Feel The Burn: How Yoga Kickstarts Metabolic Function

Time for some surprising news. While many of the yogic philosophies are around 5000 years old, the physical practice of yoga is relatively recent. Possibly no older than 200 years actually! However, this is by no means a sign that yoga is not a complete, gentle and holistic body of exercise that should be ignored. Yoga is a powerful and healing practice that promotes overall well-being. There are 6 types of yoga, and yoga is an excellent way to build lean muscle, burn calories, and most importantly, create a highly-effective mind-body balance. It’s the ultimate total workout. If you thought that yoga was easy, think again. While beginner yoga is designed to help you stretch, it also helps you to slowly and safely build muscle and balance from the beginning. In addition, yoga teaches you about the importance of breath in everything you do. Yoga really is a non-jarring, full body workout. If you are looking to lose weight, here's how yoga will help you achieve your fitness goals.

Lean And Mean Yoga Machine

Remember that yoga is an exercise. It is one that slowly builds lean muscle, and muscle burns more fat every day than fat does. In fact, you can expect to burn about 250% more fat per pound of muscle you have, than per pound of fat. So muscle building exercises are something you should be doing in order to have sustained fat burning in your body, even when you are at rest.

However, yoga is an advantageous exercise for muscle building in that it is oriented towards building lean muscle. You won’t look like Tarzan after practicing for a few years, but you will probably have a killer body. There are many asanas (poses) that build muscle in your core and other areas, which you will do the more you progress in your yoga practice. Its as simple as strength building yoga exercise builds muscle, and this helps to burn fat, even in a resting state.

Covert Calorie Attack

There are ways that yoga increases your metabolism that are slightly more surprising. First,
stress increases the hormone cortisol in your body, which slows down metabolism. Yoga, especially the meditation,  is great for stress management, thus lowering your stress levels and lessening fat-building cortisol levels.

Yoga also emphasizes breathing techniques which can be surprisingly taxing. Pranayama, which is what the study of controlled breathing is called, increase blood flow, oxygen levels in the blood system, and metabolic rate. This will increase your rate of calorific burning, even when you are just relaxing and practicing breathing.

Wakes Up Your Thyroid Function

Another important aspect of yoga is that it improves thyroid function. Some people suffer from hypothyroidism, which is a highly underactive thyroid and leads to slow metabolism. However, even if your thyroid is only mildly underactive, many yoga poses such as the Camel will stimulate it to release important hormones that will boost your body’s metabolic function and burn more fat.

Yoga is an excellent exercise that can be practiced at any age and fitness level. More importantly, it boosts metabolic function in several ways and is effective at helping you to burn fat and lose weight.
Jenny Holt