Is hot yoga good for you? Exploring the science behind the sweat

By Ash Willmott, Anglia Ruskin University, Jessica Mee, University of Worcester

Hot yoga also known as Bikram yoga (more on that later) has gained significant popularity in recent years as a fairly ferocious form of exercise. It combines yoga poses and breathing exercises and is practised in a heated studio – with room temperatures close to 40°C.

This style of yoga is designed to replicate the environmental conditions of India and is typically practised for around 90 minutes, leaving students (and teachers) dripping in sweat come the end of class.

Practising hot yoga challenges the mind and places additional physiological strain on the body. It makes you very sweaty and increases your heart rate, which can feel pretty intense. Indeed, hot yoga can lead to dehydration and dizziness, especially if it’s your first time and you don’t begin the class hydrated.

Designed to develop strength, flexibility and balance, hot yoga is believed to offer enhanced physical and mental health benefits – including improved levels of fitness and reduced stress levels.

But it can also feel uncomfortable – think sweat trickling into your eyes while doing a headstand – and hard going: with fast, dynamic sequences repeated numerous times. Then there are also those tricky balances and multiple lunges, all done at high temperatures, meaning that at times classes can feel pretty gruelling.

So are all these hot sweaty postures actually any good for you? Let’s take a look at the science.

The origins of hot yoga

Before we go into the evidence, a bit on the history. Originally known as “Bikram yoga”, named after its creator Bikram Choudhury, the traditional style of hot yoga was developed in the early 1970s. It involves a series of 26 fixed postures, carried out over 90 minutes while experiencing extreme heat stress.

In recent years many yoga studios have chosen to rebrand these classes as “hot yoga”, having changed from the original 26 fixed postures to be more flowing and individual and to include music (which Bikram classes don’t).

Read Full Story https://theconversation.com/is-hot-yoga-good-for-you-exploring-the-science-behind-the-sweat-198342