In our blogs, we have written a lot about making your yoga practice your own. What works for someone else might not work for you – and vice versa. What matters most is that you are creating a space where you can stay grounded and let go of outside distractions. 

Unconventional Yoga Benefits

Discipline

Your yoga practice can help you stay disciplined – especially if you have created a habit of setting dedicated hours of the week toward yoga. Not only that, you also have to train and discipline your mind to be present during yoga. It can take time to get to this point, and your yoga instructor will help you get there. 

Good Posture

Another unconventional yoga benefit is good posture. Yoga incorporates several lengthening techniques that do not come from traditional forms of exercise. These techniques allow muscle tension to decrease. Once you have come into a routine of yoga, you will notice good posture along with flexibility.

Structure

Yoga creates structure in our lives. Oftentimes our days can be chaotic and get away from us. Work emails, phone calls, and texts distract us and take our attention. Unanticipated problems come up throughout the day. Yoga is structured for a set time and focuses on a sequence of movement. This sequence is followed by an instructor, or can be created by the individual ahead of time. 

Mindfulness

The practice of a good yoga routine will help you be mindful. This is staying mindful of your present state and your current space. You must stay mindful of the yoga exercises you are following and that you are using good form. 

Mental Clarity

Along with mindfulness, unconventional yoga benefits also include mental clarity. The busyness of life keeps our minds racing constantly with to-do lists. Our minds can also be bogged down with decisions we need to make. Yoga can allow your mind to slow down so you can find mental clarity. Oftentimes if we slow our minds down, we can come to our heart’s center, pointing us to the direction of clarity. 

Thank you for reading! If you are interested in following a practice that produces these unconventional yoga benefits, take a look at Power Yoga’s videos. Happy National Yoga Month!

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While Bryan Kest’s Power Yoga consists of instructor-led videos, yoga practice should be a personal journey. Here’s how to find your own. Essentially, this is how it’s done!

There are 7,000,000,000 ways to do a yoga pose every day. What this means is we are all unique and different from each other. Since every moment we are aging and changing we are unique and different from ourselves the day prior. To discover where you belong in each pose is the key not only to the poses but to healthy and contented life.

Out of these seven billion ways how do I discover “my way” of doing the pose? Especially when attending an in-person or livestream class where everyone is expected to do what the instructor is asking? 

Most importantly, we recognize our uniqueness and the fact that our needs are unique! It also helps to have an instructor who also recognizes this as well and is encouraging us to tune in to what we are feeling. Once we acknowledge our uniqueness it follows that our needs are grossly or subtly different than others in everything including these yoga poses. Once we understand this, we can see the absurdity of comparing and competing. We cannot compare or compete without disrespecting our uniqueness.

 The art of yoga is the same as the art of living. This art involves paying attention (awareness) to the experience one is having and according to the experience making intelligent decisions about what’s needed. This is when yoga becomes healing, when we are tuned into and honoring what we are feeling. Sensation is the language of the body! As we enter these poses the body will talk to us in its language. Sensation that feels good means go deeper and sensation that is painful or causes strain means back off. This is how we discover our place in each pose. This place is somewhere between too much and not enough and is different from everybody else, even different from ourselves the last time we practiced yoga. 

This is not easy to recognize and embrace as our brains have been programmed by our culture to believe “more is better” and “no pain no gain”! This programmed mentality needs to be recognized and eradicated by no longer feeding it mental energy and unconscious loyalty.

To be contented we need to be accepting of our uniqueness on every level and since we need to start somewhere, why not start with our bodies within these poses? The art of yoga is the same as the art of living because in both cases we need to be quiet and present. When your mind is quiet, we are not facilitating stress and when the mind is present, we can suck the juice out of every moment. This is what we are practicing within a yoga class. Loose hamstrings don’t really help much if anything, but a quiet, peaceful, and present mind helps everything.

All of this is what we incorporate into our Power Yoga in-person or livestream classes. Once all of this is truly understood, it can then transcend the yoga studio and permeate our life. Amen! 

