Yoga and Meditation

Yoga is renowned for its capacity to reduce stress, enhance flexibility and improve muscle tone and strength. But it’s not typically associated with helping you lose weight. Yoga isn’t typically your first thought when it comes to burning off calories. So it can be surprising to discover that it can actually be an effective way to boost your weight loss efforts.

Conventional yoga isn’t a vigorous type of exercise. While it conditions and tones your muscles, you’re not likely to work up a sweat during a yoga session. However, the fact that your muscles are being given a workout means your body is utilizing calories more effectively. Therefore, you’ll get more benefit from your aerobic workouts if you include yoga in your fitness routine.

An important component of yoga is discipline of mind and body, which will help you stay committed to your exercise program and healthy eating habits. Yoga reinforces the link between your body and your mind. Therefore you feel more motivated to care for your body. This is very helpful for people who want to lose weight but have trouble getting motivated.

Conventional forms of yoga have been supplemented with some new techniques that can help you lose weight more easily. You get the benefits of cardio and yoga all in the same workout. And to make it easy, there’s a huge variety of yoga DVDs that you can buy that will give you an effective workout.

Following are a few of the most well known forms of yoga.

Vinyasa Yoga: Vinyasa yoga is centered on shifting from one asana, or pose, to another while concentrating on your breathing. There are lots of different poses that you might recognize the name of, including the Sun Salutation. Vinyasa yoga is often practiced in a heated room to encourage sweating.

Ashtanga Yoga: This is an intricate approach to yoga, integrating six series of individual poses, or asanas. The moves become progressively more difficult, so you have to learn them in the correct sequence so you can slowly develop the skills necessary to handle the more complex positions.

Power Yoga: This modern adaptation of yoga mixes active, high-speed actions with yogic breathing.

These yoga techniques offer more of the heart-healthy benefits of aerobic exercise than the usual kinds of yoga. They won’t quite give you the workout of a cardio class. But you will still experience the benefits of cardiovascular health and muscle toning, along with improved flexibility. Your weight loss program will surely benefit. And these kinds of yoga are great for people who are too busy for more than one workout routine.

On the surface, aerobics and yoga have few similarities. Nevertheless, yoga training can boost the benefits of cardiovascular exercise. And the newer styles of this ancient practice can be a great replacement for your usual aerobics. If you’re not happy with the progress you’re making with your usual fitness routine, consider adding yoga to the mix.