This is Your Brain on Yoga with Dr. Daya Grant
Yogaland Podcast
Andrea Ferretti
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2022
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you’ve ever wondered what’s really happening in your body and brain during asana and meditation, today’s conversation is going to fascinate you. Our guest is Dr. Daya Grant -- a neuroscientist, sports psychologist, and mental performance consultant -- who explains the growing research on mindfulness and meditation and how these practices are beneficial to the brain.
We cover a lot of ground in this interview including:
- How yoga and meditation affect the brain, both structurally and functionally
- What happens to the brain during breathing practices like alternate-nostril breathing (which Daya says is one of the most widely studied pranayama exercises)
- How she helps athletes use mindfulness, asana, and yoga philosophy to enhance their performance
- What it was like having a meditation practice growing up impacted her, and how she’s carrying on that tradition with her own son
Show notes: http://www.jasonyoga.com/podcast/episode258
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/yogaland.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, I'm Andrea Ferretti and this is episode 258 of Yoga Land. |
| 0:08.6 | Today my guest is Dr. Daya Grant. Daya is a yoga teacher. She has a masters in kinesiology |
| 0:16.3 | and sports psychology and she has a PhD in neuroscience. These days, Daya has a private practice |
| 0:23.4 | where she combines those three disciplines as a mental performance coach for primarily college |
| 0:29.6 | professional and elite athletes. She works with athletes in a wide range of sports, |
| 0:34.0 | like baseball, gymnastics, volleyball, ice skating, triathlon, crossfit, and her whole mission |
| 0:41.6 | is to use all of the tools that she learned from yoga and sports psychology and neuroscience |
| 0:49.7 | and combine them to empower athletes to perform at their best. So I just thought it would be |
| 0:56.5 | really incredible to talk to her and she agreed to come on the podcast. We talk about her |
| 1:02.0 | work now and how she got into it and how she came to combine these three seemingly different |
| 1:09.0 | disciplines. And we also talk about, I was really curious to know from her perspective as both a |
| 1:15.5 | yogi and a neuroscientist where the crossover is. In other words, the yogis who came up with all |
| 1:23.7 | of the tools and techniques that we use today, I'm thinking a lot of mindfulness techniques and |
| 1:30.3 | pranayama, even the eight limbs when you think about it. These are tools that are now in many senses |
| 1:37.9 | being quote unquote studied in western labs, right? They used to just be studied in the lab of our |
| 1:44.1 | bodies, but now they are being studied in all sorts of ways. So I wanted to know what she sees |
| 1:51.3 | as a neuroscientist is the crossover between the study of the brain as we know it in modern life |
| 1:57.6 | and what the yogis knew from thousands of years ago. So that's what we talk about as well. |
| 2:05.4 | I know you will enjoy this interview with her, but before we get to the interview, I just wanted |
| 2:10.4 | to remind you that I am going to rerun my content blueprint course soon in the next coming months. |
| 2:18.4 | I am updating it. I'm revising it. There's a few things I want to do a little bit differently, |
| 2:23.5 | but if you'd like to know when the course goes on sale, please go join my wait list at |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Andrea Ferretti, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Andrea Ferretti and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.