Yoga Health Secrets

 Yoga for obesity and weight loss

Remember your head while you are doing the SIDESLIP POSTURE. It should bend the same way as your arms, which you should, throughout the movement, try to press backwards as far as possible to avoid any possible sagging forward of your body.

This asana is one of the finest in the entire Yoga range for slimming the waist and reducing that pad of fat which often settles on top of the hipbones. You will feel a powerful stretch from your hips to your armpits and if you do this exercise correctly you will feel rather sore in the region of your hip joints the next day. This is normal and it will prove to you that this Yoga exercise has already begun to work for you. While one side of your body is being stretched the other side is being powerfully contracted. You can feel it squeezing the fatty tissue. It also imparts a healthy massage to the organs and muscles of the abdomen and helps the torso towards a new suppleness and grace.

When you can perform the SIDESLIP POSTURE at a moderate speed and with some degree of muscular control, then try to slow down the whole process so that it becomes a study in slow and gentle motion. This calls for a much higher degree of muscular control and thus the benefits of the posture are greatly enhanced. When you have perfected your movements in slow motion regulate your deep breathing so that you lean to one side while inhaling and to the other while exhaling. Rhythm and slow motion are the final keywords in this exercise.

In its perfect form the Sideslip Posture should be as follows. Lean to the right while inhaling. Remain immobile as you complete your inhalation and hold your breath for as long as possible. When the impulse to exhale appears do so as you raise your body off the floor and swing it to the other side. Remain immobile as you complete your exhalation and remain holding your breath for as long as possible before inhaling again. This constitutes one round. Perform up to a dozen rounds a day, starting with four and adding two rounds per week.

Like the Sideslip Posture this next exercise is not so easy as it looks. It is called AROHANASANA or in English THE RAISED HEAD AND LEGS POSTURE. This asana wages war on that bulging abdomen.

1. Lie flat on your back with your legs outstretched and your feet together. Lace your fingers together and place them at the back of your head just above your neck.

2. Inhale very slowly and deeply and at the same time raise your head, shoulders, and legs off the floor remembering to keep your knees straight. Hold this position until you have completed your inhalation. I have demonstrated the correct position in figure 36, page 111.

3. After holding your breath for a few seconds very slowly return to the original position.

These instructions are simplicity itself and even the photograph of me lying with my head, shoulders and legs raised can give you little idea of the sheer muscular effort involved in holding them that way. But try it for yourself. Those two words *very slowly’, in connection with the lowering of the legs will catch most of you out at first. You will want to plop your legs down on the floor in a great rush, but try as hard as you can to resist this impulse. It is the easy way out and you will gain nothing from employing it. You want to reduce that abdomen don’t you ? Then do please remember that there is no hurry at all in this exercise, and the slow s-l-o-w lowering of the legs is precisely what strengthens, tones, exercises, and reduces those flabby abdominal muscles and helps to reduce fat in this area.

This is an exercise that requires a lot of patient practice before you can perform it perfectly. As it is a strenuous posture do not do it more than twice a day for the first few days and after that very gradually increase the number of times you do it up to six.