Can This Ancient Practice Help YOU To Lose Weight?
I believe yoga is valuable for weight loss as it should help you to be more aware of your body. It will help you to be more ‘in touch’ with what you’re thinking and feeling because it helps us to slow down. Namely, our brain waves. In our everyday mind, we function in what is called the Beta state. When we are stressed, we function at high Beta, where our thoughts become very fast and disorganized.
Learning how to change your brain waves is a vital and overlooked skill that is developed through Meditation. Here is one of the best resources I’ve found to learn this ancient skill.
Over time, this leads to dis-regulation of important bodily functions like our digestion and immune systems. We start feeling like we’re living on a hamster wheel. And we start thinking and behaving in very habitual ways.
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Change Your Brain Waves Through Yoga And ‘Wake Up’
We often eat more than we want. Or we’re eating things that aren’t really that health we’re doing that out of habit. And when we’re in habitual states of mind and body, often our thought processes are really fast, aka high Beta. They stream into one another. We fall asleep at the wheel and have lost touch with our hunger and fullness cues.
So yoga can help us to ‘wake up’, an to help regulate our eating. This also can lead to other behaviours that help us to manage our overall health. Maybe we start to have more confidence to take up other healthy activities like strength train (hint hint). Maybe we start running or dancing or hiking.
Because the cool thing is when you do something that feels that great, you want more of that. You develop the agency to choose, instead of being in default of your old self.
Be aware that this yoga isn’t a quick fix regarding weight loss. It’s a more gradual but lasting one if you approach it in a balanced way. And it has to be regular – preferably every day with enthusiasm and even when you don’t feel like it. In fact, you’ll be surprised to discover that it was those days when you don’t feel like practising, you get the most out of it. This re-wiring your brain via neuroplasticity. So with your yoga practice, start to explore different ways of eating – maybe one where you don’t restrict yourself so much, you’re more mindful of portion control and you develop gratitude for your beautiful body, because our bodies do so much for us and it can do things we never thought it could with a regular practice.
And that’s when we start to feel whole, instead of using food to fill that emptiness.
