How intense is yoga practice?  How does it compare to other forms of exercise?  Yoga is much more than just a physical practice, but it’s an interesting question all the same.

There’s been a few interesting studies that have looked to measure the physical intensity of yoga. We’ve summarised some of the best ones.

Sequences, such as surya namaskar (performed for longer than 10 minutes), definitely gives the heart enough of a work out to improve cardio-respiratory fitness (Hagins et al., 2007).

In another study 40 healthy 12-15 year-old boys performing yoga for one year, significantly improved body weight, cardiovascular endurance and anaerobic power compared to another group doing their usual activity (Bera & Rajapurkar, 1993).  They got leaner, fitter and able to handle high intensity exercise with more ease.

Yoga has been shown to have a positive impact on cholesterol and fasting plasma glucose (Bijlani et al., 2005), as well as reducing the circumference of limbs (Khatri et al., 2007) – so yoga can reduce your risk of heart disease, diabetes and make your legs skinnier!

Yogis use oxygen more effectively.  A study by (Spicuzza et al., 2000) showed that 10 yogis had more oxygen delivered to tissues during slow breathing than 12 people with no yoga experience.

Finally a study comparing the cardiovascular fitness of 60 athletes, yogis and sedentary folks found similar fitness for the yogis and athletes, which were significantly higher compared to the non-exercisers (Prakash et al., 2007).

So in conclusion, on a purely physical level yoga compares well with other forms of exercise. Future newsletters will explore the psychological, hormonal, health benefits and spiritual influences of yoga.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this article.  Please share this information with fellow teachers and students.

Please come and visit us at NZ’s first yoga supplier www.yogasupplies.co.nz  for gear to practice and learn yoga with.