Hatha Yoga Asanas For Weight Loss

While Hatha yoga does not burn many calories, yoga asanas, or poses, encourage you to pay attention to your body and promote strength training and stress-relief. Consult a certified yoga instructor to teach you how to correctly perform yoga postures and give you modifications in case poses are too difficult in the beginning.

Mindfulness

A 2009 study by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that yoga promotes awareness of your body and eating patterns more than other types of exercise. While you learn to be mindful during the whole yoga practice, certain asanas can teach you to pay attention to your body. Try Mountain pose by standing up straight with your palms down and facing your legs. Lengthen your spine and engage all parts of your body while paying attention to your posture, breathing and body as a whole. Extend this mindfulness to the rest of your life to eat less and take better care of your body. Other poses that encourage mindfulness are Easy pose, Warrior I and II and Corpse pose.

Stress

Stress from weight-loss struggles and other factors can create the hormone cortisol in your body, causing you to gain weight instead of losing it. In his book "Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing," Dr. Timothy McCall explains that cortisol leads to weight gain by causing you to eat more and turning calories into fat more easily. Yoga asanas can teach you to calm down and think differently about stressful situations. Performing guided relaxation during Corpse pose can decrease stress. Starting with your feet and moving up, imagine releasing stress and tension in each part of your body. Other poses that reduce stress are Legs-up-the-Wall pose, Supine Cobbler's pose and Supported Bridge pose.

Strength

While your body burns extra calories for a half hour after you finish an aerobic exercise routine, you keep burning calories for up to two hours after a strength training session, says the American Council on Exercise. Strength training does not only involve lifting weights, but also includes weight-bearing activities such as yoga. Try weight-bearing poses like the Plank pose, Downward-Facing Dog and Bridge pose.

Specialty Yoga

Power Yoga and Ashtanga Yoga are intense forms of yoga that burn more calories by going through many asanas during a session instead of slowly focusing on a limited number. The primary series of Ashtanga focuses on Sun Salutations, standing postures, backbends, twists, inversions and forward bends. Although there are many different versions of Sun Salutations, try Yoga Journal's sequence of Mountain Pose, Upward Hand pose, Standing Forward Bend, Standing Half Forward Bend, Plank pose, Four-Limbed Staff pose, Upward-Facing Dog pose and Downward-Facing Dog pose. Go back into Standing Half Forward Bend, Standing Forward Bend, Upward Hand pose and finish in Mountain pose. Perform this Sun Salutation two to three times in the beginning and work up to five or more. Do not practice these types of yoga if you are overweight, inflexible or have medical conditions or joint and muscle problems, as this type of yoga is very intense and involves jumping.