Benefits of Hot Yoga

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The heat allows you to stretch a little further and achieve a greater range of motion. As you get older, your flexibility usually decreases, especially if you spend a lot of time sitting, which leads to pain and immobility. Yoga can help reverse this process.

A 2013 study of hot yoga found that after 8 weeks, yoga participants had greater flexibility in their low back, shoulders, and hamstrings than the control group. The practice also increased cardiorespiratory and muscular endurance as well as physical strength

Many yoga poses require you to bear your body weight in new and often challenging ways, including balancing on one leg or supporting yourself with your arms. Holding these poses over the course of several breaths helps build muscular strength and endurance.

As a byproduct of getting stronger, you can expect to see muscle tone and helps shape long, lean muscles in your legs, arms, back, and abdomen.

Balance training is important at any age.  Improved balance is one of the most important benefits of yoga.  Poses that require you to stand on one leg, and, for more advanced practitioners, turn you upsidedown in an inversion, can be a great way to build core strenght. Balance training improves posture and functionality to help you move more efficiently through everyday life. Exercises that strengthen and stabilize the core can promote agility and prevent accidents from stumbling or falling

Physical activity is good for relieving stress, and this is particularly true of yoga. Because of the concentration required, your daily troubles, both large and small, can seem to melt away during the time you are on the mat. This provides a much-needed break from your stressors, as well as helping to put your problems into perspective. The emphasis yoga places on being in the present moment can also help as you learn not to dwell on past events or anticipate the future. You will leave a yoga class feeling less stressed than when you started since yoga reduces cortisol levels.

The movements necessary for yoga are low-impact, allowing you to use your joints without injuring them. Yoga also helps strengthen the muscles around the joints, lessening their load. People with arthritis often see a marked improvement in their pain and mobility with regular gentle yoga.

Doing yoga improves your mind-body connection, giving you a better awareness of your own body. During yoga, you learn to make small, subtle movements to improve your alignment, putting you in better touch with your physical body. You also learn to accept your body as it is without judgment. Over time, this leads to feeling more comfortable in your own body, boosting your self-confidence

Striking different yoga poses in high heat can give your heart, lungs, and muscles a more challenging workout than doing the same poses in a lower temperature. Just one session of hot yoga is enough to get your heart pumping at the same rate as a brisk walk (3.5 miles per hour).

While any type of exercise can help burn energy and reduce circulating levels of glucose (sugar) in your bloodstream, hot yoga may be an especially helpful tool for people at higher risk for type 2 diabetes 

Sweating, and a lot of if, is one of the main objectives of hot yoga.

One of the benefits of sweating in a warm environment is that it can improve circulation, bringing oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood to skin cells. This, in turn, may help to nourish your skin from the inside out.

Many people who practice yoga report that it helps them to sleep better and a large body of scientific evidence supports this claim. In fact, a review of 49 studies involving more than 4,500 participants determined that mind-body practices like meditation or yoga can be beneficial to those with insomnia and other sleep disorders