Love,

BK

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This article will focus on aging gracefully in the physical exercise context. Yet invariably this involves how we approach physicality mentally. Aging gracefully means slowing down the aging process as best we can as well as moving through the aging process comfortably. Just to be clear, a large factor in physical health is mental stress so there is certainly more to aging gracefully than addressing the body. Everything in our reality deteriorates over time and this process has its value even though that value is not addressed in our cultural lexicon. There is a supreme importance to being able to “let go” and to “accept what is” and it’s no coincidence that letting go and accepting is the key to a stress-free life. Physical and mental benefits of exercise are the connection between yoga and aging gracefully.

Yoga and The Physical

Physically speaking, there is a universal law that states “the harder you are on anything the faster you wear it out”. Many of us pay a heavy toll in the form of aches, pain, and physical issues later in life due to the wear and tear our bodies endured throughout our youth and beyond due to the “no pain no gain” and “more is better” mentality that seems to be the foundation of our misguided fitness culture. But the past is the past, and there is no reason to dwell on what was and how we were. Let’s “let go” of how we were and address how we can move forward in a more physically benevolent manner.  

Considering that the harder you are on anything the faster you destroy it, it’s fair to say the gentler you are on anything the longer you preserve it!  It’s no coincidence that gentleness and moderation are synonymous. If us humans understood moderation there would be no such thing as global warming but that’s a whole other article. It’s not easy to be gentle or moderate due to learned behavior. Basically, this is the no pain no gain mentality embedded in us from our culture. There is a psychological law that states “the more you see something the more you believe it” and growing up in our culture, what we’ve seen is “more is better”, bigger, stronger, faster, richer, looser, prettier, skinnier and younger to name some of our highest cultural objectives. None of which contributes to health, happiness, and aging gracefully. So again, gentleness (which is an affront to this learned behavior) is not so easy. This is partly why I’m writing this article–to support you in your effort towards wellness (moderation).   

As we age we lose in degrees strength, elasticity, stamina, and our regenerative prowess–like all other things these qualities deteriorate over time. The damage of forceful, aggressive, and violent movement can no longer be camouflaged by youthfulness and we end up injured. These injuries take longer to heal and happen much too often due to the fact that the body is changing but our actions (our mind state) are not. Much like the middle-aged spare tire many carry around their belly due to the fact their metabolism has slowed down but their caloric intake has remained the same.  

Welcoming Gentleness

Moving forward, let’s be gentler! Let’s work on letting go of how things were and discover what’s moderate now. Let’s not spend middle age and beyond constantly injured due to some trip we lay on ourselves about how much we should do or how far we should go in any sort of activity. Remember our health does not depend on the quantity of our actions, it depends on the quality of our actions and the quality should be gentleness. Your body will thank YOU!  

Gentleness will slow down the aging process due to less wear and tear on our body and keeping us from being injured! Letting go will allow us to age gracefully due to the peace which emerges from not needing things to be different from how they are. In this peace, we discover the “value” of our aging process, the value that’s not addressed in our current cultural lexicon.

Welcome to Power Yoga!

Sincerely,

Bryan Kest

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These challenges encourage a daily yoga practice and I have never seen a greater tool toward enhancing one’s day than a well-rounded yoga flow. The idea of participating in a challenge, being led by an experienced practitioner and being supported by a community can be incredibly helpful in supporting or igniting a regular home yoga practice. Of course, the community aspect of these challenges is always incredibly supportive and may be needed more right now during this pandemic, where we are otherwise isolated from many in our community and loved ones.

These challenges give me a tool to continue doing what I love to do in another way. I love to share my yoga practice with others and support others’ yoga practice. I love to support and reinforce the simple truths that awareness reveals. Yet sometimes (not always) a consistent and normal format for sharing yoga can become uninspiring sometimes changing things up can awaken some dormant energies. These challenges give us a different format, an opportunity to change things up. Whether it is the consistency of a regular yoga practice or the challenge community or maybe it is the classes and instructors you never tried before? Whatever it is it’s refreshing! That’s exactly what was needed to awaken those dormant energies!

