Strong Men Do Yoga

Strength training can be of enormous benefit to anyone pursuing a fitness regime, but unfortunately most men in the gym are not working on any sort of pre or post-workout mobility/flexibility session. Yoga is beneficial because it requires one to focus on the task at hand. 
When we train this capacity of the mind, we are learning to cultivate the space we need to make conscious decisions about how we spend our time.
 It is in this space that we can bring all of our experiences, education and inner wisdom to the moment.
 The more focus, the more one is truly present and therefore the greater the capacity for excellence. Yoga exercises, meditation, and postures also improve your balance, strength, and overall flexibility, making you more capable of pursuing a balanced fitness regimen.

5 benefits of including yoga into your strength training: 

Yoga Benefit #1: Decompression
In order to keep your connective and supportive tissues healthy, decompression is essential. Tension in these areas restricts crucial blood flow, reducing the rate of healing and nutrient delivery. We want our soft tissues to remain just that, soft. The pressure of strength training introduces retain forces some part within your soft tissues. An equal but opposing force will release that tension. 

Yoga Benefit #2: Change of Scenery 
The repetitive nature of strength training can lead to some boredom with the practice. Yoga is normally practiced in a group-training environment that is completely different from your normal lifting routine. This change in setting can keep your routine fresh!

Yoga Benefit #3: Alignment Practice
There are no barbells lifted in a Yoga class. All you need is your body. Sometimes we can get so involved in our heavy weights that any body weight movements seem like a waste of time and energy. However, the postures visited in a typical yoga class all work on fundamental alignment and engagement that is essential to strength training.

Yoga Benefit #4: Brain Day
We’ve got a separate day for all the parts of the body when it comes to strength training. Seemingly absent from that list is brain day. We don’t get the term meatheads from having buff brains. Instead, it is our lack of focus on mental and emotional development that makes folks think we’re just a big hunk of meat with two eyes. We’ve all got a soft side, whether you want to admit it or not!

Yoga Benefit #5: Cleansing
When done right, strength training has some residual damage in your muscular system that repairs over the passing days after the session. Removing the resulting damaged tissue takes time, but this process is sped up with a faster flow of fluids through your body.

Some Yoga classes are in a heated environment that encourages profuse sweating. The heated environment helps with mobilizing soft tissues, allowing you to get deeper into the poses. It also makes you sweat buckets! Seriously, you’ll be left in a pool of sweat from just an hour of Yoga, so be sure to bring a towel! 

Try Yoga at Sana Vita Studio!
We offer group classes and private yoga instruction!
First time private instruction offer 2 Private Sessions for $110! 

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 More Reasons For Pregnant Women To Hit The Yoga Mat

We already know there are a ton of benefits to practicing yoga during pregnancy — from easing lower back pain to decreasing the risk of preterm birth. But how advanced can a pregnant woman really get with her poses?
According to a new study published in the journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, even the seemingly more exotic yoga poses are actually perfectly safe for both pregnant mamas and their little ones.
 
Previously, many expecting moms have been discouraged from doing certain poses later in pregnancy, like downward-facing dog, happy baby pose and corpse pose. But there have been few scientific studies that have looked into what's actually safe.

So a team of researchers decided to follow a group of 25 healthy women in their third trimesters. Some of the participants regularly practiced yoga, while others were complete novices.
In the study, the women performed a wide range of 26 poses — from one-legged balances to downward-facing dog. The only poses they were told to avoid were inversions like headstands and anything that meant lying on their bellies (for obvious reasons). Meanwhile, the researchers monitored vital signs, like the woman's blood pressure and the baby's heart rate.

The result? Every position was found to be safe — there was no decrease in fetal movement, no contractions, no decrease in any of the vital signs (for either mama or infant), and in a follow-up, no one reported leakage or vaginal bleeding. Plus, there were zero falls or injures. "This is preliminary information, but I think it's exciting and reassuring to know there were no adverse changes for both mom or baby," Dr. Rachael Polis, the study's lead researcher told NPR. In other words: As long as your pregnancy is low-risk and you aren't, say, attempting headstands during hot yoga sessions, feel free to hit the mat, mamas!

Enjoy more yoga with our November Special of 3 Yoga Classes for $30!
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Bring a Friend for Free in March

BRING A *FRIEND FOR FREE DURING THE MONTH OF MARCH! 
Exercising with a friend offers many benefits:
Friends hold each other accountable. Fewer skipped workouts mean you maintain and reach your fitness goals.

You will push yourself further. Working out with a friend pushes you to do the exercise and do it to the best of your ability. You are more willing to try something new. Friends provide the confidence boost to try new classes and enjoy the new experience together. Have your friend REGISTER HERE and select FREE SPRING FRIEND. Get fit and healthy together!

* Free Friend must be a new client to Sana Vita Studio. This offer is not valid with any other deal or a client registered under Class Pass. One class only and valid for Pilates Equipment, Pilates Mat, Power Yoga, Yin Yoga, and Yamuna Body Rolling.

New Classes - based on your feedback!

Monday's 7:00PM Pilates Mat with Kara
Thursday's 7:30PM Pilates Mat with Annette
Sunday's 7:00PM Candlelight Yin Yoga with Deanna
Sign up today!

Spring is almost here!
Stay motivated with a friend!

