Count Breaths Not Calories

I don’t like to use the concepts of weight loss and yoga in the same sentence. Yet I’m noticing that gentle yoga has changed many of my students’ relationship with their body from being at war to being at peace and as a result, pounds are lost.

While it makes sense that a vigorous hot yoga class would lead to weight loss, most wouldn’t expect the same in gentle yoga. Burning150 calories per hour of gentle yoga hardly seems like a big deal, but it’s what happens off the mat that creates change.

The 75 minutes spent in a yoga class creates a template for how to live in your body. You have an opportunity to pause, use your breath, and respond – not react – to sensations. This dynamic of slowing down translates into more mindfulness around food choices, or honoring the body with rest rather than piling on more work.

In yoga we learn to listen to the needs of the body, not just around food, but the desires for rest, peace, and the removal of stimulation. Honoring these requirements feeds the body in ways that food never could.

There are vast differences between the settings of a yoga studio and a weight loss office:

·      We don’t have mirrors, and are never weighed or measured.

·      Our emphasis is on how you feel in a pose from the inside. Standing in a Warrior II pose, we feel authentically powerful, and that is far more important than how we look in our yoga pants.

·      We don’t count calories; we are invited the witness how nourishing the breath can be when experienced fully.

·      We don’t rush to meet a weight or size goal – rather we cultivate the fine art of patience by staying in a pose when we may want to leave, or continually returning to the breath when the mind wants to run the show.

·      We don’t take before/after pictures; we invite you into loving the essence of who you are and the gift of a body that can bend, flow and exhibit strength.

·      We don’t subtract, we add; you’re encouraged to feel the fullness of your breath, your grateful thoughts, and your progress.

·      We don’t ask you to measure your food, but you might notice that yoga unlocks feelings that you’ve been suppressing with emotional eating.

·      We don’t suggest removing gluten, dairy or sugar, but you may find your internal organs working more optimally to cleanse toxins as a result of twisting poses that literally wring out your liver, kidneys and more.

·      We don’t ask you to busy your mind by keeping a food journal, but rather to quiet your mind to allow the body’s voice to be heard.

With all that we’re not doing to focus on weight loss, we still achieve it. I’ve suspected this for years, and now we have evidence from researcher Alan Kristal. As an article at Prevention.com explains, “In Kristal's study of more than 15,000 adults in their 50s, overweight people who did yoga at least once a week for 4 or more years lost an average of 5 pounds, while those who didn't practice packed on an average of 13.5—a difference of nearly 20 pounds. Additionally, yogis who started at a healthy weight were more likely to maintain their weight than those who never unrolled a mat.”

Count breaths, not calories, and see what changes.