Ask the Expert: New Year, New You, New Workout, Hot Yoga!

A new year means new opportunities for improving your wellness. As we start 2012, as yourself, how often do you find yourself stressed, overworked, overloaded or overwhelmed? Let’s face it, we live in a hectic world of go, go, go and work, work, work! Anxiety is the number one thing disturbing us on a physical, mental and emotion level. Hot Yoga can help in all these areas. Hot Yoga has so many benefits that if you haven’t tried it yet, I’m sure you’ll be at a class soon after reading this.

Stress and Tension Relief: In our yoga practice at Aerial Fitness & Natural Wellness Center, we take our focus inward and concentrate on just ourselves. It is an hour of exercise, deep breathing and reflection. Your mind is so concentrated on the poses amongst the sweltering atmosphere that your mind drifts from its usual stressors. After an hour dedicated to you, your body and mind, you leave feeling less stressed, more relaxed. You sleep better, more easily and may find your anxiety fading. Lower anxiety levels help to reduce weight gain, illness, lowers the heart rate and blood pressure as well as improves your mood. If you’re sold yet, keep reading.

Muscle and Joint Pain: This is found in many people. Several joints, particularly the vertebrae, discontinue lubricating as effectively as we enter our 30s, our 30s!! In yoga, we practice gentle twists and bends that promote joint and vertebrae lubrication that help to alleviate those common feelings of stiffness and soreness, so many of us complain about. Joints in good alignment are also less pain prone in high-impact physical activities. Hot Yoga encourages blood flow to injury-prone areas like the knees, making it popular amongst runners.

Increase Flexibility: The heated floors and room in a Hot Yoga class assist to warm and stretch your muscles allowing you to progress deeper into poses. Since stretching is an effective way to increase flexibility, Hot Yoga helps to increase ones range of motion and help some heal from possible prior accidental injuries, which could have been prevented. Stretched muscle tissue has improved range of motion and therefore are at less risk of tearing.

Boost Your Immune System: Raising your core temperature simulates a fever-like environment in your body, increasing white blood cell production, fighting viruses and bacteria. Your body will also make additional interferon, which increases the production of antibodies.

Weight Loss: Coming out of the holiday season we are all ready to shed some cookie pounds. Since Hot Yoga assists in reducing your stress, it therefore aids in reducing weight gain. Hot Yoga also increases your pulse rate and forces the body to keep thermo-regulation in the body, escalating calorie expenditure. Hot Yoga gets you to sweat and burn calories similar to those of a callisthenic work out without the force on joints.

What is Hot Yoga? It is whatever you want it to be. It’s meditation, it’s medicine for your soul or it can be one of the most challenging workouts of your life. For many, it harmonizes the psyche, keeping sanity in this hectic world. It is by far the best hour-long workout I have come upon. Your mind and body are your gifts for experience and learning. Hot Yoga helps you connect the two. Let’s start the new year off treating these gifts with the highest regard. Relax your body, relax your mind. Namaste.