Although rare, occasionally someone within our challenge community would give thanks vocally for the community cultivated, here within the challenge group, and given the times everyone could understand the appreciation being expressed. Whether it is conscious or not, social engagement is always very therapeutic – especially now!

I found myself looking forward to viewing our private Facebook challenge page. I guess my experience in reading people’s comments and posts were so positive I actually looked forward to the emotional boost I would get from reading their interactions. All the poweryoga.com challenges are similar in objective and in the benevolent quality of the participants, yet this challenge seemed to have a unison, positivity and engagement like no other and I attribute that to the pandemic and the changes in our lives it has created.

I’m not stopping, are you? There are more challenges coming! Stay tuned for our next challenge. In the meantime enjoy our 1000 classes, daily livestreams, online teacher training, blogs, tutorials and anything else we can support your yoga with at poweryoga.com Not a member? Join for free and taste what yoga can do for your mind and body.

The post Finding Sanity Through Yoga and Meditation in 2021 appeared first on Power Yoga.

Before moving forward with this article I want to clarify that the effects I will speak about will come from in-person studio classes and online classes pretty much equally. There seems to be some wrong assumptions that online classes are less potent. There are certainly benefits to in-studio classes or a yoga practice at home with an instructor (as in a private lesson,) yet there are equal unique benefits to online classes. Yet, the main important benefits are equal. Obviously, all of this is dependent on the quality of instruction.

Freedom Yoga 

You do not need to have an advanced yoga practice to start benefitting immediately so don’t worry about your experience level–we all need to start somewhere and benefits will come immediately. Actually, the word “advanced” is misleading. The correct word should be a “mature” practice.

Now, pertaining to the title of this blog, one of the main physical benefits of this practice is the freedom yoga you experience. The lengthening of the tissues (muscles and connective tissues) truly gives one a feeling of freedom and it is an amazing feeling. Consider that all heaviness comes from the density of an object and the tension one holds in their tissues from stress and other causes creates a contraction of the tissues and this contraction formulates tissue density. You may not notice the little tension you are accumulating, so over time you accumulate more and more and you unwittingly little by little become accustomed to this tension. In other words, it feels natural to be carrying the tension you have because it has built up so slowly. As you stretch and release this tension, you experience a lightness you had long forgotten about. This comes from a daily yoga practice or even once or twice a week, and it also comes from many different types of yoga practices as there are many physical varieties that accomplish this. This lightness translates into a physical feeling of freedom as you are carrying less tension and associated heaviness. Also, your range of motion increases giving you another feeling of freedom and, lastly, the bones move more freely within their corresponding joints and the joints move more freely themselves creating more feelings of freedom.

The Importance of a Regular Yoga Routine

How often should you practice yoga to get these benefits? You will experience these benefits after any practice but they will fade so a regular practice is optimal. This feeling of freedom is a big part of the motivation or reason people come back to class, it really is amazing! So get your butt to a class online or in-person and learn how to practice yoga and get some of these benefits. You could say these are the unconventional aspects of yoga as these benefits don’t affect you aesthetically, so people don’t normally indulge even though it’s so obvious you could never enjoy how good you look if you don’t feel good. And, if you feel good you don’t even need to look good because you already feel good and that’s why everyone is trying to look good!

Now, you might ask: “How do I start practicing yoga?” As I said above, just get to any class and you will begin the process! From here, try as much as possible and you will start learning what you like and don’t like and you will develop a personal practice. Good luck!

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More and more, we hear about the amazing physical and emotional benefits of yoga, from increased flexibility and strength, to creating the foundation for a calm and peaceful mind. So…why is YOGA so powerful?

Yoga can be defined as the integration of mindful breathing with movement that cultivates strength, flexibility, stamina, and balance, and nurtures not only our physical, but also our emotional and spiritual well-being. Yoga can also be self-soothing, especially in a restorative yoga class. The benefits of restorative yoga include a dialed down stress response (in other words, the parasympathetic nervous system has come online) and a calm nervous system. Through this muted stress response, we see a decrease in physiological arousal (including lowered blood pressure and heart rate), an amazing benefit for those who tend to feel wound up, on edge, and restless. 

