Health and Fitness Tips

Yoga is renowned for its power to relieve stress, increase flexibility, and build muscle tone. It is not, however, as well known for promoting weight loss. Most people don’t think of yoga as a way to burn off the calories, so they’re often pleasantly surprised to discover that it can.

Yoga is not though of as a particularly active form of exercise. While it conditions and tones your muscles, you’re not likely to work up a sweat during a yoga session. The muscle toning effects of yoga do let you burn off calories better, however. So if you participate in a good aerobic workout, you will see greater results than you would if you weren’t doing yoga.

Yoga also teaches discipline, which will assist you greatly in sticking with your exercise program or new diet. Yoga reinforces the link between your body and your mind, increasing your desire to look after your body. This is very helpful for people who want to lose weight but have trouble getting motivated.

If you plan on using yoga by itself to help you drop some pounds, there are some new variations on the traditional practice of yoga that might be quite helpful. These forms of yoga can give you the traditional benefits of yoga along with a cardiovascular workout at the same time. Following are some of the most popular.

Vinyasa – Vinyasa yoga is focused on changing from one asana (pose) to another while simultaneously doing yogic breathing. Sun Salutations are a common pose in Vinyasa yoga, but there are many other poses used also. Vinyasa yoga is often practiced in a heated room to encourage sweating.

Ashtanga – This is an intricate approach to yoga, integrating six series of individual asanas. Each series is more complex than the previous one, so it’s important to start at the beginning and work your way up.

Power yoga – This “westernized” type of yoga features more activity and fast movements alongside of yoga breathing. It will give you many of the benefits of a cardiovascular workout such as increasing heart rate and working up a sweat, much more so than traditional styles of yoga.

While they may not give you as much of a workout as aerobics, these non-traditional styles of yoga combine weight loss and cardiovascular benefits with the muscle building and flexibility training of yoga. And for those who don’t have the time to participate in two separate workout programs, they can be a great option.

Other than both being forms of exercise, yoga and aerobics seem to have little in common. But traditional yoga can enhance the effects of more intense workouts, and these newly popular styles of yoga can give you the best of both worlds. If you’re dissatisfied with the results you’re seeing from your normal exercise program, why not give yoga a try?

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