The Benefits Of Hot Yoga
May 2, 2019 Posted by Lauren Shirley Blog
You may have noticed that we like it a little toasty in our Charlotte hot yoga classes. Our downstairs studio is heated to 99 degrees with added humidity, and our upstairs studio, while still relatively cooler, is heated to around 80 degrees. Trust us when we say there is a method behind the madness – we aren’t just cranking the heat up for fun. There are tons of benefits to practicing in a heated studio.
What are the benefits of Hot Yoga?
It Makes You More Flexible
Increased heat and humidity makes it easier for your muscles to stretch. The heat and steam makes your muscles more pliable thereby enabling an increased range of motion and deeper stretch within each pose.
It Increases Endurance
While you might think a stifling room makes it harder to breathe, the breathing exercises in hot yoga can actually help train your lungs to retain more air. Deeper breaths force them to expand more than usual, which allows for more oxygen to enter the blood stream and get to the other organs
It Detoxifies Your Body
Working out in a heated room makes your body sweat, which is a good thing. When your body is sweating this means that all of your body’s toxins are being flushed out, and this is why many people feel refreshed and re-energized after a hot yoga workout.
It Burns Calories
Any physical activity that increases your heart rate will help to burn calories. Although you may not be running or jumping around, the added heat of a hot yoga class will definitely put your circulatory system to work. Add in the fast pace of our Y2 vinyasa classes and suddenly you’ll be burning so many calories that your apple watch won’t be able to keep up.
It Makes Savasana Feel 100x Better
There is nothing, and we mean NOTHING, like the feeling of relaxing in savasana with a cold towel on your head after a 60-minute sweaty practice. We don’t know what nirvana feels like, but we think this might be close.