How it can Hot Yoga help with your physical, emotional and mental health?
If you are suffering with acute or chronic anxiety, stress or depression - the combination of conscious breathing, moving your body, clearing your head and sweating out unwanted toxins could make a massive difference to your general wellbeing.
The heat in hot yoga helps to ease pain, muscle tightness and each class can be adapted for every ability and fitness level. The heat relaxes not only the body but the brain also - this is achieved through deep breathing and the physiological effects that heat stress has on our central nervous system and our processes.
There is now insurmountable scientific evidence showing us how impactful deep, conscious breathing can be to our health and well being. Taking long, slow, deep breaths can lower stress levels immediately bringing us out of our sympathetic nervous systems where we are ready to fight or run from danger and into parasympathetic where we can rest, digest, heal and be happy.
From the beginning of class you are taken through several breathing exercises and instructed throughout to maintain these deep, diaphragmatic breaths - the more you come, the more you practise until eventually it becomes an automatic habit. This habit then continues into your every day life enabling you to handle stressful situations better on a daily basis.
Ready for some science?
The heat in hot yoga is designed to create heat stress in our bodies. Dinorphin is created when we experience this heat stress (this can only be felt in hot yoga / sauna/ hot bath) the opposite of endorphin - this is what creates the uncomfortable feeling of being 'too hot'... this is where the magic happens.
Dinorphin floods the system and increases our bodies natural production of endorphins. This reaction also resensitises the opiod receptors in our brains - so not only do you feel good at the time, you feel the long term benefits of resensitising receptors that have been dimmed or dulled by medicine, stimulants or other substances.
Heat stress also creates and strengthens our heat shock proteins (HSP) which we need to fight neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s - heat stress is an incredible way to boost cognitive functioning and heal the body from the inside out. If you have brain fog, writers block or just cant shift a bad feeling - hot yoga can help.
𝐇𝐨𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐠𝐚 𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲, 𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲, 𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲.
The cleansing effect of the sweat is second to none. Moving, twisting, compressing, squeezing the body increases circulation, stimulates the digestive system, revitalizes the entire body and leaves you feeling more alive than you were when you started class. Hot Yoga can improve cardiovascular fitness and gives us the tools to control our breathing, our thoughts and strengthen our determination and focus.
For those of us who have minds that run 100 miles per hour - those 60 minutes in class are sometimes the only time we have for ourselves. Hot yoga can be your meditation, no thoughts, no lists, no worries - when you are in the hot room you are focused solely on your breath and your movements. We get you out of your head and into your body so you can leave feeling lighter in every way.
We heat our studio to 40° and are the only hot yoga studio In Belfast. Our classes are open to all levels and we have beginner (SlowFlow) classes 3x a week if you want to ease yourself in. The room is dark, the people are friendly and everyone is there for the same reason.
There are hundreds of articles online about the benefits of sauna use and hot yoga, but these are our most notable points - please feel free to do more research and get in touch with us at the studio if you have any questions or queries!
The science is irrefutable, all you have to do is give it a go. #BreatheMoveSweat
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