What is Hot Yoga?

Hot yoga is a series of postures done in a heated room. The room is usually at a temnperature of 95-100 degrees. A vigorous yoga session at this temperature produces profuse sweating and makes the body very warm and therefore flexible, enabling the person to do all postures.

-A usual question is, why the heat? Heat makes the muscles more pliant, allowing for a safer, more fluid-like stretch and greater range of motion. The heat expedites the flow of blood to all the organs, facilitating the reactions the postures are designed to create. The sequence of postures is designed to warm up and stretch muscles, ligaments and tendons in the order in which they should be stretched. This sequence, taught in the same manner the world over, systematically moves fresh, oxygenated blood to 100 percent of your body, working to restore all systems to a healthy working order. Proper weight, muscle tone, vibrant good health, and sense of well-being are only some of the benefits.







What is Bikram Yoga?


Bikram yoga is a style of hatha yoga—exercise yoga—developed by Bikram Choudhury more than 35 years ago. It is a challenging yoga sequence composed of 26 set postures, including two breathing exercises. Each posture is done twice over a 90-minute period in a heated room with temperatures kept at 36ºC and an average humidity of 60 percent.





-Bikram’s Yoga is a demanding series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises. Each posture is sequenced specifically to work synergistically and cumulatively, strengthening every muscle, ligaments and joints in the body. Yoga builds strength, endurance and flexibility, balancing the body and mind, bringing the same practice even when you’re outside the yoga room. The sequence also uses the method of compression of the internal organs using the tourniquet effect which stops the blood from flowing in the compressed area and once released, brings deoxygenated blood to the organ, revitalizing and rejuvenating it. Thus, flushing out the cardiovascular system and stimulating the endocrine and nervous systems as well. Giving you that inner glow coming from the inside not just the outside, one then becomes ageless and forever young. In addition the series helps improve skills of concentration, patience, determination and self-control, increasing mental clarity and reduces stress significantly.


Breathing


In a Bikram class, breathing is the first thing to focus on, not postures. Breathing properly and being able to control the energy that breathing brings is at the core of Bikram practice. Understanding how to consistently breathe slowly and deeply in class is the big prize for yoga practitioners; that’s how they manage stress.

The challenge of the postures and posed by the heat in the room usually leads first-timers to struggle in executing the postures or, worse, hold their breath. When a student panics, breathing tends to quicken and too much oxygen reaches the brain.

These extreme ends produce the same result: dizziness, light headedness and maybe nausea.

The key to being in control is to have a calm, even breath throughout. Not just in between the postures, but especially during the postures. Where first-timers tend to hold their breath, even those who have been practicing for only a month already understand that they need to breathe as best they can as the posture is being held.

This not only keeps the flow of oxygen into the body constant, allowing you to hold the posture, but will also guide you into a deeper expression of the posture. Be warned: Just because you read it here doesn’t mean it will come to you automatically in class.

Breathing in this way is a learned habit. It needs the discipline of going to class over the next few months years for others to learn how to breathe properly.

My blog All of Tumblr

Latest Tweets