teach at Flametree. During the 20th century, Mr BKS Iyengar was the major teacher who codified traditional Indian yoga, through his seminal books and widespread teaching. He also pioneered the use of props, so poses can be adapted to almost any body. His style is sometimes called modern classical yoga. This guide is part of our encyclopaedia of yoga for health conditions.

This guide in short

• Overall evidence: Strong. Best study: Yin 2024 pooled 19 randomised trials and 1,274 people living with schizophrenia. Yoga added to usual care eased negative symptoms (low drive, flat feelings, pulling away from people) and other symptoms, and improved quality of life and social functioning, with the benefit still there at longer follow-up. Reviews of mindfulness and of relaxation also found benefits, and they count too, because yoga and yogic breathing produce mindfulness and restorative yoga is built on conscious, guided relaxation.
• The Iyengar approach: we have not found a separate entry for schizophrenia in Mr Iyengar’s books. His teaching on a scattered, restless mind points to steady standing poses, supported forward bends, a calm breath and rest, with props.
• Dr Timothy McCall, an American medical doctor and yoga therapist who studied with Mr BKS Iyengar, author of Yoga as Medicine: schizophrenia is no. 99 on his list of conditions helped by yoga.
• The research: more than 40 studies listed below, for yoga, breathing and mindfulness, including 15 reviews.
• Nearby guides: anxiety and anger, depression and low mood, stress and burnout and brain health and memory.
• Take it further: our free ebook Cutting Stress With Yoga, the 2027 masterclass on anxiety, upsets and anger, and classes in Darwin and online.

What schizophrenia is

Schizophrenia is a long-lasting mental illness that changes how a person thinks, feels and takes in the world. It usually begins in the late teens or early adult years. Doctors group its symptoms into three kinds, and it helps to know them, because the yoga research measured all three.

• Positive symptoms are experiences added to everyday life: hearing voices or seeing things others do not (hallucinations), or strongly held beliefs others do not share (delusions). The word “positive” here means added, not good.
• Negative symptoms are things that are reduced or missing: drive, pleasure, warmth of expression, speech, and the wish to be with people. They are often the hardest part of daily life, and the hardest to shift. This is where yoga shows the clearest benefit.
• Thinking skills (cognition): attention, memory, planning, and reading the feelings on other people’s faces.

The word schizophrenia does not mean a “split personality”. That is a common myth.

Psychosis is the wider word for times when a person loses some contact with what others see as real. Schizophrenia is one cause; some of the trials on this page included people with early psychosis, and we cover them too.

The main recognised care for schizophrenia comes from a mental health team, with family support and help with work and daily life. Every yoga trial on this page added yoga to that care, and most were in people whose illness had settled on stable care. Yoga and mindfulness sit well alongside it, and the two are usually complementary. Always follow the directions of any doctor you are consulting.

“You have to tame your breath to tame your brain.”

What Mr BKS Iyengar taught about a scattered, restless mind

In short: we have not found a separate entry for schizophrenia or psychosis in the Iyengar books we hold. But Mr Iyengar wrote a great deal about how the body, the breath and the mind work on each other, and his answer keeps coming back to three things: steady the body, slow the breath, and give the mind something precise to do.

• The scattered mind (Yoga: The Path to Holistic Health, pp. 50 to 51). He describes five states of mind, from dull to still. Yoga moves the mind, step by step, from the dull and scattered states towards the steadier ones.
• “Mere relaxation is not sufficient” (stress chapter, pp. 180 to 181). He pairs rest with active practice. Standing poses wake up a dull, heavy body and use up restless energy, so the mind can then settle in the quieter poses.
• Props whenever a person is stressed (p. 181), so the body is held and the mind can let go.
• Breath before meditation. In his teaching, the steady breath of pranayama is learned only after the poses are steady, and quiet attention grows out of both. That order, body first, then breath, then a quieter mind, is how our classes run.

As he put it in 1959: “The mind governs the senses. Breathing governs the mind. The nerves govern breathing. The asana give control over the nerves.” (Sparks of Divinity.)

We do not publish Mr Iyengar’s sequences. A sequence needs a teacher who can see how you respond and adapt each pose, which is what a class is for.

What Dr Timothy McCall says

In short: schizophrenia is on his list of conditions helped by yoga, and the textbook he co-edited sets out the trials and how the hospital programmes were run.

