Hot Yoga: What is it and What Are the Benefits?
It seems like hot yoga has been becoming a bigger and bigger trend lately. If you’re like a lot of other people, though, you’ve heard the term and were never quite sure what it meant. Let’s take a look at what hot yoga is and some of its benefits.
What Is Hot Yoga?
Put simply, hot yoga is a very vigorous form of yoga that is performed in a high-heat, high-humidity environment. Most common forms of hot yoga are based on Bikram yoga.
Bikram yoga is a 90-minute program wherein the room is kept at 105°F and 40% humidity. It consists of a number of standing and stretching exercises which require forceful, sustained contractions of the major muscle groups throughout the body.
Most common forms of hot yoga today can be much simpler than Bikram yoga-- in most cases, the room is heated to somewhere between 80°F and 100°F and normal yoga postures and poses are used.
What are the Benefits?
Doing yoga in a hot room may seem intriguing, but is it actually beneficial to the body? Does it help any more than regular yoga? Here are some of the benefits of hot yoga:
It can improve flexibility. While it’s a well-known fact that yoga, in general, can be incredibly beneficial to your flexibility, hot yoga can be even more helpful since the heat can allow you to stretch further and achieve a greater range of motion.
It burns more calories than normal yoga. With traditional yoga, a 160-pound person may be able to burn around 180 during a 1-hour session. With hot yoga or Bikram yoga, that number can be increased to over 300 calories in just one and a half hours.
It can provide a cardiovascular boost. Performing yoga in a high-heat, high-humidity environment provides a more challenging workout for your heart, lungs, and muscles than doing the same poses at a lower temperature. This means that hot yoga can also boost your respiration and metabolism.
It’s good for your skin. One of the main goals of hot yoga is to make you sweat, and sweat a lot. This can help to improve your circulation, which means it’s easier for oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood to get to your skin cells and nourish your skin from the inside out.
Are There Any Risks?
If you’re considering giving hot yoga a try, make sure you stay hydrated! Because hot yoga is designed to make you sweat, dehydration is a major concern. You may also want to avoid hot yoga if you’re pregnant or have other pre-existing health conditions, such as heart disease or diabetes.
If you’re interested in trying hot yoga and finding out how it can help you, visit Falls Yoga and Barre and sign up for the Sweet Heat class today!
