This is a type of yoga that is a combination of yoga poses and cardio exercises. The reason cardio yoga is becoming more popular because this exercise challenges you to take yoga asanas to another level by including cardio exercises.
Cardio yoga not only makes you feel relaxed but also pushes you to do some intensive exercises.
Therefore, today we will discuss some amazing benefits of cardio yoga. You can also gain the benefits of cardio yoga by practising some of the cardio yoga we will discuss today in this blog. Before we dig into the benefits of cardio yoga, let’s understand cardio yoga first.
Cardio yoga is inspired by Indian philosophy based on yoga asanas. In Indian, yoga is a mean to meditation practice, relieve anxiety, improving breathing techniques, and focus on asanas. This not only helps you to get rid of stress, anxiety but helps you to achieve overall health.
One of the popular types of yoga is Hatha Yoga. It is a really helpful yoga asana to learn physical postures, breathing techniques and body flow. However, these yoga asanas are great, but these yoga asanas do not include cardio exercises.
When you practise cardio yoga, this requires practising movements that are inspired by yoga asanas. And you need to practise it faster and continuously compared to yoga asanas.
Cardio yoga requires more muscle engagement than normal yoga asanas.
The intensity of cardio yoga is more, and therefore your heart rate increases while practising cardio yoga.
Cardio Yoga that You Can Practice at Home:
Surya Namaskar is also known as Sun Salutation that includes non-stop postures that require no break.
And you start Surya Namaskar step by step:
1. Samasthiti: You need to stand on your feet keep it together, and then you need to roll backwards while your chin is parallel to the floor. Your hand will also go backwards while rolling your back.
2. Urdhva Hastasana: In this, you need to raise your arms above your head, and while doing this your knees should be bent slightly. You need to look at the thumbs after bringing your palms together.
3. Uttanasana: In this, you need to bend forward, and your legs should be straight while doing this. Your hands will also come downwards.
4. Urdvah uttanasana: In this, you need to inhale and open your shoulder to lengthen your spine.
5. Chaturanga dandasana: In this, you need to first exhale and then jump backwards and keep your feet parallel to each other and make sure your knees are not touching the floor. Your elbows should be tucked into your side, and you need to hold the body with the help of your arm strength.
6. Urdhva Mukha svanasana: In this pose, you need to lift your upper half off the ground while you are lying on your stomach with the help of your shoulders. Your knees should be on the ground and you need to lift the chest area.
7. Adho mukha svanasana: In this pose, you need to make a triangle like shape with your body. And for this, you need to lift your hip towards the sky. While doing this, you need to balance your body with the help of your arms and legs.
8. Urdhva uttanasana: This requires bending forward while your feet are together. In this, you need to open your shoulder and look front while lengthening the spine.
9. Uttanasana: In this process, you need to fold the upper half of your body with the lower half of your body. You need to relax your neck while holding your legs.
10. Urdhva hastasana: In this you need to raise your arms towards the sky, keeping your palms together and straight.
11. Samasthiti: This pose is similar to step one and in this, you need to stretch your body and raise your hands in towards the sky. You need to stretch your body while holding the weight on your toes.
This is the entire routine of Surya Namaskar can take 20 minutes max and while practising this you do not have to take a rest, you need to do all the 11 poses continuously.
Other Yoga Asanas Are:
1. Leg Lift pigeon sequence.
2. Walk downs.
3. Child pose push up.
You can practice these yoga asanas 10 to 15 times. Also, if you want to add more exercises, then you can also do air squats, jumping jacks, and some stationary lunges so that your heart rate remains elevated and you burn more calories.
What are the Benefits of Cardio Yoga?
1. Cardio yoga is also a great way to reduce stress.
2. When you practice cardio yoga, your heart rate remains elevated, which helps to improve your heart health and also helps to remove toxins from the system.
3. If you want to get rid of excess fat and want to burn more calories, cardio yoga is a great option for you. Also, you do not need to travel somewhere you can practice it at home.
4. It is also good for brain health because when you exercise your brain gets more oxygen supply.
5. Cardio yoga is also great to enhance lung heath because this requires better control over your breath, and practising cardio yoga is awesome to enhance your lungs’ capacity.