This year marks the 11th International Day of Yoga, which embraces the theme, “Yoga for One Earth, One Health,” which spotlights the fundamental link between personal wellness, public mental health, and the well-being of our shared planet. Yoga, far beyond being a set of physical movements or a tool for individual stress management, represents a holistic and salutogenic approach to health and well-being. It encourages a lifestyle that integrates physical vitality, emotional resilience, psychological stability, and a sense of personal and social responsibility.
This perspective emphasizes prevention and care across the entire lifespan—from early childhood to old age—and across diverse cultural contexts. By engaging both body and mind through yoga, individuals and communities can develop greater psychological flexibility, self-directedness, and personal responsibility—key dimensions of character maturity that support adaptive coping and effective self-management. These psychosocial capacities contribute to increased awareness and accountability, which are essential for advancing social connectedness, ecological consciousness, and collective mental health. This reflects the complex and dynamic interdependence between individual behaviour, societal well-being, and planetary health. While yoga has its roots in traditional systems of health, this Research Topic approaches it as a secular, evidence-informed practice with broad relevance to public health. This perspective emphasizes yoga’s empirical evolution into a multidisciplinary approach to well-being, highlighting its applicability within modern, evidence-based public health frameworks. The focus is on its salutogenic potential to enhance well-being across all ages and cultural settings, independent of spiritual or religious frameworks.
This Research Topic aims to explore how regular engagement in yoga can enhance mindfulness, foster resilience, and support self-regulation, emotional control, personal responsibility, and health-related agency among individuals and communities. Contributions are welcome that examine how yoga fosters a person-centred, holistic experience of health— supporting cognitive, affective, and somatic well-being—and how this integration can promote a coherent sense of well-being in conditions of unpredictability or stress. This salutogenic perspective aligns with contemporary public health goals, highlighting the importance of connectedness, purpose, and sustainable living for both mental well-being and ecological responsibility. In this way, yoga can be considered a complementary public health strategy that supports the promotion of mental and physical health, reduces health disparities, and empowers individuals and communities through accessible, low-cost, and culturally adaptable practices.
Topics welcome into the collection include, but are not limited to:
• Physical, Mental, and Preventive Health Benefits: Yoga’s impact on emotional regulation, psychological well-being, preventive care, and lifestyle diseases prevention;
• Mindfulness, Awareness, and Healthy Choices: How yoga fosters mindfulness, emotional awareness, and intentional decision-making leading to more sustainable, health-conscious lifestyles;
• Ecological, Cultural, and Social Consciousness: The role of yoga in promoting ecological awareness, cultural sensitivity, and social responsibility;
• Community and Public Wellness: Yoga communities as drivers of public mental health and environmental initiatives, and intergenerational care;
• Global Adaptation, Lifespan Relevance and Cultural Exchange: The international spread of yoga and its integration across life stages and diverse cultural and societal contexts.
Article types and fees
This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:
- Brief Research Report
- Clinical Trial
- Community Case Study
- Conceptual Analysis
- Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
- Data Report
- Editorial
- General Commentary
- Hypothesis and Theory
Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.
Keywords: yoga, wellness, public mental health, stress management, holistic approach, emotional resilience, planetary well-being
Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.