5 Ways Yoga Facilitates Natural Weight Loss

Most regular yoga practitioners who have struggled with weight problems will tell you that yoga had an important role to play in helping to them lose weight naturally. Researchers have suggested that yoga leads to weight loss because it helps increase body awareness and attune you to the signals of your body, including those telling you when you’re full.  However, the different techniques and practices of yoga work on many more levels. Here are five ways in which yoga helps create natural weightloss.

1. Yoga improves bodily functions. Yoga asanas put the body through more varied types of movements in one practice session than most people have in a month: forward bending, twisting, and backward bending. In this way, yoga asanas increase circulation and help reduce fat around the abdomen, hips and other areas. The regular practice of yoga postures also facilitates natural weightloss by improving the functioning of the internal organs and strengthening the heart, lungs, kidneys, and digestive system.

2. Yoga increases muscle mass. Weightloss comes naturally to people with strong muscles. More vigorous types of yoga, either vinyasa yoga or yoga styles with long holds, such as Iyengar yoga or Kripalu yoga, increase muscle strength over time. Muscle tissue has a higher metabolic rate that fat tissue, so people with more muscle mass automatically burn more calories both when active and resting. This is one reason why exercise in general tends to create natural weightloss.

For best results, some people prefer yoga practices like vinyasa yoga with increased repetitions of a cycle of yoga poses, such as the classical sun salutation series.

3. Yoga Creates Greater Mental and Emotional Balance

Yoga breathing techniques, also called Pranayama, are an important part of yoga, which unfortunately sometimes get a short shift in yoga classes with a more fitness-oriented approach. Prana is a Sanskrit term that means life force or vital energy. Yama means control, and pranayama traditionally is taken to mean techniques that involve controlling the breath. However, on a deeper level, pranayama really is much more than that. It is a way to free the flow of the life force or prana in the body.

Yoga philosophy teaches us that what we call mental stress or emotional imbalance results from stagnant energy in the body. When there is blockages to the flow of the life force, it affects us both physically, mentally, and emotionally. Yoga asanas in general and pranayama in particular helps facilitate the flow of prana in the body. As prana flows more freely, most people begin to experience greater mental and emotional well-being over time.

4. Yoga Improves GI Health

The twists and turns of yoga asanas massage the internal organs, facilitating detoxification and increasing GI health. In addition, some advanced yoga cleansing techniques facilitate natural weight balance by toning the digestive organs and strengthening digestive functions.  One technique, for example, known as Agnisara, involves a rapid movement of the abdominal muscles; a great technique for both improving the health of the digestive organs and eliminating abdominal fat.

5. Yoga Reconnects Mind and Body

The body has its own weight-regulating mechanisms, which will naturally keep our weight normal-as long as we don’t override them. Most of us, unfortunately, lose touch with our natural appetite-regulating signals over time. Yoga facilitates natural weightloss by increasing the connection between mind and body. As our mind becomes more attuned to the body, it becomes more and more difficult to ignore the body’s signals of when to stop eating.

Another byproduct of increased mind-body connection is that as you learn to listen more to your body, you not only become more sensitive to how much you eat, but also what you eat. As a result, many people who practice yoga regularly report that over time they will naturally gravitate towards a diet that includes fewer refined and processed foods and more vegetables, fruits, and grains.