A heart for hot yoga this Valentine's Day

There's no better day than Valentine's Day to thank that little miracle muscle known as your heart.

Resilient and strong, yet sensitive, registering everything you feel.

Thanks to Amy Accardo, who created the above video presentation on Hot Yoga and the Heart (Amy is also our newest hot yoga teacher at Riverflow Yoga), you can take a look into your heart, and how hot yoga heals that little powerhouse.

Look again and you'll see how hot yoga gets to the heart of you.

Consider this...You're in hot yoga and your heart suddently starts pounding. The hot yoga teacher tells you that's a good thing, especially after Balancing Stick pose. ("Can't catch your breath? You're doing it right")  It feels llittle panicky, but also somewhat satisfying, like something just got released.

Or how about after Camel pose; you burst into tears, while woman beside you is laughing. Where'd that come from? Or in Standing Separate Leg Forehead to Knee, you suddenly feel a bit claustrophobic and flash: you're seven years old and lost in the supermarket.

And finally, during Final Savasana, your hearbeat calms to a soft swooshing rather than its usual pounding and you feel like you just found the Mothership. It actually feels like the floor is coming up to meet your body, and you no longer have to hold yourself up. You're home.

Ever wonder if Hot Yoga is doing something more to your heart?

Yes, the heart is a  physical muscle and like all muscles, exercise - especially hot yoga - does it good. In hot yoga, it's more than just the heart that gets a workout: it's the complete heart-healthy support system including the veins and arteries that  get stretched, squeezed, and flushed; the lungs that supply oxygen to the heart that get expanded; the mind that controls the heart that gets relaxed.

Hot yoga's 26-poses and 105 degree heat both increase your body's demand for oxygen, meaning your heart works harder to pump blood to your muscles in the heat of hot yoga. And that builds the heart muscle on an even deeper level. Thus, with a three-times-a week hot yoga practice, your heart becomes super-heart: efficient at distributing blood, resulting in a lower resting heart rate and greater capacity for exercise performance.

Maximum Healthy Heart Rate in Hot Yoga

People who say that you hot yoga isn't aerobic.... haven't done hot yoga.

Have you see the Heart Chart in our studio  reception room? Amy Kyle, our original Amy hot yoga teacher, actually monitored her heart rate over the course of many hot yoga classes and created a chart showing the average increase/decrease in heart rate throughout the 26 poses.

Notice how in the standing series, the heart rate builds consistently. In the first floor savasana, heart rate drops dramatically. In the floor series, the heart rate builds again, and then Final Savasana and the final drop down to a slower pace. Quite a challenge of extremes for that little heart muscle. And exercise physiologists now agree that "short sprint" exercising - short periods of intense activity followed by periods of relaxation - is what builds bodies best, including muscles, including the heart muscle.

So those exercise guys agree with what hot yoga has said for the past 40 years.

Whats the best pace for your heart to go pitter-pat? Target exercise heart rate varies based on fitness and age. According to the American Heart Association, you can roughly estimate your maximum safe heart rate by subtracting your age from the number 220; for example, the average 50 year old person's maximum safe heart rate is about 170 beats per minute.

Your Heatin' Heart

Does the intense heat of hot yoga add to your heart health?

Hell, yes.

Performing the hot yoga  poses in a high temperature gives you an excellent cardiovascular workout, which will make your heart more resistant to diseases. Additionally, it can boost your immune system, raising T-cell levels.

In fact, the benefits of exercising in the heat, originally made popular by hot yoga, has been shown to be so beneficial that other exercise forms are adding high heat to their routines; you can find Hot Spin Class, Hot Cycling and Hot Training for Triatheletes. Heat is hot when it comes to exercise.

What does your heart say?

There's a reason why the heart is considered the emotional center of your being; the heart chakra is considered to store all your deep feelings of love or lack thereof.

Working your physical heart opens the heart chakra. The emotional heart gets a workout in hot yoga, as much as the physical heart.

We spend a lot of time "hiding" our emotions. You can literally see people protecting their hearts with a rround-shouldered, concave chest, rounded upper back posture.

The poses of hot yoga move you in the opposite direction: you'll hear things like, "shoulders back," "lift from your breastbone," chin up/chest up." These physical movements of hot yoga are "opening" the heart chakra.

What comes pouring out once the heart chakra opens may just take your breath away.

If you feel like crying. sighing, sobbing, laughing - you are having a heart-opening, eye-opening experience in hot yoga. Don't shit your eyes and go away at that point; this is the point of hot yoga. Go for it. Feel what you're feeliog without holding back.

Riverflow's hot yoga room is a safe house, where all your reactions and emotions are welcome. No one will judge. No one will even look twice. In fact, no one can tell the difference between tears and sweat, sighs and sounds of deep breathing.

And as your teacher, when we see your heart open, we feel honored.

So, this Valentine's Day, intend a heart opening, heart strengthening, heart softening experience in hot yoga. Treat yourself to hot yoga with heart; you deserve it.