In its modern avatar, yoga has made many adjustments and changes to suit the needs of the current practitioners. In this fast paced world, time is everything. People are impressed by something only if it gives timely and fast result. Hence, yoga classes are looking for ways to help their students to reach their goals in a faster frame of time. This has led to the invention of Hot Yoga.

Hot Yoga or Bikram Yoga is a relatively new invention. Its founder yoga guru Bikram Choudhury found that a body performed best when it was considerably warmed up. For this he experimented with several temperatures and found ninety to hundred degrees Fahrenheit to be best suited for body conditions. Similarly he noticed that a high humid content in the atmosphere was better suited for warming up the body than the absolute scale of temperature. Keeping these things in mind he invented the Hot Yoga techniques.

In the Hot Yoga classes the room temperature is warmed up and maintained around ninety to hundred degrees in the Fahrenheit scale. Similarly, the humidity level is controlled at approximately fifty percent. This makes the students to sweat more in the yoga class. And as the yoga classes have a high number of students practicing their yoga techniques hence their accumulated breaths create more moisture making the students sweat more. This accelerates the many improvements and benefits gained by the yoga practice.

One of the main benefits of a Hot Yoga class is that it helps a person to lose extra fat in a very short span of time. In just a few days you will find that you have lost inches from around your waist. The body fat is redistributed and burned up in the shape of energy in the yoga class. This benefit has made a number of people ardent fans of the Hot Yoga techniques.

The heat present in the yoga class creates a fluid like stretch in the body. This makes stretching exercises easier to achieve. The fluid like stretch also allows your muscles and joints to experience a higher range of movements, making the body more flexible to perform the various asana.

Another benefit of the heat in the yoga classes is that it expands the blood vessels. The expanded blood vessels allow more oxygen to pass through it. Hence the various tissues, organs, muscles and glands end up gaining extra oxygen. And this benefits the body by eradicating the toxins.

The 26 sets of asana comprising of various bends and twists makes the metabolism of the person work in a more active manner. This results in a faster breakdown of fatty acids and body glucose. Hence a lower level of fat store content.

And not only your body but your mind is also benefiting from the yoga classes. You end up having a stronger will power and an increased level of concentration and self control as you work out in the adverse and taxing atmosphere.

Thus, we see that Hot Yoga offers a number of benefits to its practitioners, and this is why it is why it is boasting of an increased number of students every year.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Yoga has been practiced in India through the earliest of times. It was basically the creation of the Sadhus or the sages who had developed and invented various yogic poses and postures during their long periods of meditations to keep and preserve their body strengths. These earliest yogic postures generally demanded a sitting position and were known as Raja yoga. But in the 15th century, Yogi Swatmarama introduced a new form of yoga known as Hatha Yoga which involved full body postures. This new form of yoga demanded a more complete body involvement resulting in a better physique.

With the advent of globalization yoga classes spread its wings in the West too. And as its various benefits became known to the residents of these countries, yoga classes became quite popular there. Now several academic institutions in these modern countries are also known to offer yoga as one of their subjects. Among these Bikram Yoga started by Bikram Choudhury is quite sought after by many of the students. According to Bikram Choudhury, the Bikram Yoga is the only real form of Hatha Yoga practiced by the West. Bikram Yoga is more popularly known as Hot Yoga as it involves practicing yogic postures in hot and humid conditions. Typically the temperature of the yoga class where this Bikram Yoga is being practiced is maintained anywhere between ninety to hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And the humidity level is kept at approximately fifty percent.

There is no restriction on the age group or sex of the person desiring to learn Bikram Yoga. Anyone at any stage of the age or having any body condition can undertake to learn Bikram Yoga. In fact even people suffering from chronic diseases like blood pressure, diabetes, thyroid problems or arthritis can very well learn this yoga in the yoga classes after having consulted with their yoga teacher and in the process get partial or complete cure for their ailments.

This ninety minute session in a yoga class involves the sequence of about twenty six yoga poses. Each yoga pose is repeated twice and held for some duration during one session of the yoga class. This yoga starts with standing poses. After this come the backward bends and forward bends. The twists follow then. And lastly Bikram Yoga culminates with the Kapalbhati breaths.

As Bikram Yoga involves lots of stretches it makes some people apprehensive in learning them. They think that their body is not flexible enough to deal with such type of physical exercises. But, with the guidance of a good yoga teacher anyone can master this yoga in a short span of time. The yoga classes aim at helping each student in mastering their techniques. Bikram Yoga is not concerned with the flexibility of your body. It basically helps in strengthening your spine and thereby your body so that you gain a complete harmony between mind, body and soul. And in a good yoga class you will be able to learn how to gain that harmony without pushing your body too far. So if you want a healthy body then Bikram Yoga is just the thing for you.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!