Dr McCall is a US medical doctor and yoga therapist who studied with Mr BKS Iyengar, author of Yoga as Medicine and former medical editor of Yoga Journal. His June 2019 list of 117 health conditions helped by yoga includes schizophrenia as no. 99. The studies he gave for it are on this page: the Bangalore trials (Duraiswamy 2007, Behere 2011, Jayaram 2013, Manjunath 2013), Paikkatt 2015 in Ranchi, Vancampfort 2010 in Belgium, Lin 2015 in Hong Kong and Ikai 2013 in Japan.

He also co-edited the textbook Principles and Practice of Yoga in Health Care (2016), with Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, Lorenzo Cohen and Shirley Telles. Its chapter on psychosis makes four points, in our words:

• Yoga helps as an add-on, especially for negative symptoms and daily functioning, across seven controlled studies.
• The hospital model: at least 12 supervised one-hour sessions in the first month, then three months of practice at home.
• Poses and breathing, not meditation. The Bangalore psychosis programmes used poses and pranayama only, and left meditation out, from a concern that it could stir up symptoms in some people.
• Alongside usual care. Most people in the trials had settled on stable care, and yoga was added to it.

Other voices

In short: Dr Krishna Raman and Dr Loren Fishman, two other medical doctors who studied with Mr Iyengar, do not write about schizophrenia in the material we hold. Prashant S Iyengar, Mr Iyengar’s son, who still teaches in Pune, often taught that better perception comes first, and good action follows from it.

“Unless you improve your perceptions, your actions will not improve.”

What does the research say about yoga for schizophrenia?

In short: when yoga was added to usual care, people living with schizophrenia had fewer negative symptoms, better quality of life and daily functioning, and better attention and emotion reading. Mindfulness courses adapted for psychosis eased symptoms and improved daily life too. Every yoga trial tested yoga in general, not Iyengar yoga. Why the difference matters.

Reviews of yoga for schizophrenia

• Yoga eased negative and positive symptoms, and improved quality of life and social functioning, with the benefit lasting at longer follow-up. Yin 2024, a review of 19 randomised trials and 1,274 people. Read the study.
• Every kind of exercise helped negative symptoms, and yoga ranked first of the five types compared. Wang 2025, a network review of 32 randomised trials and 1,773 adults. Read the study.
• Yoga was the most effective activity for overall, positive and negative symptoms. Yang 2024, a network review of 47 studies and 4,031 people. Read the study.
• Yoga was the most effective of 8 types of exercise for negative symptoms and for symptoms overall. Cui 2024, a network review of 25 studies and 1,441 people. Read the study.
• Yoga and mindfulness were the most effective of the mind-body practices. Su 2024, a network review of 22 randomised trials and 2,064 people. Read the study.
• Across three recent reviews, yoga was consistently the most effective type of exercise for negative symptoms. Trevelyan 2026, a review of reviews. Read the study.
• Yoga helped positive and negative symptoms and well-being. El Kirat 2023, an umbrella review of 9 reviews. Read the study.

• Yoga and mindfulness eased negative symptoms, with no rise in positive symptoms. Sabe 2019, a review of 15 randomised trials of mind-body practices and 1,081 people. Read the study.
• Yoga, aerobic exercise and tai chi all beat the comparison groups for symptoms, and yoga ranked best for negative and positive symptom scores. Liu 2026, a network review (a review that compares many treatments at once) of 30 randomised trials and 2,628 people. The authors rate the certainty as limited. Tai chi is a different practice from yoga, so only the yoga part counts here. PubMed 42675692. Read the study.
• Relaxation techniques gave small to moderate gains in overall, positive and negative symptoms, but not in stress. They worked better in outpatients than in hospital patients, and no harms were reported. Schlößer 2026, a review of 24 studies and 1,292 people. The relaxation techniques in yoga are restorative yoga, which uses conscious, guided relaxation and is highly effective at it, so this review counts as evidence for yoga too. Restorative yoga is the type of class we recommend for people wanting results in relaxation. PubMed 41876729. Read the study.
• Mindfulness improved insight (understanding that you are unwell) and lowered stigma (the shame people feel about their illness). Gao 2025, a review of 13 trials and 2,899 people. The authors ask for better long-term trials. Mindfulness is a calm, steady kind of attention. Yoga and yogic breathing both produce it, so this counts as evidence for them too. PubMed 41446302. Read the study.
• Exercise improved symptoms, quality of life, daily functioning and mood, and yoga in particular improved long-term memory. Dauwan 2016, a review of 29 studies and 1,109 people. Read the study.