There are many variations of yoga in today’s modern world, including hot yoga, yoga for kids, yoga for men, yoga for women, and Power Yoga, just to name a few, and they tout similar benefits as they generally fall under the term Hatha Yoga. 

Given the “on the go” lifestyle and multitasking mentality of westerners, we can find ourselves in a chronic state of hyperarousal in which the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) (or fight-flight-freeze) becomes overactivated. In this way, our busy and chaotic lives can lead to gastrointestinal issues, weakened immune systems, tension, as well as increased anxiety and depression. Moreover, living in a chronic state of reactivity (or stress) keeps the SNS alive and wired, which over time drains our levels of dopamine and serotonin in the brain, our “feel good” neurotransmitters. Low levels of these neurotransmitters can be linked to things such as the loss of pleasure and enjoyment in life, a common occurrence in depressed individuals.  

Yoga is often practiced to facilitate ease in both mind and body, creating a ripe environment for meditation and concentration. Yoga poses can range from activating poses such as sun salutations and arm balances, to relaxing and calming poses. Activating poses are often practiced in the beginning of a class and stimulate the sympathetic nervous system. When followed by relaxing poses, such as supported back or forward bends, the parasympathetic or relaxation response is activated, enabling one to drop into a more calm and peaceful place. Ultimately, the physical practice with an emphasis on pranayama, mindfulness, and movement is a pathway to moving through emotional and physical tension, preparing the body for a sitting meditation. 

The mental benefits of yoga, and the benefits of yoga for men and for women are diverse and expanding. Yoga is a unique mindfulness-based practice in that it incorporates physical movement with present-moment awareness via your breath. The use of breath as a focal point to guide and keep you grounded in your body, especially when the mind wants to distract you with seductive thoughts and emotions, provides a dynamic platform for working with mental health issues.

Mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and chronic stress are prevalent in the United States and are considered serious health conditions alongside heart disease, cancer, and asthma. Integrative and holistic mind-body practices such as yoga and mindfulness meditation have become increasingly popular and beneficial when it comes to psychological and physical health issues. In fact, yoga and meditation are considered stress reduction techniques that can influence how we relate to mental and physical health issues, ultimately leading to less suffering and attachment to life outcomes.

In expectant mamas, there are enormous benefits of prenatal yoga ranging from physical, emotional, and spiritual changes that prepare them to create and welcome another human being into the world. When your body is healthy, it provides a better atmosphere for your baby to grow and develop. Physically, a prenatal yoga practice is an amazing way to stay healthy and strong, especially with significant changes to the body due to hormonal fluctuations. Yoga for pregnant women, in particular, can cultivate relaxation and help to prepare a mother’s body and mind for the birthing experience.

It is evident that yoga has amazing and numerous benefits that have surfaced not only through our daily practice, but are also backed by science. If you are new to yoga, I highly recommend that you give it a try and see for yourself. A great way to test the waters is to take some online yoga classes from the comfort of your own home. Power Yoga on Demand offers a comprehensive video library of classes, and you can sign up for a 7-day FREE online trial. If you are not totally fulfilled with this offering, you can always cancel within the first 7 days! Let’s take this time of quiet and solitude to turn inward, to root, and to step into conscious living that is dictated by unconditional love, compassion, and understanding. 

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So, the benefits of online yoga classes that I address below can be attributed to online yoga as equally as to your local yoga studio class.

