The Yoga Minibook for Weight Loss: A Specialized Program for a Thinner, Leaner You (Yoga Minibook Series) - Softcover

Chapter 1: Understanding Yoga

Are you one of the millions of people trying to lose weight, or trying not to gain it all back? Weight control is a common problem, so if you answered yes, you're certainly not alone. Over the years, I've worked with many people just like you, who have similar questions and concerns, such as the following: With the proliferation of fitness trends, how do you choose the best weight management plan for your body's needs? When you've had enough of trendy programs, how can you maintain your weight loss?

You hold the answers to these questions in your hands. I've written The Yoga Minibook for Weight Loss for everyone who is tired of being disappointed, let down, fed up, exhausted, and dizzy from riding the unhealthy dietary-fad roller coaster. The yoga program described in this book approaches weight management in a unique way that will integrate your body, mind, and spirit. By following this program you can safely and successfully lose pounds and inches. You can also redistribute your weight while firming and toning your out-of-shape areas. Best of all, the gentle stretching, strengthening, and firming poses in the pages that follow are suitable for people at all levels of fitness and flexibility. Yoga for Weight Loss is a lifestyle program that will help you achieve and maintain your desired weight goals, make the best fitness and food choices, and enrich your mind.

Exercise fads come and go, but after more than five thousand years, the practice of yoga is still with us -- and more popular than ever. Most weight loss plans ultimately prove to be fads, offering short-term solutions to a long-term problem. Most people find these plans impossible to stay on for a prolonged period of time. In contrast, the Yoga for Weight Loss program is based on a fundamentally sound, totally different approach. The practice of yoga offers a positive change in lifestyle, where permanent weight loss is a natural by-product of enjoyable exercise.

At the core of the program is a routine that features vinyasa yoga practice, a series of postures that flow seamlessly from one to the next. It's a dynamic combination of yoga and aerobics that will help you burn calories, raise your metabolism, and promote your cardiovascular health. With my Yoga Power workout you'll melt off pounds, increase your strength and flexibility, and stretch your spiritual muscles all at once.

If excess weight around your stomach is your nemesis, try practicing yoga poses from the "Yoga for Abdominals" chapter. Just a few minutes a day will help you create and maintain that sleek, sensual stomach you've always dreamed about. If you're concerned about unsightly cellulite or flabby, out-of-shape muscles, the "Yoga for Toning" chapter can get you firm, lean, and fit with supersculpting yoga postures. This yoga workout has the power to transform your body. It will tone you from head to toe, help you lose fat, encourage good posture, build muscle, and reduce the appearance of cellulite.

Yoga is not just for skinny, ultraflexible, beautiful people, although the media often portray it that way. On the contrary, the greatest boon is that yoga most benefits those who need it the most. The "Gentle Yoga" chapter is for beginners and people with full-sized bodies, who may be intimidated by the challenge of more advanced, pretzel-like yoga poses. Although some yoga postures may look difficult, remember that yoga is noncompetitive and emphasizes self-acceptance. With patient and regular practice you can safely and gradually increase your workout intensity and fitness level, regardless of your size or shape.

For valuable information on yoga nutrition and eating, the "Yoga Food" chapter includes a sampling of the world's healthiest cuisines -- the Mediterranean, vegetarian, Asian, and ayurvedic diets. By incorporating the yoga principles of Ayurveda and the foods of these deliciously healthful cuisines into your eating style, you'll give yourself an opportunity to achieve and maintain your perfect weight and feel your very best. In that chapter you'll also find helpful ways to modify your eating habits, such as practicing mindful eating and scaling down your food portions yet still feeling satisfied.

The Yoga Minibook for Weight Loss also features tips on how to incorporate yoga into your everyday life, along with ways to develop your personal yoga practice. I've created Yoga for Weight Loss to help people of all sizes, shapes, and ages reach and maintain their ideal weight and fitness goals, through sustained individualized practice and good lifelong eating habits.

Over the years, I have studied and practiced many hatha yoga styles, such as Integral, Iyengar, ashtanga vinyasa, kundalini, mantra, raja, and tantra, and have been especially interested in yoga's therapeutic applications. I have observed individuals and groups practicing yoga, and have seen its power to help them lose weight and relieve stress while they increase their energy, strength, and longevity. I've written my yoga minibook series -- the first four being The Yoga Minibook for Weight Loss, The Yoga Minibook for Longevity, The Yoga Minibook for Stress Relief, and The Yoga Minibook for Energy and Strength -- as self-help guides, in response to people's many fitness, diet, and wellness problems, questions, and concerns. I've had an opportunity to apply yoga techniques to help people achieve their wellness goals, and I've seen spectacular results.

My greatest wish is to share with you the many wonderful benefits yoga practice has given to me and the individuals I've assisted over the years. Whether you're looking to lose weight, boost your energy, relieve stress, or find the fountain of youth, I've created a yoga book for you. But before we dive in, a little background.

