Yoga is that form of Eastern exercise where one is asked to assume pretzel-like contortions, with claimed benefits ranging from better sex to improved sleep.
The term yoga encompasses physical, mental and spiritual exercises. The best-known form of yoga in the west is known as hatha yoga, the physical practice of the discipline. There are many speculations as to the origins of yoga and its applications, with consensus that yoga began as a practice in pre-vedic India dating back to the birth of Buddhism.
In terms of yoga's effectiveness, studies have been conducted attempting to measure its efficacy as a complementary therapeutic aid in diseases from cancer to asthma and heart disease. Yoga, then, seems to be one of those catch-all disciplines encompassing everything from physical to spiritual and mental health.
Returning to the question whether yoga is an effective aid for weight control. I began practicing yoga in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in a church vestibule without the benefit of air conditioning. We lived in a subtropical climate, the temperature was hot, and the perspiration flowed copiously as we attempted to assume and maintain our poses. Later, when I would practice the poses in air conditioned comfort, the effort required to sustain some of those poses would require a good deal of effort, and thus lead to profuse perspiration. It is the effort involved in the poses that results in calorie burning, along with many other physical and mental changes.
To the casual observer, yoga is a passive mode of exercise, assuming various static poses, with some lyrical names such as Lion Pose, where the practitioner engages the inner thighs in a stretch, while simultaneously extending out his/her tongue as far as possible, and forcibly exhaling, opening his/her eyes wide while looking upward, thus creating a stretch in the back of the throat.
It is a challenging pose. The muscles in play in the Lion Pose include the facial muscles, the platysma, the throat, the neck and shoulders. The Lion Pose is said to relieve tension in the face and neck (often neglected areas), keeps the eyes healthy, stimulates the platysma, and is even credited with eradicating bad breath.
Hatha yoga includes some poses that challenge the imagination.
The above are fairly routine, yet each one of them, however benign it may seem, requires tremendous flexibility and balance. It is balance that produces enormous underlying strength.
Where strength, flexibility, balance and sweat are involved, so does calorie burning. I imagine, therefore, that yoga is as effective as other forms of exercise in burning calories, and therefore is a "diet aid." More to the point, however, is that practicing yoga produces something else: a unity of body and mind; identification of certain neglected muscles, engagement and prodding of those muscles, moving and manipulating the body in rhythm, with cadence, all the while re-learning to breathe.
Learning to breathe? What? Haven't we been doing that since plopping out of the womb? Well, maybe, but probably not well. As children, we breathe deeply, into our bellies. As children, we don't care if our belly sticks out. Then we enter our teens and begin to worry not only about getting Hollywood thin, but also making sure to suck in our tummies, especially as we pass by the football jock. With tummy-sucking comes shallow breathing. And with shallow breathing come all sorts of other maladies.
Yoga attempts to reeducate the practitioner in the basics of breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing is key, where focus is directed toward breathing deeply into the belly, watching the belly expand, holding the breath and then releasing it slowly. Everything is done in a certain rhythm. Some yoga instructors are superb at establishing a good rhythm that neither rushes the practitioners nor leaves them hanging in one position/breath. Yoga practice involves coordinated movements with proper breathing. In the process of this practice, emotions are revealed, spirituality may be revealed, and certainly, feeling good is the ultimate result.
I compare yoga to a deep massage. There are some poses that feel so good, they seem to stimulate blood flow and lymphatic flow throughout the body, with blood rushing to your head, relaxation poses counteracting other more difficult ones. For example, the Child Pose is incredibly relaxing.
A Yoga class moves from the difficult to the relaxing and back again. For one hour or so, the exercises are taken one at a time, always with a focus on going only as far as is comfortable for one's body. This is the emotional side of yoga - how to refrain from comparing one's "performance" with anyone else's. Indeed, yoga is not performance at all - it is practice, and the learning is done at the personal level.
After pummeling and groaning, relaxing and straining, the entire purpose of the hour has finally been reached: Total relaxation.
Make no mistake: This is far more active a pose than you might imagine. It is, in fact, the highlight of the yoga session. The writing in the picture above is very rudimentary, and indeed, many yoga teachers keep their guidance to a minimum, which is a shame. The best ones help you mentally dissect your smallest muscles, calling attention to each one in sequence, enjoining you to focus on your eyebrows, your eyelids, asking you to "release your hair from your scalp," "let your cheeks melt into the floor," "release your tongue from your palate," "unfurl your forehead," then mentally moving throughout your body, guiding you to "release your anus." What?? With such guided imagery, you are called upon to mentally scan your entire body for all tension, and are called upon to release it completely. This takes practice. It takes concerted effort to locate muscles and isolate them into relaxation. But once mastered, the experience is unequaled. Total Relaxation is the epitome of yoga practice if you are given sufficient time to get in touch with your muscles. Total relaxation invokes everything from the top of your head to your toes. Every part of your body is addressed.
It is a worthwhile practice where you may discover yourself.
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