No, doing yoga for weight loss won’t detract from your practice. (Part 2)
May 18, 2018 Ashley 0 Comments
As if the first three reasons to do cardiyoga weren’t enough, here’re three more:
4. It’s a nice segue into being faster … or stronger
Sure, you might be O.G.-yoga curious. You might be using diesel grade yoga to slowly slow your hyper self down. But, then again, maybe you’re working toward getting to a high impact level. A fast paced yoga class is great at readying you for that on three levels. First, you’re stretching out muscle groups you’ll be using for those activities. Second, you’re building muscle with body weight exercises. (Pulse in and out’ve chair pose for half a class and tell me I’m wrong.) And third’s the endurance. By easing into getting your heart rate up under the guidance of someone certified, you’ll be better prepped for your sweaty endeavors.
5. It’s free (after the first class, of course)
Sure, your first yoga class might cost you 20 bucks. But most’ve the moves you do in there will be so repetitive that you’ll remember them pretty well for the rest’ve your life. (Or at least your sore bum and guns will.) And that means that after you get back to your own mat, you can replay the whole class on your own. (And to your own playlist, no less, minus those pan flutes that you may or may not opposite-of-love.) These days, I tend to go to yoga classes only to pick up a few new moves and learn how to improve my current ones. The classes I occasionally take have paid off by lasting me most’ve the year when I’m back in my own home, enjoying my practice, half clothed or covered in dog fur.
And, finally…
6. You don’t hafta “worry” about calories. At all.
Truly, you shouldn’t be. Ya know, anyone blasting any style of yoga for causing “worry” has either A.) never done it before, or B.) never done it correctly. And that’s why the salty commenter caught me off guard a bit by berating the writer for making us “worry” about calories on the mat. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I agree that we shouldn’t be worried about calories on the mat. For that matter, we shouldn’t be “worried” about calories off it, either. That’s a main aim of yoga. Eradicate frantic cognition during our practice – and carry that mindset over into our daily lives. So, instead of “worrying”, we should simply be evening the scales with our food-energy intake and incineration. We don’t hafta murder the meat suits we live in to get there. But hard work isn’t excluded from the path of yoga. Yoga never said, “Don’t do anything that makes you break a sweat”. But one thing yoga does ask of us is to focus on remaining present – regardless of what pace we practice at. And when you’re focused on your breath, your moves, your body sensations, and your control – guess what you’re not focused on? Worries – of any kind. Calorie related or not. Yes, maybe you came to burn calories. But you can leave the goal at the door before you flow. Do we think about getting a great exam grade while we’re studying? Or about our pay stubs every second we’re at work? No. That’s the motivation that made us start. But, once we start, we’re focusing on assimilating information or focusing on phone lines, clients, or whatever we’re paid to do. Same goes for yoga. And that’s something invaluable you can borrow and inject into any of your other workouts (or life activities in general), too: staying focused the whole time on what you’re doing. Any thoughts of the outcome take a back burner on our brain stove. When we do that, the results of good grades, payment, or weight loss are like a reward that feels more easily earned than they would’ve had we “worried” our way toward it.
(“I’m not worrying. I’m just warrioring…”)
Again, yoga’s different for everyone. Much like religion, there are different forms so that we can all arrive at a similar end game. Indeed, for some, the yoga mat’s a temple of gentleness and the studio’s a sacred space to let pranayama and poses draw our souls slowly back into the human husk we just abused at the gym (or work… or emotionally… or whatever). No one’s taking that away from you guys. That said, much like our own respective practices ask us to grow, yoga is growing too. It’s evolving and, for some, a chimera of cardio and yoga is the next step in that.
And, for those’ve us who are true yogis, we know better than to judge that.