One reason there are not more yoga trials: yoga research is hard to fund. The money mostly comes from universities and governments, not drug companies.

Yoga trials in people living with schizophrenia

• Negative symptoms fell about three times as far with added yoga as without it. Scores on the negative symptom scale (SANS) fell from 49.1 to 31.6 with yoga, against 51.2 to 45.3 without. Twelve supervised sessions in two weeks, then ten weeks at home. Rao 2021, a randomised trial of 89 people at two centres in South India. Read the study.
• Six months of added yoga improved negative and positive symptoms and quality of life, with no significant side effects. Varambally 2024, a randomised trial of 110 people in a city hospital and a semi-rural centre in India, with blinded raters. Read the study.
• People in the yoga group were about five times as likely to improve in negative symptoms as those doing exercise or waiting. One month of daily supervised classes, then three months at home. Varambally 2012, a randomised trial of about 119 outpatients in Bangalore. Read the study.

• Four months of yoga beat a matched exercise programme on symptoms, daily functioning and quality of life. Duraiswamy 2007, a randomised trial of 61 people in Bangalore, with a blinded rater. Read the study.
• Six weeks of yoga improved social thinking skills, negative and positive symptoms, and daily functioning, compared with a waiting list. Govindaraj 2021, a randomised trial of 51 people, 20 sessions in 6 weeks. Read the study.
• Only the yoga group got better at reading the feelings on other people’s faces, alongside fewer symptoms and better functioning. Behere 2011, a randomised trial of 66 people: yoga, exercise or a waiting list, with blinded raters. Read the study.
• A month of yoga improved emotion reading and daily functioning, and raised levels of oxytocin, a hormone linked with social bonding. Jayaram 2013, a randomised trial of 43 people in Bangalore. Read the study.
• In people in hospital with psychosis, six weeks of yoga eased overall severity and low mood more than exercise. Manjunath 2013, a randomised trial of 88 inpatients in Bangalore. Read the study.
• Six months of added yoga lowered markers of inflammation in the blood, and improved symptoms, stress and daily functioning. Mullapudi 2023, a randomised trial of 60 people in India. Read the study.
• In a German hospital, a yoga group programme was easy to keep up (94% stayed) and improved positive symptoms and low mood. Hahne 2026, a randomised trial of 50 inpatients, 4 weeks, with blinded raters. Read the study.

• A month of yoga lowered aggression and anger and lifted well-being. Fırıncık 2026, a randomised trial of 74 people in Türkiye. PubMed 42401097. Read the study.
• A month of daily yoga gave better symptom scores than usual care alone. Paikkatt 2015, a study of 30 people in Ranchi, India. Read the study.
• Eight weeks of yoga improved symptoms and quality of life compared with a waiting list. Visceglia 2011, a randomised pilot of 18 people in a state psychiatric centre in the United States. Read the study.
• A single 30-minute yoga session lowered anxiety and stress and lifted well-being straight away. Vancampfort 2010, a randomised study of 40 people in Belgium. Read the study.

Thinking skills, memory and reading faces

• Yoga sharpened the speed of attention more than physical exercise did, with gains lasting six months after a three-week course. Both yoga and exercise improved several thinking skills compared with usual care. Bhatia 2017, a randomised trial of 286 outpatients in New Delhi. Read the study.
• Both yoga and aerobic exercise improved working memory in women with early psychosis, and yoga also improved verbal learning and attention. Both also eased overall symptoms and low mood. Lin 2015, a randomised trial of 140 women in Hong Kong, 12 weeks. Read the study.
• Adding breath-watching meditation and yoga nidra (guided lying-down relaxation) to yoga was safe and well accepted. Bhatia 2022, a randomised trial of 145 outpatients, 3 weeks. Read the study.

Balance, strength and the body

• Eight weeks of weekly yoga improved standing balance and forward bending, though the gains faded once classes stopped. Ikai 2013, a randomised trial of 49 outpatients in Japan. Read the study.
• Twelve weeks of chair yoga improved flexibility, grip strength and leg endurance in psychiatric inpatients, most living with schizophrenia. Ikai 2017, a randomised trial of 56 inpatients in Japan. Read the study.

