Yoga for Weight Loss?
This is the question I hear constantly ever since I started yoga. Because people who know me before can not recognise me now. Those who newly know me, they do not believe when they hear about ex me or when they see my ex photo. So they ask; you are how you are now because of yoga? It is easier to think for them to think that a magical wand turned me into. Actually all was easier for me too even I can not imagine. I will tell a little bit but everything doesn't started with yoga. Yoga is in the last 3 years of my life that I’ve started to change four years ago.
Yes, yoga helps you lose weight, and no, yoga doesn't help you lose weight.
Yes, I lost weight via yoga, those yogic approaches I’ll mention here helped me to lose weight. And no, I did not lost weight via yoga, because for that I changed my life. Yoga helped me through this way and eventually yoga itself became the way. I quit my job. I removed all those people, all habits, all my choices that created stress at my body and my soul. I cut out all those wounds clearly with a knife. I didn't go to anywhere that I did not want to go. I did not see anyone that I did not want to. During this time not only physical and mental excess, I get rid of all unnecessary stuff at home, throw away all missing, incomplete, pending, stored items from the rooms of my brain and rooms of my home. I read each source I found, I asked, I searched. Tried different techniques. I still continue to do these. Now even though I eat everything as much as I want, I keep on losing weight.
Yoga never promises you to lose specific amount of pounds in a specific time, or tightening a few centimetres in a while.
Yoga holds you a mirror. If you look at and see what you look, that may count as a first step on slimming. You may not like what you see. That doesn't matter. You do not even have to like. Only be aware of. It is what it is. You may not be ready to take a step. If so, do not force yourself, leave it there. Is not it all about those enforcements? Forcings, restrictions, limitations, deficincies, prohibitions.. All those become to a huge pool of stress that you get drown. There life turns to a torture, you suffer instead of living to be happy. There you find yourself eating to be happy. Sometimes obsessions occure for a spesific food or beverage. Mind attaches itself to one of this and as much as you consume, happiness hormones spread out at superficial layers. There is no any difference between eating chocolate when you are sad and smoking. There is no any difference between feeling hungry unless you eat meat and being a drug addict. There is no difference between saying I can not live without drinking tea or can not start a day without drinking coffee and being an alcoholic.
Be aware.
Step back and look at the mirror.
If you can not see, ask someone’s help to show you.
Unless you figure out what you see, unless that thing becomes your part, keep looking.
See that, what are you obsessed with?
Which idea that you can not leave?
What are gnawing away at the back of your mind?
See what your attachments are.
See that losing weight is an obsession.
You are what you are.
First of all know this.
You are what your mother is.
You are what your father is.
All those idee fixes are traps of your mind to run away from truths that it doesn’t want to see.
The mirror of yoga does not only shows you your face. It lightens all over your body. Have you ever listened your body, listened to what it says? Ever? Did you ever be able to notice that the body itself is clever than the mind that you assume it as free will?
Yoga practises and mediation in particular may hold the greatest opportunity to study yourself and your relationship to food and body weight. As your awareness on your body rises, your awareness on nutritioning will rise too.
Do not search answers far away, begin from the closest, the easiest place you can manipulate; your body.
Number of calories you burn on yoga mat will be your profit.
Practise yoga if it makes you happy. Not because of obligations. Not because of the fact that you’ve paid for it. Not because of the fact that you have to finish the job you’ve started.
Because of stress’s role in overeating and in the formation of fat, yoga’s proven ability to fight stress and lower cortisol levels is another aspect of its effectiveness as an aid to weight loss.
To find out how stress seized your life, look at your best friend’s life and her problems. Be sure that you have the same. You may choose to take steps together to support each other.
As you refine your ability to tune in to your bodily sensations, you may notice when you are not hungry but simply eating out of habit or emotional needs.
Differentiate. Distinguish your choices and other’s choices for you. If you are happy to live other’s choices, than change them with little touches to make them yours. Otherwise trust your own experiences most.
Meditation can help you respond differently to hunger pangs by teaching you to observe the sensation before reacting to it.
What are you really hungry for? To be loved? To be hugged? To say sorry? To forgive? To be forgiven? One or all, but believe me you are not hungry to eat.
Breathing techniques (pranayama) provides physical and mental purification. Beginning to practise yoga itself is kind of a detoxification.
It is not going to be easy. Are there anything in your life ever been easy?
Do not begin to practise to lose weight. Begin yoga to help you to begin lose weight. Begin yoga to begin to change your mindset, to begin to change your perspective.
I will be around to assist.
