Why bikram yoga works

After continued practice, these factors can aid in weight loss: burning calories, building muscle and having more mindful, eating habits can all help you reach your fitness goals. Like any yoga practice, Bikram yoga does wonder to improve the health of the mind. Since Bikram yoga involves quietude and meditative thinking, this workout is an opportunity to get inside your own head and discover your own thought patterns.

Bikram yoga could be your new favorite class. A ClassPass membership offers access to a variety Bikram yoga classes in your area, so grab your water bottle, book a class and get ready to become a Bikram yogi. Think that running classes are only…. The initial thought of sweating it out in a room set…. Stress Relief One of the main reasons people practice yoga today, is to relive stress. Weight Loss You are likely to come out of a Bikram yoga session half a kilo or more lighter than you went in.

Flexibility When you stretch muscles, as in many of the 26 poses of Bikram yoga, those muscles gain a fractional amount of greater elasticity and range of motion. Strength The postures of Bikram yoga use your body weight to give your muscles a resistance workout.

Previous Post Stress and Yoga Uncategorized. Next Post Top 5 reasons to practice Bikram Yoga this summer. You might not be able to tell by watching from the outside, but with every run through the poses, I get into at least one of them a little deeper, or find that new point of balance, or figure out how to relax a tight group of muscles that was holding me back. There is constant, noticeable improvement — only noticeable because every class is directly comparable to every previous class.

Note: this is one area where my proclivities clash with the best fitness science. As Vox's own Julia Belluz notes , fitness experts recommend varying workouts, since doing one thing over and over again will tend to produce diminishing returns. But then we're back to sticking with it , and if repetition helps you stick with it, it's definitely better than doing nothing.

No offense to people who are into incense, sitar music, and inspirational quotes about loving oneself, but I'm not. In fact, I'm allergic. It was one of my main fears about going to a yoga class at all, since, as previously noted, the yoga world is chock full of woo.

Happily, Bikram yoga is almost entirely free of that stuff. The class is silent until it begins, and when it begins, it's all about instructions on postures. The occasional teacher will try to squeeze in a fortune-cookie bromide here and there, but there just isn't enough time.

Thank goodness. Yoga has a number of salutary mental and psychological effects. It is, in effect, a form of meditation, of repeatedly returning your attention to your breath. When your mind wanders, the rigors of perfecting a pose bring it back to your body, to the present. That ability to take conscious control of your focus is the essence of meditation. There's a growing body of science supporting the positive benefits of meditation though see this welcome note of caution from Timothy Caulfield.

And there's also, y'know, hundreds of years of meditation practice to consult. Meditation tends to increase focus and retention, reduce stress, and improve emotional stability. It's definitely had those salutary effects on my life. Since starting yoga, I'm better able to resist the popcorn-brain effects of the internet, to center myself, and just generally to maintain calm.

In fact, sometimes I can just sit, quietly, and do nothing for minutes at a time — which doesn't sound like much, but for me once seemed about as possible as flying to the moon. But even if you don't meditate, hot yoga — or any yoga, really — is a great way to start getting some of the same benefits. The heat is both the trendiest and the most controversial part of hot yoga. The heat and humidity effectively prevent your body from cooling itself; if you're not careful, you can suffer dehydration or heat stroke.

If you do try hot yoga and you feel yourself getting light-headed, please, just stop. Lie down which I've done plenty. Or leave the room for a few minutes which I've never yet had to do, but have seen others do. Don't feel the slightest compunction about it. And if you have an instructor who makes you feel bad about it, or tells you to "push through it," or that "pain means it's working," find another instructor.

This is the source of many negative experiences in hot yoga — daft, poorly trained instructors who don't know how to take care of their students. All that said, I find the heat addictive. The first few times I went, it was overwhelming. But over time, I've become hooked on the sensation of sweating it all out. You are not really "sweating out toxins," as many instructors are in the unfortunate habit of saying.

Getting rid of toxins is a job for your liver and kidneys. You're mostly sweating out water, along with potassium and some other minerals, which is why rehydration and remineralization with electrolytes — Gatorade, coconut water, or just a banana is so important. Still, it's like going through a giant wringer. You walk out feeling new, like you were just born, like an empty vessel ready to start all over.

These days, if I go more than a day or two without hot yoga, I start feeling heavy, burdened, as though I'm hauling around too much psychic baggage. Your email address will not be published. Become a Wacif Client. Posted in: Client Media.

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