Heart Happiness with Yoga

February is American Heart Month.  Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. The month of February is dedicated to raising awareness about heart disease and increasing knowledge about prevention.  Yoga can be used to improve heart health as a preventive measure. We offer Power Yoga, Yin Yoga, and Pre-Natal Yoga at Sana Vita Studio and for American Heart Month we have a wonderful Special of 3 Yoga Classes for $30!  

Why yoga?

Yoga Helps Beat Stress: When you encounter a stressful situation, the brain releases adrenaline into your system to help you either fight or flee the threat. This causes your heart to beat faster and your blood pressure increases.  While this response can help you protect yourself when facing a threat, living in a constant state of stress may wreak havoc on your cardiovascular system. According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, people who are prone to stress have a higher risk for heart disease than their calmer counterparts.“What we want is a nervous system that reacts to stressful situations when they happen, but then shifts back to relaxation,” Yoga may help by dampening your body’s reaction to stress. 

Yoga reduces inflammation:  Learning to relax through yoga may help decrease stress-related inflammation. A 2010 study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine showed that when individuals who practiced yoga regularly were exposed to a stressor, they had less of a blood compound linked to inflammation than novice practitioners.

Yoga may lower blood pressure:  According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, long-term high blood pressure can weaken your heart and damage blood vessel walls, causing plaque to build up and potentially narrow or block arteries. This is a leading cause of heart attack and stroke.

While poor diet and lack of exercise are major risk factors, “we know there’s an element of stress involved in high blood pressure,” says McCall. A 2012 review published in the journal Holistic Nursing Practice suggests that yoga practice may be an effective treatment for high blood pressure because of its ability to decrease the body’s response to stress.

Yoga promotes physical activity:  People who are physically inactive are twice as likely to be at risk for heart disease as those who do exercise, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Yoga improves strength and flexibility, which contributes to cardiovascular health. 

Thinking prevention? As part of an overall healthy lifestyle, yoga can help lower blood pressure, increase lung capacity, improve respiratory function and heart rate, and boost circulation and muscle tone. It can also improve your overall well-being while offering strength-building benefits.  You may see benefits right away. After your first yoga class, your blood pressure will likely be lower, you’ll be relaxed and you’ll feel better!

Enjoy yoga at Sana Vita Studio with our February Special of 3 Yoga Classes for $30!
SIGN UP now and your heart will thank you for it!


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Hot Yoga Isn't so Hot for your Health

 The "Hot Exercise" craze can be found everywhere from Yoga to Pilates classes.   However, do the high temperatures and sweat live up to the hype? According to recent research all that sweat might just be a lot of hot air.  Cedric Bryant, chief science officer for the American Council on Exercise said that the benefits of heat are largely perceptual. “People think that the degree of sweat is the quality of the workout, but that is not the reality. It does not correlate to burning calories”. A study in 2013 conducted by the University of Wisconsin concluded that the effort required to do a Bikram-style yoga class was all but identical to that required to do a normal yoga class (the exercise intensity was on average around 56 to 57% of maximal heart rate, which would classify both as “light exercise not dissimilar to a light walk).  Some experts say that it only serves to raise heart rate and blood pressure which for some people will be a lethal cocktail.


Why are so many people under the guise that Hot Yoga has such great benefits?  Many tout that in the extreme heat the increased sweat aides in detoxifying your body.  In reality there is no evidence that sweat aides in detoxification.  Sweat comprises mainly water with some electrolytes. It’s the liver and kidneys that filter out the toxins, not the sweat glands. Research by the University of California found sweating eliminates less than 1% of toxic metals expelled by the body, so clearly sweating is by no means the most important.  It’s safe to conclude that sweat is just that, sweat, and nothing else. 

Others in support of Hot Yoga also express that they can stretch and go further within a posture  with the increased heat. Even though its may seem that there is a benefit to this heightened range of motion this actually endangers the body. The extreme heat makes the muscles flaccid and limp, and then the movement of the exercises hyperextend the joint beyond its normal range of motion. This stretches the tendons and ligaments, instead of lengthening the muscle. This creates instability and weakness in the joint. As a result the muscles have to over overcompensate to do the job that the tendons and ligaments would normally do. The body becomes bendy, but not truly open and flexible and strong.

 Another essential element to the practice of yoga is the breath.  In the ancient text, Hatha Yoga Pradipika, it is said, ‘the mind is the king of the body, and the breath is the king of the mind.’ So the breath is the master that controls everything – the body and the mind.  However, if you are doing postures in high heat, then the density and atmosphere of the environment will make the breathing techniques used in Yoga asanas impossible.

The benefits of a traditional yoga practice have been recognized for thousands of years all over the world, and the direct health benefits of yoga practice have been well documented and repeatedly recognized by American and global medical communities. From the Traditional  side of the argument many great yoga masters claim that Hot Yoga drains your adrenals and kidneys.  In Chinese medicine it is called your ‘Jing’ energy. You are born with this energy, and when you burn it up it is very difficult to get it back. When you drain it you get more paranoia, impaired energy level and quality. Actual Yoga is said to build this energy very slowly over years and years. 

At Sana Vita Studio we offer a yoga practice in a comfortably warm space that provides a safe and welcoming environment. “Yoga students should experience a peaceful, serene, non-competitive, introspective, reflective, embodied practice that unifies the body with the mind and the spirit. The practice is about listening to one’s self and understanding one’s own personal task.”  It is in this space that we begin to reveal our humanity and embody our passion to make a difference, to lead with excellence.

See our Schedule for Yoga Classes and join us for a wonderful yoga practice.




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