The Health Benefits of Yoga

Photo: Real Simple &

Tamara Schlesinger

In the world of public concern over antioxidants, body toxins, and the word "cleansing," hot yoga - yoga performed in rooms with temperatures between 85 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit - is definitely in. While there are many different styles, the basic health benefits revolve around the belief that the body sweats out toxins when exposed to heat, which then boosts metabolism and one's immune system. Here's just a few more benefits people claim from hot yoga:

Muscle flexibility

Except for a handful of synthetic compounds designed specifically not to break under cold temperatures, most things are considerably less flexible in cold environments, muscles included. As a result, in hot yoga, one's muscles are hypothetically more flexible as they're literally warmed up, potentially boosting one's range of motion, aiding injury recovery, and helping to prevent accidental injuries when exercising.

Weight loss

The heat from hot yoga makes the body increase its pulse without heavy joint impact. It also helps to bring down chemicals in the body that help a body retain fat that are related to stress, and may help to boost metabolism through thyroid stimulation. This combination of factors makes it potentially easy for the body to shed pounds faster when doing hot yoga than when not.

Joint lubrication

As one ages, the body becomes less flexible and able to recover from injuries. By doing yoga, one activates groups of muscles and moves bones that might otherwise go ignored, which can help fight and delay the onset of arthritis, muscle, and joint pain brought on by the natural processes of aging and joint impacts brought on by work and life in general.

Immune system performance

By participating in hot yoga one brings up their core temperature beyond what the body normally self-regulates, which then makes the body act as if it's undergoing fever conditions when perfectly healthy. This, then brings up white blood cell counts and stimulates the immune system, which in turn makes it harder for the body to undergo actual illness, which is obviously a good thing and an easy way for hot yoga to extend one's general well-being and life expectancy.

Stress reduction

It's been said for decades that exercise and meditation can help one reduce the amount of stress in one's life; in fact, meditation has often been practiced to help alleviate stress in and of itself. Hot yoga requires that the mind put stress factors out of the way in order to pose successfully, and this in turn helps the body to lose weight (or not gain it, as the chemicals that retain fat move less quickly and at lower levels), sleep better, lower the heart rate and blood pressure, and possibly benefit one's mood. While high stress can occasionally make the body perform better, it often proves much tighter and harder to work well, making lower stress (with all its many, many benefits upon one's mental and physical function) something worth pursuing for just about everyone and a definite reason to consider hot yoga.

Written by Andres Halloway Find his other work on schools for forensic science and online accounting degrees