How Does Yoga Burn Calories?

Many people seem to view yoga as somewhat of an “easy” workout because it doesn’t involve heavy lifting or running miles on a treadmill. Although it’s true that practicing yoga isn’t as strenuous as other activities, it can still burn between 100-600 calories per hour depending on the type of poses you’re choosing.

You can also make basically any yoga workout into a hot yoga session by adding the required heat element, which can increase an hourly session to the 500-600 calorie range. Either way, yoga is a wonderful way to burn calories, lose weight, and stay in shape.

7 Calorie Burning Yoga Poses

If you’re looking to lose weight, you can basically choose any type of yoga pose because all of them will burn calories. That being said, we’ve put together a list of some of our favorite yoga poses that will often help you burn more calories than others:

High Lunge

The high lunge yoga pose is extremely popular because although it focuses on your glutes and quads, it actually works out your entire body. You’ll open up your groin and hips, stretch and tone your legs, stimulate your abdominal organs, and more. It requires a small amount of balance, which is always beneficial when doing yoga. That’s because maintaining balance forces your body to work harder, which burns more calories.

Plank

The plank yoga pose is another very popular pose for burning many calories because it utilizes major muscle groups while forcing your body to resist gravity. The muscle groups used most include your shoulders, abs, and glutes. It’s also easier to burn even more calories by raising your foot an inch or so off the mat, along with other variations. The longer you stay in the pose, the more calories you’ll burn.

Low Plank

You can easily get into the right mindset of this pose by thinking of it as holding the low part of a push-up. With this pose, you’ll be engaging your core, legs, and arms to stay in a 90-degree angle at the elbows. This particular pose is for more advanced yoga practitioners, and once you master it, you’ll reap tons of benefits on top of burning calories.

The Chair

The chair pose may be one of the easiest yoga poses to perform, but it’s also one of the most beneficial. Not only does it strengthen your hip flexors, ankles, glutes, calves, and back, but it also stretches your chest and shoulders, in addition to toning your leg muscles. This pose also stimulates your heart, diaphragm, and abdominal organs. All this works together to burn a high number of calories safely and effectively.

Sun Salutations

Even though this isn’t a single pose, it deserves to be on this list. Sun salutations involve a set of 12 yoga poses done one right after another that not only activate the cardiovascular system but will also engage your abs, glutes, biceps, shoulders, triceps, and calves. These poses can prevent fatigue, improve mental clarity, promote relaxation, and several other benefits. It is recommended sun salutations be done in the morning for maximum benefit.

Wheel 

If there’s one thing to say about the wheel yoga pose, it’s that it really gets your blood flowing. This is a pose that you’ll need to work up to, but once you do, you should never let it go. This pose stimulates your breathing, opens up your chest and shoulders, improves your spinal flexibility and strength, etc. If you perform this pose in a heated room, you’re likely to get your heart rate up and burn even more calories than normal.

Dolphin

The dolphin yoga pose is similar to the very famous downward dog pose, except that your forearms are on the mat instead. This is a great pose for strengthening your core, arms, and legs while stretching and opening up your shoulders and chest. Since you’re using your forearms against the mat, you’ll also be fully engaging your triceps. Even though this is a pretty simple pose, you’ll be able to burn a healthy amount of calories from it.

Contact East West Healing Solutions for Calorie-Burning Yoga Poses and Classes

East West Healing Solutions has the best yoga studio in Palm Harbor and the surrounding areas. If you have any questions about our services, call us at (727) 216-3972 today or check out our yoga class schedule. You can also take a look at our East West Healing Solutions store for all of your yoga supply needs.