Slim Calm Sexy Yoga: 210 Proven Yoga Moves for Mind/Body Bliss

healthy—and wanted to keep them that way.
    There’s nothing mystical going on here. Practicing mindless activity leads to mindless behavior—yes, even eating. Most cardio exercise, particularly the kind you do on gym equipment, quickly becomes rote, making it supereasy for you to zone out completely and not think about how you make decisions. On the other hand, practicing a mindful activity (like yoga) leads to consciously choosing behaviors that make your body feel good.
    Another crucial factor in yoga’s pound-crushing power is that it’s proven to reduce the one thing that 43 percent of Americans say makes them overeat. That one thing? Stress.
    I’ll get into the fascinating stress-food-weight connection in much greater detail in Chapter 4, but rest assured that there’s plenty of evidence to support the idea that practicing yoga will slim you down by settling you down.
    Which leads me to …
    GUIDING BREATH
    The practice of yoga brings you back to YOU, where all the good stuff is. When you rest your attention on your breath, instead of your thinking, your creativity and intuition have room to surface.
    Try it now. Close your eyes and follow your breath for a moment and see where it leads you. When you follow your breath, your instincts kick in and help guide you to the things you need to stay healthy.

Yoga Will Make You Calmer
    Every day, people walk into the yoga studio all bottled up with stress. Every day, they walk out happy and calm. Stress will always be a part of life. There’s no way to make it disappearcompletely. (I wish!) But yoga is proven to help you handle it better. In a 2009 study published in the journal
Health Education and Behavior,
office workers who took part in a 6-week yoga and meditation program reported significantly lower stress levels and improved sleep quality. Sitting up and paying attention to your breath for 5 minutes before bedtime leads to a more restful sleep than watching reruns of
Frasier
until your eyes can’t stay open. Likewise, 5 minutes of yoga when you wake up, before you start checking your e-mail and making breakfast, sets your mind in a calm state for the day.
    And the more yoga you practice, the better your body will handle stress, which has major implications for your overall health. A groundbreaking study published in 2010 by Ohio State University scientists looked at yoga’s role in reducing inflammation. (Inflammation signals several serious health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, and osteoporosis, and is strongly influenced by stress.) Study participants were divided into two groups: yoga practitioners with at least 2 years of experience and yoga novices. Scientists gauged inflammation by measuring blood levels of several chemicals, including one called interleukin-6 (IL-6), high levels of which have been linked to chronic stress. The novices’ IL-6 levels at the beginning of the study were 41 percent higher than those of the expert yogis. What’s more, when exposed to stressful situations like immersing their feet in freezing water or solving difficult math equations, the novices produced nearly 25 percent more IL-6 than the yoga experts did. The researchers aren’t sure what aspect of practicing yoga confers the benefit but suggest that yoga is a powerful stress buster that will lead to a longer, healthier life.
    If work, family, or problems with a friend or partner are the cause of your stress, yoga can help you paint a clearer picture of what is actually going on and guide you to your best path. Yoga teaches you how to focus and pay attention to detail. You have to learn to stack your arms, legs, spine, and neck in correct alignment so you can stay balanced. You also have to maintain your attention and make adjustments so you don’t fall over. It forces you to focus on how your body and mind feel, along with how to make adjustments that optimize that feeling. This translates directly into your life off the mat. It helps you see what’s in front of you more clearly so you can act from a grounded place and make good decisions. This is called mindfulness, and you’ll hear a lot more about it later in the book. It comes into play everytime you practice yoga, and it’s a very good thing.
    TRY IT, YOU’LL LIKE IT
    Yoga is experiental. No matter how much I can try to persuade you that it works, you have to try it yourself and see what happens. The good news is that, each time you practice, you’ll feel less stressed and more