The article is about my personal experience with yoga on losing weight and a bit of yoga concepts on weight loss.

Let me give you few of my observations before we get into meat of this article, I have been to lot of yoga studios for drop in classes in US, India and South America.

Observation # 1: I noticed people who practice yoga on regular basis, majority of them are lean/skinny.
Observation # 2: Walk into a yoga studio and try to find people with excess weight Vs lean/skinny people. From my experience, I say chances are quite slim to find good number of overweight people.

Should I conclude practicing yoga will build lean and nice body??

No, as a yoga teacher it would be too naïve on part of me to believe in such claims that yoga practice is a solution for weight loss. There are several reasons behind why someone is overweight, it could be a improper thyroid function, diet or some other medical reasons. Everyone is unique and we are all wired differently, however practicing yoga can help you enjoy a healthy lifestyle.

My Experience

I have been practicing yoga since I was in college, my body has always been skinny and I never attempted to gain weight or anything. I moved to US and my practice of yoga has been greatly reduced due to other commitments and I attempted to gain some weight to not look so skinny. After much difficulty I could put on 15 pounds, which isn’t much for my body yet. All I could notice was my cheeks got chubby and my waist size grew by 1 inch. Later, I went to India for a 4 week yoga teacher training, it was quite intensive and energizing. After 4 weeks, I lost all the 15 pounds I put on. It took so many months for me to gain that weight and in 4 weeks I lost all that. However, I didn’t lose anymore weight beyond that even after I kept practicing yoga. I was eating quite good all the time.
But what happened?

One of the result of my 4 week training was I got 4x flexible that I was before. All the postures I was doing everyday has stretched my muscles and tissues really good. We had to hold the posture for a minute or so and that generated heat in the body and guess what? fat meltdown all the way. I realized the weight gained before was nothing but extra fat in the body, no muscle or so. I checked my body fat percentage and it was 8%, which is in range for an athletes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage)

The common question I hear about weight loss is – are there are any particular postures for weight loss? The answer is Yes and No, because it depends on body type and also where the excess weight is i.e., abdomen or hips or neck or chest or any of the combination. A good yoga teacher will evaluate the student’s body and will make a plan on what postures she/he should practice for better results.

However, some of them cannot afford paying yoga teacher and try to find solutions over internet. Isn’t the reason you are here in first place? well, we can get some answers if not everything. Most of the excess weight tends to be  around waist, abdomen and/or hips area.

List of postures

For all postures, try to hold in the posture for atleast 30 seconds or so.
1. Tadasana I – Click here to see the posture in action
- Inhale raise the arms and push the palms towards sky. Bend sideways till you can and repeat the same on  other side, repeat 4 times on each side.
- Another variation to do along with above is to the twist and turn at the waist towards right and then left. Repeat 4 times on each side.

2. Uttanasana (standing forward bend pose) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttanasana
Place feet one foot apart and slowly exhale to bend forward. If you cant touch your feet, its alright. Just let your body hang and leave it to the gravity to work. Stay in this position for 2 minutes for this one. While coming back to standing position, don’t forget to bend knees little bit and slowly raise your body.

The above 2 postures are very good for reducing waist and abdomen fat. Do it regularly for a week or 10 days in morning and evening and you should be able to see the difference.

There are more poses to work on, but they require series of steps involved to attain the final posture. The above 2 postures are easy and doesn’t require any steps to remember.

Thanks for reading

Pic source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3206805049/in/photostream/

My friend from Thailand has been teaching yoga for years, I was fortunate to attend her class when she was in India last year. And I remember the way she explained about yoga in simple words –

“Yoga doesn’t begin when you step into this yoga hall. It BEGINS when you step out of this yoga hall”

Image: giena via Flickr

That is absolutely correct. She zipped all yoga talk in one short sentence. Let’s see –

We all pack our yoga mats, towel and bottle of water to yoga hall to do some yoga. We spend one or two hours doing some physical postures and satisfy ourselves how good it was. It’s true and there is nothing wrong or bad in it, it’s what we at least expect from it. However, the moment we step out of that yoga hall, we are back into our own world… we are back into our old patterns, everything is the way it was.

What does she meant when she said “yoga begins when you step out of the yoga hall? Does she mean we should spend our time doing yoga postures whenever it is possible? No, this is not what she meant. Before I tell you what she implies with that statement, let me give some insight into the essence of yoga.

There are hundreds or rather thousands of books on yoga and every author may have his own way of explanation on yoga, either they mention it directly or put it in a long way. Nevertheless it can be explained in few simple words. The core of the yoga lies in being in this present moment, being aware of every single moment with or around us. When we say living in present moment, what does it mean “living in present moment”? How do we live in present moment? To explain in non-yogic way to understand, how common is it for us to keep on thinking what has happened or spending tons of our time running simulations in our brain about future even when we are actively doing something. The analysis part of our brain running ifs and buts, why and why not’s and millions of random questions as we actively engaged in our job or school. It means our major part of our brain is focused either in past or in future, isn’t it why we tend to make lot of mistakes unconsciously because we aren’t focused on what we are doing now. Living in present moment means engaging ourselves completely in this moment with 100% attention on what we are doing.