COVID-19 has created an environment as conducive to practicing yoga as city dwellers could possibly expect since most of us have plenty of time, and there is certainly plenty of online yoga. Buy a hot plate (so you can boil water) and a space heater and turn both on 30 minutes before you practice and voila! Now you have “Hot Yoga,” Not only is the current climate conducive to yoga, you could also argue COVID-19 has made yoga practice more important as COVID-19 is creating lots of fear and anxiety-producing loads of stress. Yoga’s number one effect is reducing and even eradicating stress. This is a nice segue into…

The health benefits of yoga, or the benefits of online yoga, or the benefits of hot yoga, or Power Yoga are, for starters, the absolutely most complete or comprehensive exercises I have ever seen. The largest factor in health is stress, and the number one focus of yoga is to reduce stress! The mental benefits of yoga are key. Most real health comes from a calm and peaceful mind. Physically speaking, you cannot take care of something you do not touch and a well-rounded yoga class touches it all. It touches every range of motion, every body part, and all aspects of fitness: strength, balance, flexibility, stamina, and CVR. Power Yoga is the ultimate cross-training! But, don’t let that scare you as it can also be tailored to any age or body. This completeness is the BENEFIT!

Now, the specific benefits are too many to address, and we would have to use a lot of scientific jargon when talking about yoga’s influence on stuff like the parasympathetic nervous system and certain body tissues like fascia. Yet, to me, the benefits are simple to understand and it’s also easy to understand that those benefits have a trickle-down effect on every other part of our being as it is all literally interconnected. So, when people ask, “Did you know yoga affects the endocrine system?” I say “Yes!” without ever learning its effects on the endocrine system. Or, I’m told of the benefits of prenatal and postnatal yoga and I smile and say “Of course.” It’s like the chicken soup of wellness endeavors.

Science says a baby monkey will die without three things: food, water, and touch. I’m sure it’s more than just a physical touch, it’s soul nourishment is to be cared for. Truly this is what yoga is all about, “caring for oneself and others!” The objective of yoga is not strength, flexibility, or beauty. These might be a by-product. Yoga is not trying to change you because yoga doesn’t look at you like you are ugly, wrong, and broken in the first place. All yoga is trying to do is care for you! 

Past injuries and personal needs, whether it’s mental/emotional or physical, are addressed in this body-mind science. Releasing the old and embracing the new, through understanding and insight, are cultivated within the observation. Yes, this is a science. The foundation of scientific progress is investigation and observation and that is the foundation of yoga as well.

What an amazing tool a yoga practice truly is! As we age yoga provides us with muscle tone, suppleness, and agility, clarity, calmness, insight, and understanding. Please join us for both online streaming classes and LIVE streaming classes and start the journey of a lifetime that culminates daily!

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But… Why Yoga?

How could yoga, something so simple which on the face of it, is breathing and moving through poses (or asanas), be so powerful and transformative? Yoga is unique in that it incorporates physical movement with present-moment awareness via your breath. The use of breath as a focal point to guide and keep you grounded in your body is provocative, and can counter the omnipotent tendencies of the mind that want to wreak havoc on your present-moment awareness by offering up seductive and enticing thoughts and emotions. Yoga is instrumental in that it allows us to open up, both physically and emotionally, and creates a pathway to tap into the heart space that is all-knowing, free from mental chatter/reactivity, and guides us to a place where we can respond from our wise and intuitive self–bringing together the emotional and rational self. Here, we are not being driven by emotion-based tendencies, which can often run amok and leave us feeling drained and regretful.

The instrumental role of yoga in promoting emotional health and well-being has received increased attention, ranging from anecdotal stories put forth by yogis to the scientific literature, with yoga benefits for mental health cutting across various issues, including depression, anxiety, and stress management. 

Depression and Anxiety

Yoga, with its emphasis on purposeful movements and the use of breath to move through the physical poses (asanas), can help with depression and anxiety. Yoga increases awareness of present-moment experience and attentional focus, and as a result, can help individuals become aware of negative moods and the dwelling (i.e., rumination) in negativity that is often characteristic of depression. Through these pathways, individuals can begin to disengage from judging/self-criticism, and the “mental chatter” that without awareness, can dominate our behaviors and move us toward a not so healthy place. The discomfort of physical sensations such as sweaty palms, tightness in chest, feeling “out of control” that are often associated with anxiety can also be worked with during a yoga practice. The more aware of and engaged one is with breath and the process of paying close attention to the breath while in a pose, and during transition from one pose to the next, can provide a “neutral” (without criticism/judgement) space for physical sensations and the thoughts associated with these sensations to exist. And, over time, the arousal or tension that might occur when emphasis is placed on these experiences. Over time, acceptance of an uncomfortable sensation or thought may occur and the individual can simultaneously live his/her life in a meaningful way with less distraction from the “anxiety”. 

