Top 10 Reasons to Try Yoga Yoga and Weight


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Yoga Weight Top 10and Reasons to Management Try Yoga Weight Management

Preoccupation with weight control is reaching new heights as the obesity crisis is 1. STRESS RELIEF: Yoga reduces the physical effects of stress on the body. encouraging approaching epidemic proportions. The prevalence of adults who are By officially considrelaxation, yoga helps to lower the levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Related benefits ered to be overweight is at an all-time high. Approximately 65% of American adults are include lowering blood pressure and heart rate, improving digestion and boosting the overweight, and around 30% are officially obese. The danger in being overweight comes immune system as well as easing symptoms of conditions such as anxiety, depression, from the complications of carrying excess weight, which include increased risk of develfatigue, asthma and insomnia. oping heart disease, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. People often look toward fad can dietsease or quick solutions order to lose weight, but it is often yoga long2. PAIN RELIEF: Yoga pain. Studies in have demonstrated that practicing term lifestyle changes involving dietary changes and exercise help asanas (postures), meditation or a sensible combination of the two, reduced pain for that people withto conditions such weight as cancer, multiple sclerosis, auto-immune diseases and hypertension as support lifelong management. well as arthritis, back and neck pain, and other chronic conditions. Some practitioners report thatcontrol even emotional pain be easedconcern, through the practice of yoga. As weight becomes ancan ever-larger more attention is being directed toward the effects of yoga on long-term weight management. When people begin 3. BETTER BREATHING: Yoga teaches people to take slower, deeper breaths. This helps to taking up yoga, they often notice that they are able to lose weight through a regular improve lung function, trigger the body’s relaxation response and increase the amount of practice. oxygen available to the body.

4. FLEXIBILITY: Yoga helps to improve flexibility and mobility, increasing range of movement Yoga and Weight Management

and reducing aches and pains. Manyof people touchloss their toes during or their first yoga Most of the evidence for the effects yoga can’t on weight is anecdotal experiential. class.teachers, Graduallystudents they begin use the correct muscles. Over time, the ligaments, tendons Yoga andtopractitioners across the country find that in their own bodies, and muscles lengthen,yoga increasing elasticity, also helps to or with their students, helps to supportmaking weightmore loss. poses Many possible. teachersYoga specialize in yoga improve body alignment resulting in better posture and helping to relieve back, neck, joint programs to promote weight management and find that gentle yoga practices often and support muscle problems. help weight loss. People do not have to practice the most vigorous forms of yoga to lose weight. Many teachers find that yoga encourages development of a positive self5. INCREASED STRENGTH: Yoga asanas (postures) use every muscle in the body, helping to image, as more attention is paid to nutrition andwhile the body a whole. The positive effects increase strength literally from head to toe. And, theseas postures strengthen the body, of yoga on weight may also have to do with reducing stress. they also provide an additional benefit of helping to relieve muscular tension. 6. WEIGHT MANAGEMENT: Yoga vigorous canto aidmaintain weight control efforts by Stress is a significant factor for(even manyless people in styles) an effort healthy weight. reducing the cortisol levels aschronic well as by burningto excess andstimulates reducing weight stress. Yoga Current research shows that exposure stress calories hormones gain, also encourages eating habits and a heightened of well and particularly in thehealthy abdominal area. One ofprovides the benefits of a yogasense practice in being weight loss esteem. isself through reducing stress. Although this is an effect that has not been directly studied in experimental research, yoga practice, especially techniques which focus on reducing 7. IMPROVED CIRCULATION: Yoga helps to improve circulation and, as a result of various stress, can be an important component to a long-term weight management program. poses, more efficiently moves oxygenated blood to the body’s cells.

So there has not CONDITIONING: been much research directlyyoga examining the effects of yoga 8. far, CARDIOVASCULAR Even gentle practice can provide cardio-on weight loss. But a by recent paper was heart published the journal Alternative vascular benefits lowering resting rate, in increasing endurance andTherapies improvingin Health Medicine which investigated the relationship between yoga practice and oxygenand uptake during exercise. weight management. In a lifestyle study of 15,500 adults in their 50s, researchers collected 9. FOCUS ONabout THE PRESENT: Yoga us to focus on thehistory, present, to become moremedical aware information 10 years of helps participants’ weight physical activity, and to help create mind body health. It opens the way to improved concentration, coordihistory and diet. The authors of the study found that regular yoga practice was assocination, reaction time and memory. ated with decreased incidence of age-related weight gain; this was even more notable in10. people who were overweight. finding further investigation the issue, but INNER PEACE: The meditativeThis aspects ofwarrants yoga help many to reach a of deeper, more provides somemore motivation for place teachers, students, scientific researchers to continue spiritual and satisfying in their lives. and Many who begin to practice for otherto explore part ofthis a weight-management program . become an essential part of reasonsyoga have as reported to be a key reason that yoga has their daily lives.

Study citation: Yoga Practice is Associated with Attenuated Weight Gain in Healthy, Middle-Aged Men For Women. more information please www.yogaalliance.org andand www.yogadayusa.com and By Alan R. Kristal, Alyson J. Littman, Denise Benitez Emily White. Published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, July/Aug 2005, 11(4), pgs 28-33.

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