Why use yoga for exercise?
Try and get past the trendiness and celebrity-bandwagon-jumping of modern yoga for a second and you'll be able to appreciate why the ancient Indian form of spiritual and physical exercise has become so wildly popular. First of all, yoga brings both physical and mental benefits: combining exercising, strengthening and toning your body with conscious relaxation and meditation techniques. At the end of a successful yoga session you should feel stretched, relaxed and invigorated.
Over time, continued regular practice improves your flexibility, strength, muscle tone and posture and can help relieve specific pains, such as back pain. Poses and sequences can also be tailored to meet your current needs or tackle particular problem areas, whether you're expecting a baby, dealing with post-natal aches and pains or trying to shift baby blub. While many forms of exercise give you a mental lift, yoga's combination of exercise and focus on breathing can be particularly effective, helping bring mental clarity and leaving you calmer, more self-aware and better able to cope with the stresses and strains of life as a parent.
And while the fashionable yoga world is now full of fancy, and expensive, yoga paraphernalia, one of the great things about yoga is that you don't really need any equipment - you simply need some loose, comfortable clothing to practice in and some floor space. If you take classes in a gym then you can usually borrow or hire a yoga mat, and if you want to practice at home then you can buy mats quite inexpensively.
Another great benefit of yoga is that once you've got a bit of experience under your belt you can practice anywhere where you have a little space and calm. This makes yoga relatively easy to fit into your day at home - when your baby is sleeping, for example. You can also use the breathing and meditation techniques alone at times when you need to calm down or re-energise yourself.
Yoga for weight loss
While all forms of yoga are great for improving your flexibility, strength and muscle tone it's the more vigorous yoga styles that will give you the cardio work-out that you need to burn lots of calories and lose weight. If you do plenty of other aerobic exercise then there is definitely a place for the more gentle forms of hatha yoga in your exercise/weight loss programme to build stamina, promote relaxation and improve energy levels. These slower and more gentle forms of yoga include Iyengar, Viniyoga, Sivananda and Kripalu yoga, and focus on maintaining and deepening poses and stretches. However, if you want to focus on yoga as a means of losing weight then you need to plump for one of the more athletic styles of Vinyasa yoga such as Ashtanga, Bikram, Anusara or power yoga.
What is Vinyasa yoga?
Vinyasa yoga encompasses styles of yoga where one pose flows into another following the rhythm of your breath. Poses may still be held as stretches for a number of breaths, but they are linked together by a series of movements made as you inhale or exhale. There's an enormous variety within Vinyasa yoga in terms of style, speeds and focus, so if you're looking for a class make sure to talk to the instructor first to find out if their style matches what you are looking for, and if you don't find the right class at first, don't be put off from trying another with a different teacher.
Here are some more specific forms of Vinyasa yoga:
Ashtanga yoga - A demanding form of flowing yoga where you're constantly moving from one pose to the next based on a set series of poses in a set order. The movements are designed to give you a good work out to sweat out toxins, improve circulation, tone and strengthen muscles. Find out more.
Power yoga - Based on Ashtanga yoga, power yoga differs in that it may not stick to the set sequences that make up an Ashtanga work out, so there's more room for variation and personal input from your teacher - some teachers use poses similar to pus-ups and handstands along with more traditional poses.
Bikram yoga - A set series of poses done in a room heated to around 40 degrees in order to loosen muscles and allow for deeper stretching, improve circulation and maximise sweating (to flush out toxins). It's quite a demanding one to start off with and you may be better off getting the hang of some of the poses in normal conditions first. Find out more.
Anusara yoga - Quite a new form of yoga, Anusara makes use of a lot of props (such as yoga blocks to lean on) and puts a strong emphasis on alignment (the correct positioning of your body in each pose), both of which can make it a good style for beginners. Anusara is underpinned by the belief that there is intrinsic goodness in everything and each class focuses on an uplifting theme - some people will love this strong spiritual aspect of the classes but other may be put off. Find out more.
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Where do I start as a beginner?
The first thing to do as a beginner is to do a little reading about the different styles of yoga to find the one that you think will best suit your aims, needs and available time. If you've given birth quite recently then you might want to consider a specific post-natal yoga class, which are quite commonly offered. If you're pregnant then you definitely want to take a course specific to pregnant women as not all the poses are suitable for pregnancy exercise. If you can chat to a couple of yoga instructors about the various forms of yoga it will probably help you narrow down your choices. You'll then be able to make a little more sense of the way in which different yoga classes are labelled and find one that suits your requirements and your timetable.
Taking a class is the easiest way to learn yoga as a beginner for several reasons. You don't have to struggle with a book or the video control as you learn the poses, the teacher will be able to correct your posture as you learn the poses as well as watch out for the way that you breathe and signing up for a regular class an help with your motivation. If you are lucky you might be able to find a mother and baby yoga class in your area, which can work really well with younger babies and give you a head start to your practice alone at home.
However, the right class at the right time isn't available to everyone, and with a family you might not have time to leave home for a class. It is possible to learn yoga from a book, video or DVD, although it is definitely more difficult and requires a good deal of determination. A video or DVD can give you a clearer idea of what each pose requires and is far easier to follow during practice than trying to juggle a book. Some post-natal yoga instruction resources cater for beginners as well as for those already familiar with yoga.If you do take this route then we'd recommend that you start by using beginners-specific instruction and by spending plenty of time reading through your book, or watching your DVD all the way through so you can get a general feel for the concepts and poses before trying them yourself. Jumping straight in to Rodney Yee's flashy-looking 'Power Yoga' may seem like a good idea, but you'll probably get confused and frustrated within the first five minutes and give up before you really get started.
What to expect from a yoga class
As we've said, there can be a huge variety in yoga classes in terms of style, speed and focus, but there are several elements that are common in yoga classes. Classes often start with chanting, relaxation exercises (breathing) or short meditation, known as 'centering'. This is usually followed by warm-up poses before the more challenging poses, stretching and finally a few minutes of guided relaxation (savasana). Most classes last for about ninety minutes, though in many gyms you'll probably find classes designed to be fitted in at lunch time.