Stress Reduction

Stress is a major epidemic in our society that can create a “hypervigilance” in our mind and body, and impairs our ability to come from a less reactive place during times of increased stress. Yoga functions like a self-soothing technique in that it alters the stress response system, helping to “tame” and quiet down the nervous system. In this way, the mental health benefits of yoga are witnessed with the reduction of stress by way of decreased cortisol (stress hormone) levels in our body. An overarching theme that weaves its way through all yoga poses is the “letting go” of deep holding patterns in the body and finding a state of balance to support healing. Longer held poses characteristic of Restorative yoga, for example, work to dial down the sympathetic nervous system’s fight-flight-freeze response, the place we tend to react from when feeling overwhelmed and unsure of how to cope with the many demands of our fast-paced, technology driven lives. When space is created to allow us to move from overdrive to relaxation, the parasympathetic nervous system (aka, the relaxation response) can thrive and function efficiently. 

Whether it is a physically rigorous Power Yoga class, or a slow-paced restorative class you are interested in, it’s all yoga–again, breath and movement. When you create the space (even if only for 20-30 minutes) to step away from email, text messages…life  and tune into your breath, you are giving yourself an amazing gift-time to get out of your head with all the mental chatter (emotions, thoughts, feelings), and drop into your heart space where that intuitive, wise self lives and thrives. And, with a consistent yoga practice, it’s inevitable that you will begin to experience the difference between living from a place of reactivity and healthy, heart-focused responses–regardless of the situation. So, the next time you are confronted with toxic and unhealthy communication, remember you always have a choice to either feed it through your own emotion-based reactivity, or to rise above and respond from your heart space. You decide…

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Let’s address these and many other questions pertaining to yoga and weight loss. Is yoga good for weight loss? Can you lose weight with yoga? What types of yoga are good for weight loss? Is Power Yoga good for weight loss? How does yoga help you lose weight? How many calories does power yoga burn?

Considering the mass interest in weight loss and of course, yoga’s popularity and physicality, the answers to these questions are important. So, let’s address them.

Is Yoga Good for Weight Loss?

The answer to these questions is “YES”, yoga is an amazing weight loss program. That said, it is very important to understand why. Yoga was not developed as a weight loss program. Yoga was developed as a wellness practice. To make a long story short weight loss is a byproduct of wellness, as wellness would dictate a healthy body weight, a bodyweight in balance and harmony with your unique constitution. Yet yoga will not facilitate weight loss if one is not out of balance. Yoga was developed for wellness; it was not developed to force your body to conform to a stereotypical ideal created by your culture. Remember, we are all unique. Some people are bigger-boned and some thinner-boned. Some people more fleshy and others not, some taller and some shorter. Many of the ultra-thin people on the covers of those magazines are NOT healthy. Health is a personal state of balance, same as body weight. Yet this is the message of beauty. So why do you want to lose weight? Is your reason truly about health? Or are you consciously or unconsciously fulling a cultural program? It is true being overweight, especially being obese, can be the precursor to numerous health issues and arguably the largest contributor to disease after stress (stress is a contributor to obesity). So make sure you are being dominated by your wisdom and not your vanity or fears when you pursue weight loss and exercise. Remember fat is not bad! What’s harmful is too much fat. As too much of anything (other than love) can be harmful. As mentioned, we are all unique yet here are some general body fat guidelines. Do take into consideration, to some degree, our uniqueness. These guidelines below come from the Mayo Clinic.

