Yoga

Something that I have been doing a lot of research on lately is yoga. I was in the health and fitness section at the bookstore and started picking up books on the subject and looking over them.

What piqued my interest was a woman at work who started doing yoga a while back for chronic back pain that she's been dealing with for years. Now she says her back almost never bothers her, and she's lost weight.

I thought yoga was for stretching and stress-relief, but not really for losing weight. So I started looking into it, and I have to say I'm surprised. Firstly, I didn't realize how much fat-busting power stretching had! Because stretching makes your muscles work and hold positions, it is very effective at burning fat. On top of this, yoga gives you long, toned muscles that look great.

I also hadn't realized how effective yoga was at targeting certain parts of the body. If you have something you want to strengthen, you can choose workouts that will give that area a great workout. You can also work around any weaknesses you have. I was spending time looking up poses that I felt I could do without putting too much strain on my right wrist too soon. I figured that if a woman with an old back injury could improve it with yoga, it might work on my wrist as well.

So, I bought a couple books on the subject and a beginner's DVD since I don't have the money for classes right now, and I've been making sure to do 30 minutes of yoga at least twice a week. So far I've been very happy with the results. I've been at this about a month now, and while I'm not seeing weight loss yet (that I can undoubtedly attribute to the yoga anyway,) I am feeling good. I'm getting stronger and feeling more refreshed in the mornings. It really does help with stress relief too!

I would definitely recommend adding yoga to your weekly workouts. Even one or two workouts a week will give you more flexibility and less tension.