Yoga from a users point of view (Yoga in general)

Member Name: I-tried-this

Product:	Yoga in general
Date:	06/08/08 (48 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It can help with so many things in your life, balance/stability, muscles/strenth, energy....

Disadvantages: It requires your full attention and you do need to practice practice practice

Now I have to point out, I am writing this from a learners perspective, I am not a professional nor aiming to be, and I practice Yoga with others in various classes through out the week. I am not writing this to try to tell you the entire history of Yoga, I am simply trying to tell you about the benefits and experiences I have had and hope that the review I give will be of some use to you.

The reasons I initially started Yoga, followed being an inpatient at hospital for 4 months as an anorexic. Having been under careful surveillance, I was only allowed to exercise, mildly for 30 minutes per week, and a 20 minute walk per day. Naturally I left hospital itching to be able to move again but not wanting to jeopardise my recovery or loose phenomenal amounts of weight again, I looked into non cardiovascular forms of exercise. I simply wanted to tone up.

Most if not all Yoga classes will be based however loosely around the Sun Salutation (or Sura Namaskara). Basicly this is a sequence of movements which moves with each breath- so its really important to listen to your body which will tell you just how fast or slow you need to go. The breathing is called pranayama or yogic breathing and is about breathing in very fully each time- your stomach actually moved when you do this type of breathing, its not about keeping a flat stomach, its about letting oxygen get to every organ in your body. The poses are called asanas, of which there are many, some of which will be interwoven into the Sun Salutations but others that wont be. With the sun salutations, the trick is to never let any other part of your body other then your hands and feet touch the ground. On your first few weeks this wont happen, you just wont have the body strength, but its so rewarding when you can as you really do feel like you able to go with the flow of pranayama (breathing).
There are so many many different forms of poses, standing poses, lying poses, twisting poses, balancing poses... the list goes on. Each demands a different degree of attention and each will help you gain strength and focus each time you work on it.

My very first class was a Hatha yoga class. (Pronounced Hat-Ha). Hatha Yoga is a gentle form of Yoga. In fact, all Yoga's derive from Hatha but they generally vary to the point where they proclaim their own title, normally after the person who created it.
Hatha Yoga is good for anyone hoping to use yoga to relax, gain inner strength in terms of posture and core stability, and works well with pregnancy. Its good for calming you down after a long day or helping you relax mid day. Its not a Yoga to burn fat or loose weight though.

I attended classes for about 6 months weekly before calling it to a halt and needing to work at University more. I was sad to leave the Yoga as you really do learn to stretch and gain more balance and generally feel like you have released something somewhere. But needs must and I did need to stop.

It wasn't for 3 years until I went back. The class I rejoined was a level 2 yoga. (Normally there are 4 levels: beginner, level 1, level 2, and level 3 or advanced). I found out later that the class was really a form of Ashtanga.
Ashtanga has part of the yoga world spilt from my experience. One Yoga teacher I had later said that Ashtanga in itself is fine, but as we live in the West, we would rarely get to practice if properly as it is meant to involve 2 solid hours of Yoga every morning and more time in the evening. Its also important you don't eat 2 hours before a Yoga session and spend plenty of time in the day meditating. Where we live in the West of the world, this sort of routine is near impossible- unless your that wealthy you don't need to go to work and if you do, its short and sweet, you come home early and have no family. You also need to work on different series, such as the Primary which is all about forward bends, and Secondary which is all about backward bends. But because most Yoga classes are an hour, you rarely get to work the Second series to its full extent and as a result, can become unbalanced and weak in certain areas, over worked in others. Unfortunately you do need the full two hours to both warm up your body and work to the correct poses.
But Ashtanga is in some form practised across the world and is still quite a popular Yoga. Its popular for many reasons, namely as its a more energetic form of Yoga, you can actually work up a sweat if you move fast enough, and your heart rate as a result will rise, meaning that your burning more calories. Added to this the no eating 2 hours before a class, and focus on how your body is feeling/e.g. being self aware, can really help people to think about the way they eat and carry the practice of Yoga through to the rest of their lives. As a result, many people do loose weight when they realise they re not perpetually hungry, they are actually sad/lonely or tired. Yoga teaches you to stop and think and this is a perfect example of that.

