For those who’ve ever entered your yoga class feeling a bit, um, backed up, you may be stunned to understand that you simply don’t stroll out of it the identical means: There simply may be one thing in regards to the observe that—whereas calming your thoughts and soothing your muscle tissues—additionally revs up your digestive system.

“It’s very doubtless 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 properly, which is why she says she skips the pre-class breakfast burrito so she doesn’t find yourself working out in the midst of it.

All this explains why yoga generally is 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 will probably assist ease the signs of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), Jill Deutsch, MD, director of the Yale Useful Gastrointestinal Problems Program and a registered yoga trainer, tells SELF. In response to a small 2014 research, when younger adults with IBS took a few yoga courses 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 selected function of yoga that’s accountable, Dr. Deutsch says. “It’s doubtless a mix of issues,” she says, mentioning that the observe can embody each asana (motion) and pranayama (breath work).

The primary half is clearly enormous. For one, motion generally can pace up your intestine motility, or how rapidly waste strikes by way of your GI tract. “We perceive {that a} physique in movement implies that all of its elements are in movement,” Dr. Deutsch says. This would possibly clarify why you all of the sudden need to 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 long term.

Digging a bit 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 generally,” Dr. Deutsch says. However, she says, yoga practitioners and lecturers and those that 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 may 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 doubtlessly assist stimulate or enhance motion by way of 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 inner therapeutic massage might help transfer issues alongside, so to talk, which is why it is not unusual to listen to the occasional flatulence in a yoga class,” Turner tells SELF.