Yoga + Buprenorphine Treatment Accelerates Opioid Withdrawal Recovery

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 14, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Yoga, in addition to buprenorphine treatment, significantly accelerated opioid withdrawal recovery, according to a study published online Jan. 7 in JAMA Psychiatry.

Suddala Goutham, from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bengaluru, India, and colleagues evaluated yoga as adjuvant therapy to accelerate opioid withdrawal recovery. The analysis included 59 men (aged 18 to 50 years) with opioid use disorder experiencing mild-to-moderate withdrawal symptoms who were randomly assigned to yoga (30 participants) or a control group (29 participants). The yoga intervention included 10 supervised 45-minute sessions for 14 days alongside standard buprenorphine treatment, while the control participants received buprenorphine treatment alone.

The researchers found that participants in the yoga group recovered faster than those in the control group (hazard ratio [HR], 4.40), with a median stabilization time of five days versus nine days in the control group. Participants in the yoga group showed significantly superior heart rate variability improvements with large effects on low-frequency (LF) power (ω² = 0.16), high-frequency (HF) power (ω² = 0.14), and LF/HF ratio (ω² = 0.12). Increases in parasympathetic activity accounted for 23 percent of the treatment effect (indirect HR, 1.38). Additionally, the yoga group experienced significantly greater anxiety reduction (ω² = 0.28), with moderate improvements in sleep latency.

“These findings support integrating yoga into withdrawal protocols as a neurobiologically informed intervention addressing core regulatory processes beyond symptom management,” the authors write.

Abstract/Full Text