Long-term Yoga Experience Predicted a Facilitated Attentional Disengagement from Fearful Faces.
International Journal of Yoga January 1, 2025 Gabriela Campelo, Goiara Mendonça De Castilho
Long-term yoga practice, but not current weekly practice hours, was associated with facilitated attentional disengagement from fearful faces under conditions requiring top-down attentional control. Twenty long-term yoga practitioners completed emotional spatial cueing tasks measuring engagement and disengagement biases toward fearful versus neutral expressions. Greater yoga experience predicted reduced emotional bias specifically in top-down, not bottom-up, attentional processes. The findings suggest that regular yoga practice over years may modify top-down emotion regulation mechanisms.