Does Yoga Help ADHD?

What does the research say? Does Yoga Help Adhd?

Many research studies show that exercise is an important support for ADHD. While medication is the number one “go-to” support, exercise and meditation are also show to be beneficial. This is especially important for people who can’t take medication. For some people medication has pretty awful side effects, and for some people medication simply doesn’t work.

This is where the practice of yoga can be extremely beneficial. Not only is yoga wonderful exercise, it also has been called “moving meditation” as it encourages you to breath deeply and stay in the moment.

When I first started yoga in my home city of Edmonton my instructor used to tell us, “Get out of your monkey mind”. Apparently the monkey mind is the mind that jumps from one thing to another, like a monkey jumping from one tree to the next. This is also how many ADHD brains behave. During yoga it can actually feel easier to focus on the present due to the struggle of staying with the pose. Especially if it is a hard pose, like chair pose.

During a yoga session you are asked to focus on your breath, something that every therapist is always trying to get their clients to practice. We do this because we know that focusing on the breath helps regulate the nervous system. The more you practice, the easier it is to regulate. You are also asked to struggle in Yoga, which helps increase something we call “distress tolerance”. This is the ability to withstand uncomfortable or distressing situations without running away, or lashing out. Yoga also helps us with proprioception, or body awareness through balancing poses. This is something that many adhders struggle with.

Yoga does help with certain ADHD symptoms

A study published in 2025 states that primary students who engaged in 16 yoga sessions twice a week had less anxiety, better forward and backward memory scores (working memory), and better attention post intervention (Bagheri, S. (2025). The sample size for this study was smaller (only 40 students), so hopefully more studies will be done in the future with larger sample sizes. It’s also important to note that there are many different types of yoga. The type of yoga, the personality of the yoga instructor, and the setting could all influence the results of the study.

There aren’t a ton of studies looking at yoga and adults with ADHD unfortunately. There always tends to be more research done on children than adults in general in the ADHD world. One study I looked at had participants engage in Hatha Yoga and Cycling (Dinu et al., 2023). This study had a larger sample size (Control =77, experimental =82). The study wrote that everyone benefited from cycling in regards to temporal impulsivity. This is the tendency to want/need something now (immediate gratification) instead of being able to wait. However, only ADHDers benefited from the yoga. The authors of this study also mentioned other research linking Yoga to increased dopamine, which lead me down another rabbit hole…

Thus far I have found one study showing an increase in endogenous dopamine release while practicing yoga (Kjaer et al., 2022). I also found a review article that discusses a correlation between increased activity of melatonin, nonadrenalin, serotonin, dopamine, and yoga (Kumar e tal., 2023). This information indicates yoga is likely beneficial for the neurotransmitters involved with ADHD. That being said, we could use more ADHD specific studies-especially regarding adults affected by ADHD and yoga.

So, should you practice yoga as an additional support for your ADHD? I don’t see why not, as long as you do so in a safe way that honors your body and brain. Personally, I enjoy in-person yoga sessions supplemented by online yoga with Kassandra. (I am not endorsed by her- I just enjoy that she offers free yoga on youtube and that she offers 10 min, 30 min, and longer classes).

Interested in talking to Cammi about ADHD Therapy? Contact us today to learn how we might work together.

Resources:

Bagheri, S. (2025). Effects of Yoga Training on Cognitive Performance and Anxiety of Children with ADHD. International Journal of School Health., 12(3), 187–196. https://doi.org/10.30476/intjsh.2025.105097.1469

Dinu, L. M., Singh, S. N., Baker, N. S., Georgescu, A. L., Singer, B. F., Overton, P. G., & Dommett, E. J. (2023). The Effects of Different Exercise Approaches on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder in Adults: A Randomised Controlled Trial. Behavioral Sciences (2076-328X), 13(2), 129. https://doi-org.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/10.3390/bs13020129

Kjaer T.W., Bertelsen C., Piccini P., Brooks D., Alving J., Lou H.C. Increased dopamine tone during meditation-induced change of consciousness. Cognit Brain Res. 2002;13(2):255–259. doi: 10.1016/s0926-6410(01)00106-9.

R, P., Kumar, A. P., Dhamodhini K S, Venugopal, V., Silambanan, S., K, M., & Shah, P. (2023). Role of yoga in stress management and implications in major depression disorder. Journal of Ayurveda and integrative medicine, 14(5), 100767. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaim.2023.100767