How To Reduce Your Anxiety With Hot Yoga

06/07/2011 19:19

If you are just beginning hot yoga, you might wonder what advantages it can supply in terms of stress reduction amidst the clearer health benefits. How can a difficult class that gets your heart pumping and allows you to press beyond your usual comfort zones be in any way soothing? As many can confirm, hot yoga is actually a fantastic practice for relaxation. Those who perform it often have lower cholesterol, heart rates, and blood pressure, including better rest in the evening. Hot yoga enables your internal organs to detox during class, and leaves you with a sense of well-being afterwards.

The poses in hot yoga are designed so that your lymphatic system is flushed and your detoxifying units, such as the liver, are gently massaged. The tightening and release of muscles also stimulates your body in a way similar to receiving pressure point therapy. Hot yoga is not only about bodily practices either, but breathing. Breathing exercises allow you to release tension and get into a calmer state of mind. It is actually quite meditative to be so concentrated on your breath and the positioning of your body during a class, and this sort of focus can be transmitted into other practices as well.

Hot yoga increases metabolism and blood circulation so that you will feel its healing effects once you are outside of class. Many participants feel that since they have been able to work through a hard scenario during hot yoga, they are able to deal with other, non-physical stresses throughout the day better as well. It is true that much may seem less taxing than usual after a hot yoga class, and having completed one is definitely something to feel confident about. This self belief leads people to feel more sure of themselves.

Whether practitioners are aware of it or not, there is a specific stress reduction technique that is implemented during hot yoga. It is fairly similar to how one prepares to sleep, and is called "progressive muscle relaxation". Of course, hot yoga is a more active discipline than falling asleep, but the practice of having muscles tense and then release their energy allows people to move into a deeper stress-free state of being. This sets people up so that they can tell when they might feel increased discomfort or tightness in specific body parts outside of class, and can more easily discover the root of any problem that arises.

Mindfulness has always played an important part in all forms of yoga, especially when it was first created thousands of years ago. By paying attention to every part of their bodies while performing hot yoga, practitioners are able to be aware of themselves to a greater extent than usual. There is also a "walking" meditation that hot yoga promotes that allows for people to be aware of the physicality of what they are doing without being distracted by other things going on around them. Hot yoga is a wonderful way to loosen up and grow more centered in your life, and that can pass from you to others for a more peaceful attitude throughout the day.

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