Iyengar Yoga is all about poise and position. Its again, based on Hatha Yoga but really concentrates on holding poses for a while and getting the positions just perfect. You are aiming to hold poses for upwards of 5 minutes, perhaps 15, and it does really hurt to do this! But like any muscle building, you do get better and in time you can hold the pose for longer.
You would think that Iyengar Yoga doesn't burn any energy but you'd be wrong. As you build muscles, you do actually sweat, not to the same degree you would do for a sprint run, but you do defiantly sweat. When you have developed muscles, it will also help you to burn fat at a higher rate.

Vinyasa Yoga is all about flow. You move from one pose to another with energy and breeze of movement, you do have some pauses, but nowhere near as you do with Iyengar. Its a good yoga to do in the morning if you are able to feel energetic in the morning- it is rewarding in that sense as it will give you more energy by increasing the blood flow and circulation.

There is also Restorative Yoga. This is a mixture of Iyengar and Hatha, its also on the whole, a very passive Yoga, which encourages you to fall into a pose, like lying upside down (in some classes they have ropes where you can hang from) where in reality, your not doing anything then letting the rope hold you, but actually its doing a lot for your circulation and again by putting yourself into different poses, like balancing yourself with your legs in a diamond shape, can stretch out your hips and again, help with circulation and balance.
Restorative Yoga is best done at the end of a day, again, on a near empty stomach and with a decent amount of time for the class/practise such as 1.5 to 3 hours.


I found that overall, yoga helped me massively, this last bout I began just under a year ago and at one point was attending 5 classes a week. It really made a difference to my balance, my posture- I also did loose any cellulite I had- this is the honest truth! (Sadly due to time commitments I have had to cut this back down to one class a week, but only restarted that after 3 months in which time the cellulite had returned and I get it pretty badly: not just on my thighs but on my calves and my bottom and parts of my stomach).

I also increased my stamina for each pose and at times out lasting many of the muscle men who came to the class- you have no idea how good that felt as I am not a particularly muscular girl to look at! But the fact is, yoga doesn't work the same muscles you work when your training, it works ones you don't use as much, it really really makes a difference when you have been doing it for a month or so regularly, and the best thing is the longer you do it, the more you improve. There seems to be no limit to how much you can learn and how much you can teach your body to do.

Yoga also helped me with any muscle strains I gathered- I do a lot of other exercise during the week- I basicly go and workout at the gym 6 out of 7 days a week for anything from an hour to 3 or 4 hours at a time. (an old anorexic hang up though I am at a very very healthy weight now and a size 10-12 so I am in no way anorexic where my body is concerned!!). In my workouts, no matter how much I stretch, I do overwork muscles every now and then. But rest assured there will normally be a yoga pose which can help me aid the muscle that I have pulled. Its not a quick 'click and its fixed', its more a different way to stretch a muscle and quite often, a stretch you can hold in place for a decent amount of time rather then a quick stretch you encompass at the end of a workout and is too difficult to hold for more then 30 seconds without loosing some of the stretch.

I would advise Yoga for every one. But its important to remember that you get in what you put in, you will make your class experience more for filling, no one else can do this for you. So if your doing Yoga because someone else has told you to or because your supporting a friend, really re-think your plans, think about how you want it to benefit you and work on that. If you really cant find one part of you that wants to take the classes, then maybe Yoga is not for you, it will become harder to focus on your breathing, harder to work to the pose structure and harder to get good results. Yoga can help everyone, but you have to want it to and you have to want to do it.

Summary: This is a good form of excercise as well as a tool for calming yourself and brining focus.