The Japanese balance trial makes a point we see every week: gains in balance and steadiness come with regular practice, and fade when it stops. Keep going.

Iyengar yoga studies

No trial has yet tested Iyengar yoga for schizophrenia, and none of the trials used Iyengar-trained teachers. Not yet studied is not the same as not working. In our view as certified Iyengar teachers, the precise, step-by-step instruction of an Iyengar class, the props that let every pose be done safely, and the years of training behind the teacher are well suited to people who need a clear, steady structure.

Breathing and pranayama

No trial has yet tested pranayama on its own for schizophrenia. Gentle pranayama was part of every Bangalore hospital programme above. Not yet studied is not the same as not working.

• Six sessions of breathing and relaxation training lifted psychological well-being and improved sleep. Yıldırım Üşenmez 2024, a randomised trial of 64 people at a community mental health centre in Türkiye. Read the study.
• Ten days of yoga with pranayama shifted the heart’s rhythm towards calm, along with fewer symptoms. Bansal 2026, an early pilot of 45 people at NIMHANS, Bangalore. Read the study.

We teach slow, smooth, nasal pranayama step by step, starting lying down. A review of pranayama for mental health found side effects came more often with fast breathing than with slow (Mütze 2025), so fast, forceful breathing is not where we start.

Mindfulness and meditation

• Mindfulness courses eased psychotic symptoms and improved daily functioning and insight, and the more days of practice, the better the results. Reangsing 2024, a review of 24 studies and 1,632 people. Read the study.
• Mindfulness courses made a 50% fall in symptoms nearly twice as likely, with better quality of life and insight and no serious side effects. Yip 2022, a review of 31 studies and 2,146 people with psychosis. Read the study.
• Mindfulness was linked with fewer hospital stays and crisis visits, and no more side effects or worsening than the comparison groups. O’Brien-Venus 2024, a safety review of 39 randomised trials and 2,684 people. Read the study.

And the single trials:

• Six months of a mindfulness-based education group cut time back in hospital, and more people reached full remission over two years: 37%, against 26% with standard education and 7% with usual care. Chien 2017, a randomised trial of 342 people in Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan. Read the study.
• Six weeks of mindfulness eased lingering negative symptoms and improved memory, compared with general rehabilitation. Shen 2021, a randomised trial of 100 people in Shanghai. Read the study.
• Eight months of daily guided meditation eased long-standing voices and unusual beliefs, and improved quality of life. Xue 2024, a randomised trial of 64 men in hospital in China. Read the study.
• Eight weeks of mindfulness training raised mindfulness and sped up thinking and sustained attention in people in remission. Quality of life showed a trend that did not reach significance. Lyu 2026, a randomised trial of 70 people in China; the attention results were secondary. Read the study.

• A mindfulness group eased voices, anxiety and low mood and improved quality of life. Yang 2026, a randomised trial of 80 people, twice weekly for 8 weeks. Mindfulness is a state that yoga and yogic breathing also produce, so this counts as evidence for them. PubMed 41679222. Read the study.
• Eight months of daily meditation slowed the shrinking of brain tissue (grey matter) and eased symptoms in people with long-term schizophrenia. Yang 2026, a randomised trial of Han Chinese men in a Shanghai hospital: 58 finished, 30 meditating and 28 on usual treatment. Brain scans were done at the start, at 3 months and at 8 months. Meditation builds the steady attention that yoga and pranayama also build, so this counts as evidence for them. PubMed 42154270. Read the study.
• Mindfulness-based therapy built resilience and self-esteem and lowered the stigma people felt about themselves. Dai 2024, a randomised trial of 174 inpatients, 8 weeks. Read the study.
• A weekly mindfulness group eased negative symptoms at 3 months in early psychosis. MacDougall 2024, a randomised trial of 59 people at three centres in Ontario, Canada. Read the study.

A note on meditation and safety

Mindfulness courses designed for psychosis did not show extra harm in a review of 39 trials. Long, intensive, silent retreats are the exception. A review of 28 case reports linked intensive meditation practices with episodes of psychosis (Sharma 2019), and the Bangalore yoga programmes left meditation out for that reason, so people with psychosis should leave long, intensive, silent retreats out. Silent retreats do build mindfulness, but they are not something Flametree does. Our classes and our retreats build yogic skills, mindfulness and yogic breathing step by step, with a teacher guiding you and the attention kept on the body and the breath. That suits many people, who do not like the idea of a silent retreat. If you notice unusual experiences during practice, stop, open your eyes, and tell your teacher.