Women:

• 20-40 yrs old: Underweight: under 21 percent; Healthy: 21-33 percent; Overweight: 33-39 percent; Obese: Over 39 percent
• 41-60 yrs old: Underweight: under 23 percent; Healthy: 23-35 percent; Overweight : 35-40 percent; Obese: over 40 percent
• 61-79 yrs old: Underweight: under 24 percent; Healthy: 24-36 percent; Overweight: 36-42 percent; Obese: over 42 percent

Men:

• 20-40 yrs old: Underweight: under 8 percent; Healthy: 8-19 percent; Overweight: 19-25 percent; Obese: over 25 percent
• 41-60 yrs old: Underweight: under 11 percent; Healthy: 11-22 percent; Overweight: 22-27 percent; Obese: over 27 percent
• 61-79 yrs old: Underweight: under 13 percent; Healthy: 13-25 percent; Overweight: 25-30 percent; Obese: over 30 percent

Originally all yoga practices were created for wellness. So, they all have the potential to facilitate weight loss. Wellness includes physical health, which to an extraordinary degree is a by-product of mental health. So, wellness means a healthy body and mind. This is especially so when you consider the effects of mental stress and its relationship to weight gain and disharmony in general. The one omniscient effect of yoga is stress reduction, calmness, and relaxation. This one effect may be the foundation of all physical health as our scientific community is telling us 90% of physical disease originates in our mind. Eating is a popular and prolific manner in which people deal with stress. When using yoga instead of food to deal with stress you are helping yourself lose weight in many ways. First, you are taking in less energy, this means your body will have less energy (calories) to store. Secondly, you are using energy (burning calories) due to the physical nature of your yoga practice. So you are taking in less and burning more. Right here you can see how losing weight could occur. There is still another way this yoga practice helps with losing weight. That way is, as you practice yoga you truly start feeling really good. As this occurs your desire to care for yourself increases as you want to continue feeling good and your participation in harmful actions decreases. Still another weight loss benefit from yoga is the goal of yoga, which is awareness. If your yoga instructor has the understanding and ability to guide you towards developing awareness, then you will start to notice the cravings and unnecessary snacking. This awareness gives you the choice to not indulge as snacking is usually always unnecessary calories. Again, giving you a chance to prevent unnecessary energy storage (weight gain).

How many calories does yoga burn?

Within the yoga paradigm, there are many types or styles of yoga practices, and some more vigorous than others. The more vigorous styles of yoga can and will burn more calories and facilitate losing weight more rapidly than the more passive styles. Yet these vigorous styles may leave you feeling more hungry, so it could be a catch 22 and you need to be careful not to follow your yoga practice with a binge. Beyond losing weight these vigorous styles may redistribute body weight, which may give the effect (aesthetically) of losing weight in the sense one is burning fat and building muscle. For example, the waistline may decrease but the upper arms, chest, buttocks, and thighs may develop. There is even a small chance of weight gain as muscle weighs three times more than fat. Obviously, vigorous activity requires energy or calorie output so the more vigorous the yoga style the greater the weight loss or redistribution of body weight there will be, especially if you can complement your yoga practice with a healthy and moderate diet. You can usually see this in the bodies of people who practice different styles of yoga. As the Yin, Gentle and Restorative styles tend to produce a lean, healthy, tone yet a less defined physique, and Power Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga, Vinyasa, or Flow Yoga styles tend to produce a lean, healthy, toned, sinewy and more defined physique. Hot yoga is somewhere in between as it is not as passive as Yin Yoga or Restorative Yoga yet not as vigorous as Power Yoga or Vinyasa Yoga.

How many calories does hot yoga burn?  

Hot Yoga may burn slightly more calories than the same sequence in an unheated room as it may take more energy for the body as it tries to keep itself cool as is evident by the prolific sweating in a hot yoga class. Although most of the weight loss you may notice after a hot yoga class is the water weight you sweated out and that weight will immediately return as soon as you rehydrate. All these different styles of yoga were designed for specific benefits, yet they also all have general benefits and one of them is the benefit that occurs due to physical activity.

