How Hot Yoga Stands Up to Dr. Mercola's 3 Fitness Pillars

If you're a fan of Dr. Joe Mercola, the original alternative medicine doctor who has always been ahead of the curve on everything healthy, you'll love what he has to say now:

Dr. Mercola's 3 Fitness Pillars are an almost perfect description of what we do in Hot 26 Yoga.

It's no surprise to me. Yoga is 5000 years old. Back then, yogis didn't need doctors or scientists to confirm what they knew: yoga is healing.

About 40 years ago, when the hot 26 yoga series was developed as a healing to acute injury, those yogis knew the deeper secret: that hot yoga was a complete healing: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Yoga acknowledges the interrelationship of all aspects of a person, unlike western medicine where the focus is primarily on the physical body (allopathic medicine only relatively recently even acknowledged that emotional stress impacts physical health, and only after testing proved what yogis always knew: the emotional and the physical are not separable).

That's one reason why you just feel so darn GOOD ALL OVER, even in your mind and attitude, after a hot yoga class!

Here's what Dr. Mercola has to say about the best fitness routines; read my notes throughout about how hot yoga measures up!

By Dr. Mercola

Exercise is like medicine and is sometimes best "taken as prescribed" to optimize your health.

Whether you're a beginner, intermediate or advanced, the workout "prescription" below covers the most important variables to keep in mind when creating and performing your fitness program and to help you reap maximum results.

The Three Pillars of Fitness

Most every fitness program should include the following pillars at their base. These are the foundation that holds your program together:

1. Peak Fitness High-Intensity Interval Training: Exercising in shorter bursts with rest periods in between burns more fat than exercising less intensely for longer period. MY NOTE: In the Hot 26 yoga series, unlike hot Vinyasa Flow or just about any other hatha yoga form, we do a challenging pose, and then a Savasana rest, especially on the floor series which some consider to the "real" hot yoga poses, which the standing series is considered the "warm up."

2. Researchers believe this type of exercise works because it produces a unique metabolic response. Intermittent sprinting produces higher levels of chemical compounds called catecholamines, which stimulate more fat to be burned from under your skin and within your muscles. The resulting metabolic shift towards increased fat oxidation is thought to drive the increased weight loss. MY NOTE: Thanks for the scientific data; if you love hearing the chemical details, this is great news for you.

   The key factor that makes interval training so effective is intensity. To reap maximum results, you need to work out at maximum intensity for short intervals, with rest periods in between these spurts of activity. MY NOTE: Get into the hot pose and HOLD IT for as long as your teacher tells you and your are working your body hard at a short interval and then...Savasana.

3. Remember, to perform the Peak Fitness correctly, you'll want to raise your heart rate to your anaerobic threshold (220 minus your age), and to do that, you have to give it your all for those 30-second intervals. MY NOTE: You know how your heart is beating out of your chest after Standing Stick or Triangle, or even Eagle and of course Camel? You just worked your heart muscle.

4. Active Isolated Stretching ...means to hold each stretch for only two seconds, which works with your body's natural physiological makeup to improve circulation and increase the elasticity of muscle joints. This technique also stimulates your body to repair itself and prepare for daily activity. MY NOTE: From the time we say START, after the initial set up, most hot yoga poses are held for 10 seconds. Look at all you're getting by holding still!

5. Strength Training... can build bone density and reduce and even reverse loss of muscle mass as you age – and the more you strength train, the more muscle you will build, which will actually help you lose weight. A pound of muscle burns 10 times more calories than a pound of fat. Strength training can even help you reduce your risk of heart disease, as it helps you lose visceral fat, the most dangerous type of fat when it comes to cardiovascular health. MY NOTE: No additional weights needed in hot 26 yoga - your body itself is the "weight" you use, along with gravity, for your strength training.

So - what have you noticed about your body, mind, and attitude since you started practicing hot yoga? COMMENT HERE!