Fight Fat on Your Mat?

By Andrea Ferretti

There's no question that yoga practice builds body awareness and acceptance, but yoga as a sure-fire path to weight loss? Until now, doctors and scientists weren't convinced. But a recent study from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle may make them sit up and take notice.

Researchers queried healthy men and women about their weight history and physical activity from the ages of 45 to 55. It turned out that study subjects who were overweight and did yoga at least once a week had lost five pounds over the 10-year period, while their non-yogi counterparts had gained eight. (Yoga practitioners of normal weight did tend to gain weight over the years, but people who didn't practice gained more.)

The reason? Lead researcher and Anusara Yoga practitioner Alan Kristal believes that it's not the number of calories that yoga burns, since only the most vigorous yoga practice will burn enough to trigger a weight loss. "But yoga builds mindfulness," says Kristal, who is also a professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health. "You learn to feel when you're full, and you don't like the feeling of overeating. You recognize anxiety and stress for what they are instead of trying to mask them with food."

Spotlight on Ashtanga Yoga

by Yoga Journal

This form of yoga is intensely physical and athletic. Ashtanga yogis practice a prescribed set of asanas, channel energy through the body using bandhas (locks), and concentrate on singular points using drishti (gaze) in asanas. Classes typically begin with an invocation to Patanjali chanted in Sanskrit.

WHAT IT LITERALLY MEANS: Ashtanga yoga translates as "eight-limbed yoga" and refers to the eight limbs outlined by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutra, which include moral and ethical guidelines, postures, breathwork, sense withdrawal, concentration, and meditation.

WHAT IT HAS COME TO MEAN: In America, "Ashtanga Yoga" most often refers to the system taught by Indian yoga master K. Pattabhi Jois. Sometimes called Ashtanga vinyasa yoga, Jois's Ashtanga comprises a precise series of poses done in sequential order, linked together with the breath.

WHO FOUNDED IT: The practice that Jois teaches is detailed in an ancient Sanskrit text called the Yoga Kurunta, which was rediscovered early in this century by T. Krishnamacharya. Jois studied with Krishnamacharya in Mysore, India.