How many calories does Power Yoga burn?

You can burn anywhere between 400 and 800 calories with power yoga. Calorie burning is not an exact science and calories themselves are just units of energy. Yet one thing is for sure weight gain has a lot to do with energy storage and those stores of energy are being depleted through physical exertion.

So again, if you’re wondering is yoga good for weight loss, the answer is yes! Yoga is a wonderful modality towards losing weight and yoga will help you lose weight especially when combined with a moderate (don’t overeat) and healthy diet (no junk food), good sleep, and lots of clean water. Yoga will help with losing weight because of its innate physicality as well as its tendency to help reduce stress and the effects of stress. Yoga helps with losing weight because it just makes you feel really good and that’s something you want to perpetuate by taking care of yourself which includes not overeating or eating crappy stuff. In general, exercise is a great tool in losing weight, and yoga, especially Power Yoga, might just be the most complete and well-rounded exercise on this planet.

Please understand that you may not need help with losing weight. Much of the desire to lose weight has to do not with health but with beauty, or an ideal of beauty we have been indoctrinated with. That ideal may actually be opposed to health. As it is not healthy to force your body to look in a manner it was never supposed to look. This is why yoga is such an ideal weight-loss tool. Because yoga is about wellness which losing weight may be part of, it’s not about forcing our bodies to conform to some image. So, the outcome is Homeostasis which is being in balance!

If you enjoyed this post, check out why a well-rounded yoga workout is the best workout!

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What I want to express here is my 38 years of experience and how I see and feel yoga benefiting me. Specifically, physical benefits of yoga, even though a lot of the physical benefits are a direct by-product of the mental benefits.

So maybe a nice way to dive into this subject is to consider physical yoga’s objective. I like to describe yoga’s goal as ”wellness.” It’s not meant to achieve peak performance or aesthetic beauty, which can actually be opposed to health and wellness. When you think about wellness, you have to consider the “whole“ body, considering the integrity of the web is dependent on the resiliency of each strand. As we could never feel our best with a bunch of dead, atrophied, stagnant areas in our bodies. Just like each morning and night, we brush all our teeth, not just the front one’s that affect us aesthetically. This is why in yoga, you see all these different poses. All these poses are a creative way to access body parts so you can care for them the only way you can care for anything, which is to touch it gently. These poses also help maintain range of motion, helping us stay comfortable doing the activities we love to do deeper into old age. The body regenerates itself through circulation, which is facilitated by stimulation. So these movements stimulating all these different places in the body increase circulation to the body parts, flushing in nutrient-rich blood and flushing out toxins, which is the job of our blood. Sometimes I wonder why we had to go all the way to India for this? Why could we not have figured this out ourselves?

Physical Health Benefits of Yoga

Some of the benefits are: Elasticity, not just in the muscles but all the body’s tissues. This not only helps us age more comfortably and gracefully but also adds a freedom and ease of movement in the here and now, adding to a feeling of comfort within the body and aiding in energy levels as now you are not expending excess energy in your movements, fighting against the tension within the body’s tissue.  Elasticity is a major factor in injury prevention as well. Depending on the type or style of yoga one practices, we can develop tone, stamina, balance and even achieve cardio. Add elasticity to this, and you have the most complete exercise I have ever seen.

A well-rounded yoga practice is the ultimate cross-training. And you don’t have to take an advanced class right away. 

Add to all that any benefits from sweating, deep breathing, dissolving tension (relaxation) and quieting the mind (a by-product of deep breathing), and we really have something very special here. Lastly, we need no equipment, no props. It’s so simple, we can take it anywhere and do it almost everywhere. Especially with poweryoga.com online streaming classes. The only thing you need is Wi-Fi. And you can take it slow when you’re first beginning. Start out with a beginner flow or even a class to walk you through the poses. You’ll become stronger with time and be able to notice all of the wonderful benefits I’ve talked about above. 

Aloha,

 Bryan

Want to learn more on what yoga can do for your body? Check out our article on “How Does Yoga Help Relieve Stress?”

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