For families and carers

• Four weeks of yoga classes, then home practice, eased the burden carers felt and improved their quality of life. Varambally 2013, a randomised pilot of 29 family carers of people with psychosis in Bangalore. Read the study.
• A mindfulness course (MBSR) eased anxiety, hopelessness and burden in family carers, still there three months later. Boğahan 2025, a randomised trial of 50 carers in Türkiye. Read the study.

Carers are welcome in our classes too. The two carer trials above suggest that a practice of your own helps you stay steady for the person you look after.

What the yoga that worked had in common, and its limits

The programmes that helped were regular, not occasional: daily or several times a week for the first month, then steady home practice. They combined poses and gentle breathing, were taught by a teacher, and were added to the care people already had. One Japanese trial of one hour a week, in people who had been unwell for many years, found no change in stress or resilience (Ikai 2014), and its authors pointed to the low amount of practice. The older Cochrane reviews (Broderick 2015 and 2017) found some benefits from single trials, but judged the evidence then too thin to be sure. Since then, many more trials and reviews have been published, and they point the same way.

Yoga, pranayama and mindfulness: how they work together

Several of the schizophrenia studies above tested mindfulness courses or meditation, and one tested breathing and relaxation training. All of it counts as evidence for yoga. Yoga produces mindfulness: you cannot do a pose well without keeping your attention on it, right now, and that is mindfulness. Yogic breathing produces it too. In the film My Year Of Living Mindfully, Jon Kabat-Zinn, who created the best-known mindfulness course, defines mindfulness as “paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally”, and describes it as a state or a capacity that a whole family of practices builds. Yoga poses and pranayama (yogic breathing) are two of the oldest of those practices. So the mindfulness trials that eased symptoms also show what a good yoga and pranayama class builds, with the attention kept on the body and the breath. No trial separates which part does the work.

We suggest coming to both a yoga class and a pranayama class. Mr Iyengar taught that asana (poses), pranayama and meditation are not divided, and in our experience the two together do more than either alone. See every class time. We trace the history and the links in Yoga And Mindfulness: Why The Mindfulness Research Points Back To Yoga And The Breath.

How this comes together in a Flametree class

Everything above points the same way, and it is how we teach yoga for schizophrenia in Darwin and online.

• Precise, step-by-step teaching. Each pose is taught in clear stages, so the attention always has a definite, practical job.
• Standing poses first. They wake up a heavy, flat body, use up restless energy, and build a sense of being steady on your feet.
• Supported forward bends and lying poses, to settle a wound-up system.
• Props in every class: chairs, belts, blocks, blankets, bolsters, the wall and the ropes, so the body is held and the mind can let go.
• Rest and breath to finish: every class ends with supported rest, and our pranayama classes teach a slow, smooth breath step by step.
• A practice for every kind of day: our gentle yoga and restorative yoga classes suit the days when energy is low.
• A friendly group. Pulling away from people is one of the negative symptoms. A regular class, at the same time each week, with the same faces, is a gentle way back into company.

See the timetable and book a class. Body, then breath, then a quieter mind: that is the path a class follows, and it is why we offer poses and breathing together.

Read more on the mind and emotions

• Anxiety and anger: worry, panic and the calm breath
• Depression and low mood
• Stress and burnout
• Brain health and memory: attention, memory and thinking skills
• OCD, PTSD and trauma and sleep and energy
• Yoga and mindfulness

Take it further

This guide gives you the facts on what helps. Stress and anxiety run through many of the studies above, so the ebook to start with is our stress book, with the stories of people it has helped. Go and do the free classes, see what you think, and then a pass puts it all into action.

• Classes, in Darwin or LIVE online: new, or away 3 months or more? 2 free classes, then 10 at half price. Already practising yoga? See the non-beginner half price pass. See the timetable and book.
• Masterclass: anxiety, upsets and anger is one of our 2027 Sunday Arvo Masterclasses with Chris Lalor. Come for the poses, the sequences and the pranayama that steady the body and calm the mind. Bookings are open.
• Retreats: a week of daily, adapted yoga in Bali. See the retreats.

