The 10 Best Yoga Poses for Brain Damage

It doesn’t seem to matter how bad things get.

Some website will always suggest yoga.

They’ll tell you to chant aphorisms into a mirror or do superhero poses to combat deep anxiety and depression about any number of global catastrophes or crimes against humanity. They’ll tell you the answer is to turn off your phone and ignore all the problems you see instead of trying to do anything about them. That attitude has led us directly here, and we see how ugly it becomes and what deep moral and intellectual failings it conditions.

They’ll respond to record heat waves or a new disease by telling you to build up your tolerance to heat or eat healthier foods. A couple of years ago, one website even said if we were struggling financially, to develop a healthier relationship with money, as if that’s not another meaningless platitude.

But when all the other advice fails, the wellness mafia always defaults back to their failsafe. Just do a little yoga.

Here’s a recent example:

Here’s how it starts:

Brain fog always seems to strike at the worst possible moment. It creeps in right when you’re trying to work on a project or give a presentation on Zoom, making it impossible to focus. It can also wreak havoc on your ability to stay organized or remember where you put your keys.

The article says nothing about what causes brain fog. That’s the point. The point is to make brain fog feel normal, something a little yoga can solve. The point is to get this article circulating in Facebook groups, and to sell yoga pants. Meanwhile, another health blog attributes the rise in brain fog to…

Menopause.

As that article says, “Women easily forget things, get distracted, and feel mentally sluggish during menopause, which can impact their daily functioning.” They even quote an expert that:

Some women may find it hard to recall recent conversations they had with a friend or relative, names of people, or appointments they booked, or they may find it difficult to stay focused when it comes to tasks… some women can experience brain fog symptoms for months and others for years.

The article goes on to tell women with cognitive problems to eat better, get more sleep, exercise more, and do mental exercises.

It’s not condescending at all.

These articles never once mention Covid infections as another likely cause for brain fog, and they say nothing about further testing or diagnosis to rule it out. By now, countless articles have made it abundantly clear that Covid, a disease that continues to circulate around the world all year long, causes significant amounts of brain inflammation and damage that can last for months, if not forever.

It’s undeniable that we’re facing a crisis of cognitive decline caused by a virus that results in a 2-3 point IQ drop per infection for mild cases, and up to 9 points for more severe ones. A study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that these drops last for months to years. Study after study has focused on the harm Covid does to the brain while outlining possible treatments. These studies have been covered everywhere from The Scientific American to The Guardian.

And yet, treatment remains elusive.

It’s a personal venture.

Brain fog offers a euphemism for what Long Covid patients describe as “the feeling that their brain is lost in a maze, and they can’t find their way back.” As Long Covid expert Ziyad Aly-Aly writes, letting Covid spread unmitigated through the world has already resulted in "an increase of 2.8 million adults with a level of cognitive impairment that requires significant societal support."

They need societal support.

Not yoga.

Studies have shown that Covid elevates your risk of memory problems by 77 percent, even in mild cases. They’ve found that Covid can destroy synapses in your brain, resulting in cognitive impairment on par with Alzheimer’s and dementia. Another recent study confirms that Covid can fuse brain cells, hampering their ability to function.

In March, Nature published a review of research confirming brain inflammation from Covid as a key cause of memory and concentration problems. Your immune system triggers the inflammation.

There's also evidence of direct infection that can age your brain. Scientific American published an overview of studies documenting Covid's cognitive impact. They've shown that Covid survivors routinely face the following:

1. Cognitive deficits
2. Memory problems
3. Prolonged brain inflammation
4. Fused brain cells
5. Brain shrinkage

Covid doesn't spare kids. More studies have shown that children and teenagers face the same risk of Long Covid as adults.

A recent study in Pediatrics found that Covid is causing a range of neurological problems in children, along with sleep disorders, lower academic performance, irritability, impulsive behavior, emotional instability, and even suicidal tendencies. As you can see with your own eyes, these problems are widespread in schools, and they're getting worse. Neuroscientists are extremely worried about how Covid harms brain development in adolescents.

