Vinyasa Yoga and Why You Should Try It
If you’re looking for a style of yoga that feels more like a dance workout and less like a slow-paced and restorative practice, consider vinyasa. Vinyasa involves moving quickly from one pose to the next in a flow. As you move through postures and sequences at a faster pace, you increase your heart rate.
“The hallmark of vinyasa is the organic flow of breath and moment. It literally means ‘to move in a special way’ and that special way is with awareness,” says Jonah Kest, a Nike trainer and vinyasa and ashtanga yoga instructor.
In vinyasa flow yoga, you synch movement with every inhale and exhale. For example, you inhale during the lengthening phase or the expansion part of the pose and exhale as you move into the deeper part of the pose, according to the American Council on Exercise.
Many people refer to vinyasa as a form of ashtanga yoga, where there is one breath for each movement. Other styles of yoga, such as hatha yoga, tend to be more rigid and require you hold a pose for a few seconds before moving into another posture. But with vinyasa, the free flow is like a dance, and your breath is your partner, Kest explains.
You can expect to do traditional yoga poses and postures, such as downward-facing dog pose, plank post, upward-facing dog pose, forward fold pose, and warrior I, II, and III poses, as well as sequences that involve sun salutations, binds and twists in a vinyasa class.
Now that you know what vinyasa is about, read on to learn some of the benefits of followi[……]
