Yoga, Weight Loss and You
Yoga is an ancient art and science which can help you lose weight and feel great. The word “yoga” comes from the Sanskrit language and means “to join” or “to yoke.” In essence, yoga is connecting our individual self, including our body, mind and heart with our universal self, or spirit. In yoga, we practice uniting our body with our mind and heart, our mind and heart with our spirit. In my understanding, yoga was developed by mystics over 5,000 years ago. These wise beings would go into meditation to connect with the peace of their spirit but found it challenging to sit still due to physical aches and pains and mental chatter and unrest within them. They would open their eyes and see the beauty and tranquility of nature all around them and realize that the trees were not complaining about their aching trunks and the mountain was not stressed out about the storm rolling in. So the mystics began to imitate nature so that they too could be like nature and return to their true state of contentedness and sit in the stillness at peace with simply being themselves.
The practice of yoga makes the body strong and flexible and helps to improve the overall function of the digestive, respiratory, circulatory and hormonal systems. Yoga assists us in releasing mental stress, bringing clarity and peace of mind. Yoga opens a door into the heart and helps one practice self-love and self-acceptance so that s/he becomes emotionally stable. But this is only the beginning of a life-long journey towards one’s core, the realization of the true, essential self, the ultimate aim of yoga.
Yoga has helped me to lose a substantial amount of weight. In my experience, when you remember who you are and align yourself with what is truly important to you, you will return to your true nature of health and happiness and your body will return to its perfect weight. I once read a wonderful article about Mariel Hemingway, who is a yoga enthusiast. She said, “Yoga doesn’t give you the body you want, it gives you the body you were meant to have.” Yoga will help you to achieve your perfect weight, not necessarily the media’s perception of the ideal weight or shape. Through regular practice you will create the body that supports you in being and expressing who you truly are. Yoga asanas (postures) strengthen and stretch your muscles, toning the whole body. They also help to tone every tissue, ligament, joint and nerve.
Yoga helps to align and correct the posture so that you move with confidence and grace. The regular practice of stretching, twisting, bending and inverting the body squeezes the internal organs, cleansing the body of impurities, including the build-up of excess fat. Yoga asanas increase the circulation of fresh blood and oxygen through the body, ridding it of toxins and diseases which accumulate due to improper eating habits, lack of exercise and poor posture. The various postures help to improve digestion and strengthen the elimination systems so that the (hopefully healthy and nutritious) food you eat moves easily through your body. Yoga jump starts the metabolism, improves the functioning of the lymphatic system and harmonizes the natural flow of hormonal secretion. The overall result is chemical balance in the body.
One of the greatest benefits of yoga is the oxygenation of all the cells due to deep, conscious, diaphragmatic breathing. The yogis (practitioners of yoga) teach us that vital life-force energy (prana) travels within our breath. When we direct the breath into different places within our body, tension is transformed by the prana into fluid, flowing energy. With each exhale we are releasing what we no longer need. Each inhale we breath in fresh new energy. Excess fat in this respect could be perceived as stagnant energy (what we don’t want) and consciously directing the breath into those old store-houses of accumulated energy helps to clear the unwanted fat.
Yoga is a means through which you ultimately tune in to your body’s own wisdom. When you get to know your body and listen to its innate intelligence, hopefully you will begin to follow its guidance. You will practice yoga in a way that serves you on that particular day. You will eat food that nourishes and energizes your body. Yoga helps you come back into alignment with your body and your body transforms into a vehicle through which you experience the health and well being that is your true nature. The great yogi Iyengar teaches us “The body is your temple; keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.”
Gautama Buddha said, “We are what we think. All that we are rises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.” So the question is, what reality are you creating for yourself with your thoughts? Have you ever heard the expression “We are molded by our environment”? Our thoughts are the internal environment that we live in. Notice how your thoughts have molded your body. Are you constantly telling yourself that you’re fat and that losing weight is a hopeless battle? Or are you telling yourself that you are beautiful and that you’re on an inspiring journey towards living life at your perfect weight? What you think about yourself and the messages you are constantly giving yourself are vitally important in the process of losing weight. From the yogic perspective, our minds are intimately connected with our bodies. The mind can be seen as a monkey wildly swinging from branch to branch and thought to thought, oftentimes completely unconsciously. unconsciously.
Yoga is a means to calm the crazy swinging of the mind so that the mind returns back to its resting place of calm focus. In this state it is possible to live life in awareness, with clarity and confidence.
We have been given an amazing gift to help us balance and harmonize our minds. You are doing it right now. You are breathing. Most of the time we breathe unconsciously. In yoga we breathe with total awareness, absorbed in the present moment. The yogis say that the breath is the master of the mind. Without oxygen, the brain will shut down. In truth, the mind cannot think without the breath. When the breath is slow, deep and smooth, the mind slows down and we become deeply rooted in ourselves, our true nature of present, open, wakefulness. Then we can make decisions about how we move and eat and interact from a place of connectedness with ourselves, fully conscious of what is truly right for us in the moment.
The heart of yoga is your spiritual heart, the dwelling place of love, compassion and acceptance. When you return back to your spiritual center, you will be at the “heart of the matter” of weight loss. The role of our heart is to integrate and balance the different parts of who we are into a radiant sense of wholeness. Within this union of body, mind, heart and spirit one finds true self-love and self-respect. When our hearts are open in deep compassion for ourselves in the often times challenging process of losing weight, we find a love that is eternal and constant. There’s a wonderful saying, “Love is the expression of the willingness to allow something to change.” When you love yourself, you create a space in which transformation can happen. Self-love allows change and freedom but keeps you deeply connected to that which never changes, your spirit, your essence.
A big part of self-love is changing and/or letting go of those things that no longer serve you. Self-respect is loving yourself enough not to keep excess baggage in your life that is weighing you down. Excess weight is very connected to excess baggage in all respects, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Losing weight is not just about doing some physical exercise and eating right. It is a process of deeply looking at your life, your work, your relationships, your internal and external environments and clearly seeing if these things are weighing you down or uplifting and fulfilling you.
Yoga is a way to find out how you are buffering or protecting yourself from your own life. It is inner conflict resolution. So yoga and losing weight take great courage. It is an internal and external process. The yogis teach us that our bodies remember everything that has ever happened to us, that our biology is our biography. In yoga you face yourself and you face your life. One of my students told me, “I don’t need therapy, I practice yoga.” Yoga helps you get clear about who you are, what doesn’t work, what does work and gives you the tools to remember your true nature of self-love, respect and acceptance, the keys to losing weight.
With great faith in yourself and confidence in your spirit’s vision to be healthy, you will lose weight. Keep moving and keep breathing and you will be renewed; what is not needed will be dissolved and renewed again. Yoga reminds you that you know who you are and you know how to take care of yourself. The answers are within you, waiting for you to look inside.
I bow to and deeply honor who you are. In truth you are love, peace and beauty itself. When you remember who you are and I remember who I am, We are one.