As one recent article stated bluntly, “students across all ages and economic levels have begun to demonstrate weaker memory and flexible thinking skills.” Unfortunately, that article discusses the pandemic but doesn’t reference a single study or expert linking Covid infections to cognitive declines.

Imagine having brain damage and inflammation from a viral infection dismissed as mere forgetfulness brought on by menopause, or just a mild inconvenience that happens to everyone, something that will go away on its own in a few months or a few years, and in the meantime you should just exercise more. Imagine telling millions of teens that it’s just their TikTok habit.

How irresponsible is that?

How insidious is that?

Millions of Americans and millions more around the world can’t concentrate long enough to make it through a day of work or school. They’re forgetting entire conversations, entire meetings, entire email threads. This is a crisis, but articles like these try to make it sound cute. The casual, breezy openings frame the problem as an inconvenience we’ve already been dealing with, not a new emergency that requires immediate, urgent, collective action.

That’s the point.

These days, almost every news media outlet has a wellness section. The wellness section exists for one sole purpose, to transform public health from a collective endeavor to a handbag of life hacks.

The wellness section routinely takes public health crises and offers a spin on them, makes light of them, and offers individualized solutions that put the entire responsibility on your shoulders. Never mind that you pay about a quarter of your income to support institutions like the CDC. Never mind that you’ve been promised affordable healthcare for your entire life.

Just do some yoga.

Eat a carrot.

The wellness section endeavors to convince you that you don’t need healthcare and you don’t need to protect yourself from threats, while simultaneously blaming you for problems caused by greed.

If you want another example, look up almost any article on sleep published on the vast majority of news sites today. Even if they sometimes make a slight gesture toward larger social problems like light pollution and overwork, they always default to the same advice that centers blame on our personal habits, saying nothing about the larger forces that disrupt our rest. And of course, they never tell you that the entire financial bedrock of our economy hinges on tens of millions of people spending too much time on their phones.

They need you to spend too much time on your phone.

They need you to believe it’s your fault.

They need you to keep doing it.

Earlier this year, even Hannah Singleton at GQ had to admit that brain fog, a term she never used before, has “become part of my daily vocabulary.” Even when major news outlets and magazines make the Covid connection, they almost always stop short of demanding clean air and mask policies in schools and workplaces, even as more and more companies regress and demand their employees return to the office, blaming their problems on remote work. At best, these articles recommend you see a specialist, but they don’t mention the uncomfortable fact that as cognitive problems skyrocket, you might wait months just for an appointment. Meanwhile, you can learn those ten yoga poses and take a supplement.

These listicles have a few other things in common. They’re written by someone who’s comfortably insulated from reality. Before deciding to tackle the greatest public health crisis in a generation, perhaps a century, these writers previously wrote about mattresses and mindfulness.

Forget credentials. They haven’t had their heads in the game. It’s only now occurring to them that something might be wrong.

There’s no vast conspiracy. As a number of media analysts have explained, this is simply how journalism and media operate now. They reward content that doesn’t make anyone think too hard. They promote content that transfers collective responsibility to individuals.

This kind of content feeds the wellness industry, a multi-billion dollar market that profits from the failures of public health.

That’s the quiet agenda.

Many of us have spent years trying to warn everyone what would happen if we abandoned public health and accepted mass infection. Now GQ of all places is writing about brain fog, and even the most superficial publications out there are trying to explain away the new surge in cognitive deficits as a cute little problem, as if adults in their 30s and 40s have always forgotten the names of their friends or struggled to remember entire conversations.

They don’t want you to demand a flexible work schedule. They don’t want you to demand clean air or safer schools. They don’t want you to wear a mask. All of that directly conflicts with the western corporate profit motive. After all, if people actually understood how viruses spread and what they do to your brain, nobody would want to eat in crowded indoor restaurants or go clubbing anymore. Want proof? Look no further than the weekly obsession with employment figures and consumer spending reports that determine the value of shares.

It’s not that there’s an evil scheme to rot your brain, it’s just that taking care of people is so… inconvenient and expensive.

It’s easier to just get everyone doing corpse pose.

Now that’s cheap.