Can yoga help to help kick the tobacco habit?

Smoking. You can’t have missed the memo that it’s not good for health. But it’s also a hard habit to kick. Perhaps yoga could be a support if you are trying to ditch the smokes?

A small study in the US reported in the Journal of Women's Health in 2012 compared two groups of women who were undergoing cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to stop smoking. One group, which included 32 women, did Vinyasa yoga classes twice a week, while the other group of 23 women did the CBT alone.

Did the yoga help? It seems so: the yoga group showed greater abstinence from the smokes immediately after the eight-week programme and, to a certain extent, they were more likely to abstain from smoking in the six months after the programme.

“Our results provide preliminary evidence that yoga may be an effective adjunctive treatment for smoking cessation in women,” write the study authors, noting there were other benefits too. “Women participating in the yoga program also showed reduced anxiety and improvements in perceived health and well-being when compared with controls.”