Weight Loss, Healthy Joints, Peaceful Mind- All with Yoga!

Are you looking for a challenging yet still manageable way to tone your body, experience relief from painful joints, increase your flexibility, and become more balanced with your body and with your mind?

According to St. Joseph’s Hospital, Eating a well-balanced, calcium-rich diet and regular physical exercise are critical to ensuring healthy bones.  If you are a woman looking for a new exercise routine, then yoga may be the new exercise practice for you! Yoga is an exercise practice that has been around for more than 5,000 years, and today millions and millions of Americans practice it. With a little practice, you can get into a yoga practice that will be healthy to your mind and body -- as yoga incorporates both poses that flex and bend your body over time as well as meditation, if you wish to incorporate this latter element into your routine.

Practicing the correct yoga practices will help to protect your body against harmful stretching. You can pull a muscle out of joint by stretching and bending your body in incorrect formations and poses. You also can damage your body if you do too much yoga. The key to a healthy yoga practice in which you will lose weight, tone your body, and improve joint health is to practice it gradually. Work up to a regular yoga practice and diversify your routine by going to other classes that work different parts of your body -- such as aerobics, Zumba, and kickboxing.

You will see changes in the tone of your body and experience varying degrees of weight loss through a yoga practice -- but this will not happen immediately. Yoga tones your body by stretching and tightening your muscles over time. Some yoga practices incorporate Pilates, which challenges you to hold muscles in certain positions to strengthen your calves and abdominals. You also may experience weight loss through a hot yoga practice. Hot yoga -- also called Birkham hot yoga -- is a yoga practice that combines heat with yoga. The high temperatures loosen your muscles and give you more range for flexing and stretching. The hot temperatures also lead to more sweating, which purifies the body by releasing toxins and shedding water weight.

There is some risk in hot yoga and other yoga practices if you overdo the routine. So make sure you consult your doctor before taking up an yoga practice. This is especially important for women, as they experience conditions that men do not experience, such as pregnancy. Your doctor can assess the condition of your back, spine, and knees to tell you if you are a good candidate for a yoga practice.

Fitcorp’s guest blogger is Carolyn Fallon, a 20-something year old with a passion for life, fitness and overall well being.  She is an avid cycler, golfer and has known to bust some serious moves on the dance floor.  Check out Carolyn’s blog at http://fullonfit.blogspot.com!