Vigorous yoga can keep your heart and the rest of your body healthy.
“Alice, I need more aerobic activity in my life if I want to stay healthy and avoid a heart attack!” Elizabeth recently read an article in the Readers Digest that got her thinking about her lifestyle.
The article was talking about the benefits of aerobic exercise on the health of your body. The article said that the recommended minimum aerobic exercise is 30 minutes a day 4 times a week. If you can manage to do this you should see a reduction in your risk of heart disease and other related conditions by as much as 30 percent.
The article also said that if you did more than the minimum that you get even more benefit. “The risk of everything from such big killers as diabetes, stroke, and heart attack to less common conditions like glaucoma, cataracts and macular degeneration can be reduced by as much as 70 percent when you exceed the recommended minimum.”
“I am not as young as I used to be.” Elizabeth told Alice “ Jogging and Skiing are hurting my body too much. Running on a treadmill is too boring.”
Elizabeth asked Alice “What are you doing for aerobic activity?”
“I do yoga 4 times a week at my local yoga studio” Alice told Elizabeth “I am getting an hour of aerobic activity every time I go to class.”
Elizabeth is surprised by this. She thought that yoga was just sitting on the floor and gently stretching. How can Alice be getting an aerobic workout from gentle stretches. Alice has found some styles of yoga are more aerobic than others.
Will any type of yoga work?
Alice has found that there is a wide variety of yoga styles. Some of these styles match Elizabeth’s expectation. They are very gentle and your heart rate does not get elevated into the aerobic zone. These gentle styles of yoga are exactly what some people are looking for and they are quite popular as well. These gentle styles of yoga are equivalent to a walk in the park.
Alice has also found that there are many vigorous styles of yoga. These types of yoga accelerate your heart rate into the aerobic zone and keep it there for most of the time that you are in the class. They are about the same as a 60 minute run in that same park.
There are many styles of yoga that are aerobic to varying degrees.
Which types of yoga are aerobic?
Ashtanga Yoga, Power Yoga, Vinyasa flow and several others all manage to get your heart rate up into the aerobic zone for most of the time that you are in the class.
There is a significant difference between these vigorous styles of yoga and the more gentler styles.
How does vigorous yoga get your heart rate up?
In Ashtanga yoga for example there are two major components. There are the poses themselves. Some of these can be quite aerobic as you work on getting into them and others can be more of a gentle stretch.
The other major component is the connecting movements or Vinyasa between the poses. This connecting movement between the poses is very aerobic.
The Vinyasa is similar to a Sun Salute and consists of a series of yoga poses that are done to the breath. When you do a Vinyasa you are picking up your body off of the floor and moving it backwards and forward and up and down several times before you start on your next pose. It is all of this movement between the poses that keeps your heart rate up in the aerobic zone.
In the vigorous styles you only hold the yoga poses for a few breaths, typically about 5, before you move through a Vinyasa and on to the next pose. Staying in the pose for a short time and then doing another connecting movement keeps your heart rate in the aerobic zone for a longer time.
You are doing all of this aerobic activity without having an impact on your joints as well.
How is yoga different from other forms of aerobic exercise?
When Elizabeth is running, skiing or jogging on a treadmill she is putting a lot of impact on her joints and muscles. If she is not careful she can injure her knees and back.
Yoga is different. It does not have any impact on your joints like you do when you are running or jogging. You are sitting or standing still as you do the yoga pose and then you move through the Vinyasa on to the next pose. The Vinyasa while it is lifting up and moving your body around does not have the same impact on your joints as running in the park will.
You can protect your body from injury while you are getting your aerobic exercise but you still have to do it more than once a week.
How often will I have to do yoga to get the aerobic benefit?
Just like any other form of aerobic exercise you have to do it several times a week to improve the health of your heart. The recommendation in that Readers Digest article is that you have to do at least 30 minutes or more of aerobic activity 4 times a week.
That does not mean that if you do an hour an 15 minute vigorous yoga class that you can do it fewer times during the week. The aerobic benefit for your body happens when you do your aerobic exercise several times a week and not all in one block once a week. You need to spread out the aerobic activity over the entire week.
Summary
The best approach for Elizabeth is to start doing a vigorous style of yoga and taking 4 classes or more in a week to get the recommend amount of aerobic activity for her heart and the rest of her body to get healthy.
As an added bonus she will not be injuring her joints like she would if she was running, skiing or jogging.
Next Step
Alice is planning on taking Elizabeth to her next yoga class to show her how aerobic a yoga class can be. You should bring one of your friends that is looking for an aerobic activity that does not hurt the body to a yoga class as well.