Other conditions are in our encyclopaedia of yoga for health conditions.

“Physical firmness, emotional stability and intellectual clarity are the keys to meditation.”

Yoga for schizophrenia: questions people ask

Does yoga help schizophrenia?

Yes, as an add-on to usual care. A review of 19 randomised trials and 1,274 people found yoga eased negative and other symptoms and improved quality of life and social functioning (Yin 2024), and a review of 32 trials ranked yoga first of five exercise types for negative symptoms (Wang 2025). Every trial tested yoga in general; Iyengar yoga has not yet been tested for schizophrenia.

Can yoga cure schizophrenia?

No. Schizophrenia is often long-lasting, and no practice can promise to remove it. What yoga can do is ease negative symptoms such as low drive and flat feelings, lift quality of life, and sharpen attention, as the trials found, alongside the care you already have.

What are negative symptoms, and can yoga help them?

Negative symptoms are things that are reduced or missing: drive, pleasure, warmth of expression, speech, and the wish to be with people. They are where yoga shows its clearest benefit. In one trial, negative symptom scores fell about three times as far with added yoga as without it (Rao 2021), and in another, people doing yoga were about five times as likely to improve as those doing exercise or waiting (Varambally 2012).

Can yoga improve thinking skills in schizophrenia?

Yes. In a trial of 286 outpatients, a three-week yoga course sharpened the speed of attention more than physical exercise, with gains lasting six months (Bhatia 2017). In women with early psychosis, yoga improved working memory, verbal learning and attention (Lin 2015), and in Bangalore trials yoga improved the reading of feelings on other people’s faces (Behere 2011).

Is meditation safe for people living with schizophrenia?

Mindfulness courses designed for psychosis did not show extra harm in a review of 39 trials, and were linked with fewer hospital stays. Long, intensive, silent retreats are the exception: case reports have linked intensive meditation with episodes of psychosis, and the Bangalore yoga programmes left meditation out, so people with psychosis should leave them out. Silent retreats do build mindfulness, but Flametree does not run them. Our classes and retreats build yogic skills, mindfulness and yogic breathing step by step, with a teacher and the attention on the body and the breath.

Can breathing exercises help schizophrenia?

Gentle pranayama was part of every hospital yoga programme that helped, and in one trial six sessions of breathing and relaxation training lifted well-being and improved sleep (Yıldırım Üşenmez 2024). No trial has yet tested pranayama on its own. We teach a slow, smooth breath through the nose, step by step, and leave out fast, forceful breathing.

Can yoga replace my usual care for schizophrenia?

Every yoga trial for schizophrenia added yoga to the care people already had; none tested it as a replacement. Yoga sits well alongside your usual care, and the two are usually complementary. Always follow the directions of any doctor you are consulting.

How often should I do yoga for schizophrenia?

The hospital programmes that helped used about 12 supervised one-hour classes in the first month, then three months of practice at home. A trial of one hour a week found little change. So aim for two or three classes a week, and keep going; benefits grew over months.

Can I do yoga for schizophrenia in Darwin or online?

Yes. Flametree Yoga teaches Iyengar yoga in Woolner and Coolalinga in Darwin, and LIVE online, with gentle and restorative classes and pranayama classes for the breath. New students can begin with our new-student offer of 2 free classes, then 10 at half price. Book a class

Where this comes from: BKS Iyengar, Yoga: The Path to Holistic Health (Dorling Kindersley), pp. 50 to 51 and 180 to 181; Light on Life (Kindle edition); Sparks of Divinity; Iyengar: His Life and Work. Prashant S Iyengar, Yoga Rahasya, 2001. Timothy McCall MD, his June 2019 list of 117 health conditions helped by yoga and its bibliography. Khalsa, Cohen, McCall and Telles (eds), Principles and Practice of Yoga in Health Care (2016), chapter 7. AIHW, Survey of High Impact Psychosis, 2010. Sharma 2019 (meditation and psychosis case reports), Mütze 2025 (pranayama review), Ikai 2014, and the Cochrane reviews by Broderick 2015 and 2017. Studies as linked above, each looked up in PubMed in November 2026. Everything is summarised in our own words.

This page is general information, not medical advice. Flametree Yoga Studio, Darwin and LIVE online.