Yoga disciplines your mind and body, helping reduce stress, improve fitness and support weight loss, according to the Mayo Clinic website. Yoga postures and controlled breathing encourage you to center your focus in the moment. This focus enables you to tune out distractions and redirect your energy. Because yoga is so diverse, pushing your physical limits and training you to completely relax, it serves as both a stress-management and weight-loss tool.
Significance
Practicing yoga pulls your energy and focus away from outside stressors, helping you to feel calm and relaxed. However, yoga serves as much more than a distraction from stress. The mind and body awareness that yoga promotes helps ground you and improves your state of mind. A clear and focused mindset gives you an edge in dealing with and placing problematic issues in perspective.
Yoga's usefulness as a weight-loss tool centers around both mind and body fitness. Sure, you burn calories performing yoga, but as Natasha Rizopoulos explains in the "Yoga Journal," the calm, centered mindset yoga creates leads to a greater awareness of and attention to food choices.
Factors
Signs of stress include headaches, restlessness, irritability, lack of focus, insomnia, high blood pressure, anxiety and impatience, to name a few. The Mayo Clinic website points out that stress reveals itself through your body's responses, your thoughts and feelings, and your behavior. Physical activity in general leads to improvement in mood and stress levels, but yoga effectively relaxes your mind and body, where responses to stress originate. Overeating, which leads to weight issues, can also be a symptom of stress, either as a self-medicating mechanism or as a side-effect of distraction or worry.
Effects
Yoga, through relaxation and focused energy, helps return you to a more stable mindset where you're in control of your choices rather than constantly responding to outside stimuli or unrecognized emotions or feelings. Controlled breathing is central to yoga practice. Writing for the "Yoga Journal," Dr. Timothy McCall describes short, choppy breaths as both a cause and symptom of stress. Yoga practice slows your breathing. Slow, deep breathing increases oxygen flow throughout your body, while ragged, shallow breathing depletes carbon dioxide and promotes anxiety, explains McCall.
As to yoga's effects on weight, regular practice increases your energy level, improves your attitude and gives you a greater sense of control, which all contribute to a healthy lifestyle, according to yoga teacher and author Dr. Baxter Bell, writing for the "Yoga Journal." Vinyasa-style yoga, an intense workout that combines flowing postures and breathing, burns more calories than other genres.
Considerations
Prolonged stress can cause artery damage and increase your risk for heart disease as well as other underlying factors for heart disease such as high blood pressure, according to the Mayo Clinic website. Stress symptoms may also indicate other possible health issues. Consult with a health care professional if stress signs are accompanied by chest pain, dizziness, nausea and shortness of breath, or if you're not able to get relief from yoga or other relaxation techniques.
Combine yoga practice with a balanced diet and exercise program for more efficient weight loss. Integrate other types of physical activity, such as walking, swimming or bicycling, into your overall fitness program to increase your weight loss potential. Monitor your caloric intake to help you create a calorie deficit that's necessary for losing weight. Make slow, steady weight loss your goal and focus your energy on taking care of your mind and your body.
References
- MayoClinic.com: Yoga: Tap into the Many Health Benefits
- "Yoga Journal": Yoga Before or After Weight Loss?
- MayoClinic.com: Stress Symptoms: Effects on Your Body, Symptoms and Behavior
- "Yoga Journal": Yoga for Stress and Burnout
- "Yoga Journal": Can Yoga Help Me Lose Weight?
- "Yoga Journal": Not All Yoga Is Created Equal
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