Can yoga help you lose weight?

The widely-read July 2001 Time magazine article entitled "The Power of Yoga" alerted the public to the fact that this esoteric activity has a lot more to offer than most people previously thought.

Through the Nineties and into the 21st century, the trend in exercise has been slowly but surely heading towards the direction of mind-body correlation. Even modern science has realized that the mind plays a vital role in ensuring the body’s health.

Why are more and more people turning to yoga and what exactly is it? The word yoga means to yoke or unite, and the American Council on Exercise describes it as the practice of uniting all aspects of a person – body, mind and spirit. This is done through physical postures, breathing exercises and sometimes, but not necessarily, meditation.

Though the practice and theory of yoga are quite complex, it is a system of exercise that was developed in India about 5,000 years ago. Created to expose internal imbalances and weaknesses and eliminate them, it is a series of positions and poses that blends strength, flexibility and body awareness, and promotes mainly a union of the mind, body and spirit.

A lot of beginning practitioners see and feel improvements in their flexibility, strength and stress levels after only a few classes. One of the best things about yoga is that you can take it with you and practice it anywhere – no equipment is necessary. In traffic, in your home, while on vacation – little yoga time-outs throughout the day can boost your stress-handling capabilities and the age-defying process which worry and stress put a major toll on.

But the one thing that most people are interested in when they join a new class is, very basically, whether it will help them lose weight.

Depending of course on the type of class you take, yoga burns approximately 250 calories per hour. Though this may not sound too impressive, remember that yoga also does the much-needed job of helping speed up your metabolism by building muscle. And we all know that the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, not just when you exercise, but all day long, and even while you sleep. Yogic philosophy says that certain postures, when performed regularly, stimulate your thyroid gland and help you manage your weight.

One example is Julian Goldstein whose success story was reported by medical writer Carol Sorgen in an article for Medscape. At 53, Goldstein weighed 285 pounds and was suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes with neuropathy or numbness in his extremities, with a herniated disc that prevented him from participating in a regular exercise program. He wasn’t expecting to live much longer when he started taking yoga classes. He says that at first he could hardly bend over. After five months, however, he was off insulin completely, his blood pressure was normal and the numbness was gone, all without making any changes in his diet. Today, he’s 61 years old, weighs 220 pounds, teaches two yoga classes a day in California and is in excellent health.

Through the years, our lives have become more hectic and more people are beginning to recognize that yoga is a powerful antidote to these stresses of modern life. Though we probably have been trained to think of yoga as just strange poses and lots of meditation, there’s much more to it than that. You don’t have to be in a meditative mindset to enjoy the benefits of practicing yoga. A fit and supple body can be developed through the practice of yoga postures (asanas). The movements are easy to follow, and there are many levels to work at. Even at the novice level, regular yoga works all the bodily systems, toning the muscles, stimulating the circulation and improving overall health. Your flexibility and posture will improve, your breathing techniques will be more effective, and you will feel calmer and more relaxed, more capable of functioning efficiently under pressure and concentrating your energies. As you go on, you will also see your muscles tone and tighten, as they become stronger and can more easily support and stabilize your weight in certain positions.

Yoga & Pregnancy

If you’re pregnant and thinking about taking a Lamaze class, you might want to consider yoga instead. "The connection between yoga and pregnancy, as far as the western world is concerned, goes back to the work of Dr. Fernand Lamaze in the mid-20th century," says Julio Kuperman, head of the Division of Neurology at Saint Agnes Medical Center, part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System in Philadelphia. Dr. Kuperman is also a yoga instructor and director of Yoga Teacher Training at the Baptiste Power Yoga Institute in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

"The well-known breathing and relaxation techniques that Dr. Lamaze popularized were lifted straight from yoga practices as he learned them from BKS Iyengar and his wife," says Dr. Kuperman.

If you are pregnant, thinking about getting pregnant, or perhaps have just had a baby, this is a wonderful time to begin yoga.

Breathing

When you inhale, try and fill the chest first and then guide the breath all the way down to the abdominal area or the stomach, feeling it expand to accomodate the air, and deflate when the air is exhaled. If you can, think of starting a movement at the beginning of an inhalation or exhalation and conclude it at the end of the same breath. Do not hold your breath while you are in the postures.

From experience I know that if an exercise is so difficult that you end up suffering, there’s very little chance that you’re going to convince yourself to come back regularly. And it’s the regularity of the practice that will give you the benefits – one-and-a-half hours of yoga once a week is not as beneficial or effective as 15 minutes a day. If at the end of a class you don’t feel good about yourself because you weren’t able to achieve the optimum pose, you wouldn’t want to go through the agony and humiliation again. But if you learn from the beginning that every one is different and should only work to his own degree, plus the movements have been adjusted so that even if you’re prone to injury you’ll be completely safe, you’ll be much more likely to stick to it and see and feel the rewards.

I don’t teach yoga so that I can pass down the wisdom of the ages. I try to teach the people who attend my workouts that when they’re relaxed and strong, and most of all open, they will find for themselves the peace they need to get them through their sometimes very stressful lives.