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“Will Bikram Yoga help me lose weight?”
This is a question we hear from new students on an almost-daily basis. The truth is that yoga, practiced consistently over time, will bring your body and mind back to optimal health. For some that means gaining strength, for some that means losing fat and for others a little of both!! Weight loss can be a welcome by-product of becoming healthier -- mind and body.
How does it work?
Body
- Provides cardiovascular benefit
- Builds muscle, which ultimately burns more calories by increasing the body’s metabolism.
- Builds longer, leaner and more defined muscles that work along the kinetic chain, as opposed to strength training that works on individual muscles.
- Leads to optimal functioning of the body’s organs and systems by providing fresh, high speed, nutrient rich blood to each and every cell in the body. (e.g., improves metabolism, facilitates removal of excess)
- Removes excess water weight through sweating.
Mind
- Builds the emotional muscles of discipline, self-control, patience, and faith
- Fosters self-acceptance
- Cultivates a healthy respect for the body; leading to mindful eating and a more sustainable desire to take care of yourself
Consistency is key! Practice regularly, with intention, and you will find that your thought patterns change and your actions will change. It becomes quite easy to put what you know about weight loss – eat less and move more – into practice. You begin to consume only what your body needs and practice regularly because you have an internal longing to feel healthy, lean and strong.
Mindy Hinkel, long-time practitioner and Work Study Team Member says:
Mindy Hinkel
July '08
3 weeks before beginning Bikram Yoga
May 1st, 2011
After 20+ months of consistent practice. Wow!
Can you lose weight with Bikram Yoga? I will not write about what I have lost as many diet testimonials will do. Losing something implies you would like to find it again and that is not my intention, but these are the results Bikram Yoga has offered me in the past 2.5 years of practicing consistently and listening to what that practice had to tell me.
- 65.5 pounds are no longer on my body
- 3.5 inches are no longer on my upper arm
- 1.75 inches are no longer around my neck
- 10.75 inches are no longer on my waist
- 9.5 inches are no longer on my hips
- 7.5 inches are no longer on my thighs
- 3.25 inches are no longer on my calves.
- 9.5 inches are no longer on my chest.
More than anything what I believe this style of yoga offers
over any other style of yoga and form of exercise is PERSPECTIVE.
The mirror we are asked to meditate and look into offers a window to ourselves. If we are courageous enough to look through it, we find it will reveal an image of something very special and so unique that it can’t be found anywhere else on earth – YOU. There is no one exactly like YOU anywhere else at this time and that is indeed amazing.
I no longer say that “I am fat” when I look into the mirror. I say “hey, I’ve got some fat on those thighs that no longer needs to be there and no longer serves what I want to do with my life.” Though counting calories was a useful tool in the beginning for my weight loss, I no longer feel the need to do so and eat when I am hungry, don’t eat when I am not hungry, crave healthy foods for the most part, indulge occasionally in some foods that are not as healthy – all the while I continue to rid my body of more weight without stressing over it.
How can you ever be sorry to spend 90 minutes of your day meditating on yourself and making yourself a better you to go about the rest of your day in? Perspective.
It is not what I have lost from this practice that you need to be asking me about but what I have gained. I have gained more LIFE.
I continually gain more faith, self-control, determination, concentration, and patience with every class in hopes that one day as Bikram says, “there will be no need to chase after life, life will chase after you.”
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Staff teacher Aaron St. Pierre is spending one week at Teacher Training in LA.