Can’t deny the facts, yoga is amazing and has so many incredible benefits for your health. why hot yoga is good for you?
What is hot yoga?
Hot yoga is practicing in a room that’s heating up to 105°F.
It’s thought that the temperature helps to warm your muscles in preparation for practice, however hot yoga has been found to have several other benefits too.
10 Sizzling Benefits of Hot Yoga: Turn Up The Heat
1. Improves Flexibility
Yoga is great for flexibility, however, yogis speak highly of how powerful hot yoga can be in particular.
By enjoying three sessions of hot yoga each week, participants in a 2013 research project found they improved their trunk flexibility.
The study focussed on arterial stiffness in young and older adults, with results most notable for the young adult group. The warmer room will make it easier for your muscles to stretch. The steamy temps “allow you to increase their range of motion and stretch deeper within each pose,” since heat makes muscles more pliable, says Numbers. Unlike stretching it out in a standard cool yoga studio, the heat will have you feeling like a pro and extending further than you thought you could.
2. Strengthens Your Body
There are lots of yoga poses you can try to improve your strength, but why not heat things!
A critical review of the various studies done in Bikram yoga, conducted at Western Sydney University, showed that Bikram yoga was proven to improve your lower body strength.
The 2015 review looked at several pieces of research and also highlighted how good the practice was for improving your range of motion.
3. Increases Your Fitness Level
Hot yoga really is a powerful practice that can help to improve your overall general fitness. Eight weeks of research conducted in Colorado focused on healthy adults and sought to discover whether Bikram yoga can help improve general physical fitness. Results were astounding with participants showing improvements in their back and shoulder flexibility, as well as deadlift strength.
4. Improves Your Breathing
The ability to improve your breathing through hot yoga is invaluable to serious runners looking to use yoga to their advantage.
Runner’s World magazine recommends hot yoga, particularly for those training for a marathon.
They explain how hot yoga relies on you having great control of your breathing to flow through the poses and how it trains your body to rely on your breath during endurance activities such as running a marathon.
5. Reduces Stress
It’s reported that Americans are among the most stressed-out people in the world.
A research project conducted on a sample of 51 healthy participants looked at the effectiveness of 8 weeks of Bikram yoga on perceived stress as well as mindfulness and overall physical fitness.
The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) was used to assess participants, and following a series of hot yoga sessions, stress levels were significantly reduced. The small sample used in the study and the uncontrolled nature of the research meant it had major limitations however the findings were still felt to be significant.
6. Increases Your Heart Rate
We’ve all walked uphill in the blazing heat during summertime and felt our hearts pumping hard at work. When you’re heart is pumping it brings extra food and oxygen to your muscles! Heat is one way to increase your heart rate. Although you won’t be walking uphill in the blazing heat anytime soon if you’re in the winter season like me, you can take on hot yoga all year round to get that heart pumpin‘ right away.
7. It’s Good For Your Skin
The steaminess of a hot yoga studio is much like a hot sauna room at the spa. Steam is known to help open up your pores and cleanse your skin! Although you’ll be sweating during a hot yoga session, it’s actually good for your skin to be exposed to some steam (moderately of course). Don’t forget to clean your face with your favorite cleanser once you’re home to get rid of any excess buildup. And voila, your skin will be pore-free and glowing in no time. One of the benefits of sweating in a warm environment is that it can improve circulation, bringing oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood to skin cells.
This, in turn, may help to nourish your skin from the inside.
8. Prevents Back Pain
Multiple yoga poses have been shown to actually prevent and reduce back pain. The heat from a hot yoga session, in addition to various yoga poses, allows your muscles to relax and stretch so that not only can you treat pain and discomfort, but also prevent it. Yoga poses like the Sphinx and Thread the Needle are known for targeting the spine area to ease tension.
9. Tones and Defines Muscles
If you’re itching to tone and define your body then hot yoga can help you do just that. Various yoga poses work out your core muscles that are usually targeted for toning, like your obliques, and adding heat to the mix can help you sweat and target those muscles even more! Hot yoga = hot bod.
10. Helps You Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle
The best thing about hot yoga is that it can lead to good overall health. Being able to exercise, meditate, and relax your body simultaneously can help you maintain a healthy lifestyle. It can also help you stay active and physically and mentally healthy, which is the key to maintaining a balanced and wholesome life.
hot yoga has the ability to give your heart, lungs, and muscles an even greater, more intense workout.
Also some people asking about is hot yoga safe during pregnancy?
There are many views regarding doing hot yoga during pregnancy. Some experts argue that hot yoga should not be practised during pregnancy, while some say that it is safe to continue practising hot yoga during pregnancy, provided that the pregnant woman has already been doing it over a period of time.
Doctors worry that hot yoga can increase the temperature of a new mother’s body but yoga instructors say that the body temperature goes up only by one degree when practising hot yoga, so there is nothing to worry about. It is up to the mother to make the choice which is suitable for her.