21st Century Yoga

Throughout the centuries, yoga has redefined and re-created itself to meet the needs of different eras and cultures. Yoga was barely known in the Western world until the 1960s, when the Beatles went off to India to find spiritual enlightenment with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and George Harrison came back with a sitar. Since then, yoga has evolved from a practice for hippie spiritual seekers chanting Om with Swami Satchidananda at Woodstock in 1969 to a practice embraced by everyone from Hollywood stars striving for beautiful bodies and high-powered CEOs seeking stress relief, to baby boomers wanting to turn back the hands of time. Even United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor takes a weekly yoga class. At least fifteen million Americans include some form of yoga in their fitness regimen.

Although yoga has been celebrated as the new fitness philosophy for the twenty-first century, the practice of yoga actually goes back thousands of years. Yoga originated in India and is an ancient philosophical discipline, not a religion. Originally yoga was practiced as a path to spiritual enlightenment, a way of arriving at a state of pure bliss and oneness with the universe. Yoga is a Sanskrit word meaning "union"; it describes the integration of body, mind, and spirit, and communion with a universal energy, the Supreme Consciousness. The practice of hatha yoga, whose exercises are familiar to many Westerners, was originally devised to strengthen the body and prepare it for the long, motionless hours of meditation.

Yoga dates back to the ancient Vedas, sacred Hindu scriptures first recorded around 2500 B.C.E. Over millennia, the yoga tradition has evolved into eight principal branches, which are different paths that all lead to the same goal: enlightenment.

The eight branches of yoga are called the Wheel of Yoga. They are:

Hatha Yoga (pronounced haht-ha), the yoga of physical discipline and bodily mastery. This is the branch of yoga most of us in the West are familiar with, and it is the one presented in this book. In hatha, enlightenment is achieved through spiritualized physical practices including asanas (postures), pranayama (controlled breathing), and meditation. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a fourteenth-century text, is a guide to hatha yoga.
Jhana Yoga (pronounced gyah-nah), the yoga of wisdom and knowledge. In jhana, enlightenment and self-realization are achieved through the teaching of nondualism, the elimination of illusion, and direct knowledge of the divine.
Bhakti Yoga (pronounced bhuk-tee), the path to achieve union with the divine through love and acts of devotion.
Karma Yoga (pronounced kahr-mah), the path of enlightenment through selfless service and actions.
Mantra Yoga (pronounced mahn-trah), the yoga of sacred sounds for self-awakening. A form of mantra yoga familiar to Westerners is Transcendental Meditation.
Kundalini Yoga (pronounced koon-da-leenee), the activation of the latent spiritual energy stored in the body and raised along the spine to the head through the breath and movement.
Tantra Yoga (pronounced tahn-trah), union with all that you are, achieved by harnessing sexual energy. Although tantra yoga has become famous for some rituals that spiritualize sexuality, it is essentially a spiritual discipline of nonsexual rituals and visualizations that activate spiritual energy.
Raja Yoga (pronounced rah-jah) -- also known as royal, classical, eight-limbed, or ashtanga (not to be confused with the separate ashtanga style of yoga) -- yoga of the mind and mental mastery. In the second century B.C.E., the great Hindu sage Patanjali wrote down the principles of classical yoga in the Yoga Sutras. Patanjali describes eight steps or "limbs" known as the Tree of Yoga. These eight limbs provide ethical guidelines for living and help along the yoga path to enlightenment.
The Tree of Yoga is composed of

Yama (pronounced yah-mah), the roots of the tree, which are moral discipline and ethical restraints. These include nonviolence (ahimsa), truthfulness, freedom from avarice, chastity, and noncovetousness.
Niyama (pronounced nee-yah-mah), the trunk of the tree, which represents self-restraint and observance, including cleanliness, contentment, self-discipline, introspection or self-study, and devotion.
Asana (pronounced ah-sah-nah), the branches of the tree. It includes the postures of hatha yoga.
Pranayama (pronounced prah-nah-yah-mah), the leaves of the tree. It includes breath control for circulation of prana, or life-force energy.
Pratyahara (pronounced prah-tyah-hah-rah), the bark of the tree. It includes withdrawal of the senses for meditation.
Dharana (pronounced dah-rah-nah), the sap. It includes concentration for meditation.
Dhyana (pronounced dee-yah-nah), the flower. It includes meditation.
Samadhi (pronounced sah-mah-dhee), the fruit. It is the state of pure consciousness, or total bliss. All of the limbs of yoga lead to samadhi.

Your Yoga Practice

Whether you're nine or ninety, you can enjoy and greatly benefit from practicing yoga. Its requirements are minimal. You need only 30 to 60 minutes each day; a nonskid mat; comfortable, nonrestrictive clothing; and a small exercise space. Turn off your phone, put on the answering machine, and let your family and friends know that you're not to be disturbed during your yoga time -- unless, of course, they want to join you. You'll be able to create your own yoga weight loss home practice by following the yoga programs presented in Chapter 2, "Before You Begin"; Chapter 3, "Yoga Power Workout"; Chapter 4, "Yoga for Abdominals"; Chapter 5, "Yoga for Toning"; Chapter 6, "Gentle Yoga"; and Chapter 7, "Yoga Food."

You'll notice that the practice workouts in this book include poses that stretch the spine in six directions. In yoga there is a saying, "You're as young as your spine." If you stretch your spine in six directions during your daily practice you will be richly rewarded with a youthful, flexible, strong back and body. The six directions (and some representative postures) are