How Does Hot Yoga Reduce Toxic Substances?
Hot yoga is praised as a wonderful exercise for not only enhancing one's flexibility and well-being, but as an exercise that can help your body "detox". With different options available that entail strict and often unsafe diets that have you subsisting on nothing more than juice or smoothies for months at a time, hot yoga definitely looks to be a milder option. However, many people have misconceptions as to what leads to detoxing within your body during hot yoga. It's correct that hot yoga is a great choice to rid your body of hazardous substances, yet it is not mainly through hot yoga's most well-known aspect - sweat - that your body is reducing the most toxins.
Some believe that sweating causes toxins to be secreted from your body's sweat glands. This is partly true, but only to a very small extent - 1% in fact, according to a Ph.D from Auburn University in Alabama. This may be something, but it doesn't make hot yoga sound very worthwhile if you're hoping to cleanse your entire system. Don't jump to conclusions too quickly though, as sweating is only one aspect of hot yoga. The various poses one performs during hot yoga are designed to specifically stretch and "massage" different parts of your body, one of which is the liver. In contrast to releasing toxins through sweat, your liver is specifically designed to get rid of bodily toxins.
Hot yoga actually works to stimulate all of your body's biggest detoxification units, including your intestines, kidneys, lungs, and skin as well. One of hot yoga's poses, called the "Wind Removing" pose, stimulates the transverse, ascending, and descending sections of the large intestine. This partly allows built up toxins to continue to be moved through your body. Additionally, your liver is compressed in poses such as the "Half Tortoise" pose. By doing this your liver is essentially getting a massage, and as hot yoga also stimulates blood flow, your internal organs will function more efficiently and naturally cause your body to become better at removing toxins. Even during hot yoga's breathing exercises your organs will be receiving stimulation throughout the entire class, as these actions compress them too.
So what about the detoxification of your largest organ, the skin? Once again due to the circulation of blood during hot yoga, your skin will be refreshed and feel renewed after a hot yoga session, but be sure you are drinking plenty of water before, during, and after your practice to avoid dehydration. If you want to take a step further, since your pores will be thoroughly opened after a class, take to the showers and use a facial mask product to easily help draw out additional impurities.
Hot yoga can provide numerous healing benefits aside from body detoxification, and can be taken up by individuals of any fitness level despite its apparent difficulty. Moving one step at a time is important, and you will find yourself growing more accustomed to the warm environment and stretches involved even if you can't finish a class initially. You may even end up becoming an instructor after getting past the learning curve, and helping others reach their fitness goals as well.
If you have at any time thought of learning to be a yoga teacher, you can get started with your yoga teacher trainings by becoming a member of an accredited training course that focuses on yoga instructor training.