The statement about yoga begins when we step out of the yoga hall – she meant that we should be aware of our actions, speech and every single moment we live. The more awareness we bring in what we are doing, the more insightful it will be. The more we live in our present moment, the less we hanker in our past or obsess with future. With awareness we bring more peace in ourselves and utilizing our brain more efficiently since we cut off those ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ from the equation. When we have beautiful moments now, will later be beautiful memories of past and future will be great anyway because our present is beautiful.

This is the essence of yoga.

The word "yoga" is believed to have its roots in the Sanskrit word "yuj", which means to control or to unite, although it has also been connected with the phrase "yujir samadhau" which can mean absorption or contemplation. A person who practices yoga or who has achieved a certain level within the practice may be called a yogi or a yogini.

The branches of yoga include Hatha yoga, Bhakti yoga, Raja yoga, Jhana yoga, Karma yoga and Tantra. Different forms of yoga are practiced in different ways and they also have different goals. There are two sides to yoga, the mental and the physical and the practice of yoga is often about seeking a balance between these. It can also be about the search for harmony with the wider universe. Yoga can mean different things to different people.

Many people take up yoga, particularly the secular forms of yoga, in order to improve their physical fitness or for the sake of stress management and relaxation. However, the goals of yoga, particularly the traditional forms, can include improving one’s health and attaining spiritual goals such as release from the cycle of reincarnation that is part of the Hindu belief system. In Hinduism, yoga is a discipline that follows the paths of action, knowledge and devotion in order to achieve tranquility and spiritual insight. Similar goals of yogic meditation pertain in the other religious forms that are found in Jainism and Buddhism and even in the forms that have been adapted by the Christian and Islamic faiths.

The practice of yoga can combine meditation, physical postures and actions, and breathing exercises. A practitioner of yoga may focus on stretching their body in different ways, working with their breathing and senses, or searching for a spiritual awareness and concentration. Some forms of yoga are gentle while others are more vigorous. Some focus on the mental or spiritual achievements, while others are more about developing the health or fitness of the body.

Image: mailumes (license)

Yoga is something that has been part of my life for as far back as I can remember.  My whole life, I’ve seen people practice yoga, talk about yoga, and all around be nauseating about yoga.  And to top that off, I was strongly encouraged, if not required, to practice myself. Ever since I could go to school, I was enrolled in group classes, private classes, retreats, workshops, asana practice, history lessons; if it was out there, I was in it. It was drilled into me that yoga was the greatest thing since sliced naan.  And I have to admit, I did love the beauty of it.  Watching the grace of it, as if people are dancing and standing still at the same time.  Cliché as it sounds, I thought of gliding swans and elegant gazelles.  And I wanted to be one of them so badly.  I wanted to do yoga to be exactly what yoga is not about: being externally perfect.

It also didn’t help that I loved the rich history that yoga comes from.  I couldn’t stop being amazed by the fact that I was practicing something that has been practiced since the Indus Valley.  The Indus Valley!  But, that also made me feel pressured.  Like, I had something to live up to, or someone to not let down.  There was so much that came before me, so much at stake, it seemed. How could I ever measure up to something that has been practiced since the beginning of time?  Talk about self-imposed expectations.  In my mind, I created this larger than life idea of yoga and completely psyched myself out.

The fact that I loved the idea of yoga, feeling so whole and so alive, didn’t erase the fact that I couldn’t stand the actual classes.  They always felt like an hour of constant, mind-numbing stretching for an unattainable, esoteric goal.  I couldn’t bring myself to continue practicing, whether alone or in groups.  Neither did all my memories of seeming to always end up next to the guy who could fold himself up into a pretzel and still maintain and still practice diaphragmatic breathing.  Man, that guy still irks me.

But despite all my hesitancies, something about it kept reeling me back in, and somewhere along the line, I decided to commit to a personal practice.  And I’ll admit it – I’m not the most physically fit person out there.  So I was legitimately concerned about the physical strength needed for practicing yoga.  In hindsight, I’d say I stressed about what I thought I needed to be able to do. I had a number of uncoordinated experiences where I couldn’t do a pose correctly, due to a lack of strength or flexibility.  The entire thing felt like an initiation rite into a club I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be in. It was frustrating and overall discouraging.

After a long search and with the help of a good teacher, I realized I had bought into the hype of yoga. All the marketing of it had led me to create a very definitive end goal, and so I envisioned perfection without any journey.  But despite that, I welcomed the opportunity to find what I was really after: true yoga.  And the fact that there are concrete ways to increase the efficacy of the craft of yoga, it remains that the art of yoga is the process of finding a way to practice those concrete ways every day.  Even when your mat does end up next to the guy who folds into a pretzel and still has enough air leftover to chant Ommmm……