Skimming the class schedule at your gym for a good yoga class can be a real exercise in confusion. How can you tell the difference between Anusara and Ashtanga? Or hot yoga and hatha? Below is a cheat sheet to the many different styles of yoga being taught today. May it help you find your way to a class you love.
High-intensity interval training HIIT continues to grow in popularity, but the high impact workout can often lead to stiffness and tight muscles, making it more important than ever to factor some restorative exercise into your routine. Yoga is very versatile — but there are many different styles of practice that could confuse a beginner. To make it even more complicated, many studios and instructors teach their own signature styles. To help us through the maze, Chris Magee, head of yoga at Another Space, talked us through a few of the many variations of yoga and and what they’re likely to mean on a timetable. If you’re looking to strike a balance in your training regime, or are simply interested in taking up yoga, here are some of the most popular variations you may come across.
Vinyasa is a style of yoga characterized by stringing postures together so that you move from one to another, seamlessly, using breath. Vinyasa classes offer a variety of postures and no two classes are ever alike. The variable nature of Vinyasa Yoga helps to develop a more balanced body as well as prevent repetitive motion injuries that can happen if you are always doing the same thing every day. As a philosophy, Vinyasa recognizes the temporary nature of things. We enter into a posture, are there for a while and then leave. While Vinyasa, or Vinyasa-Krama, dates back to the Vedic age—the earliest period of yoga thousands of years ago—it referred to a series, or sequence of steps, to make something sacred. While Vinyasa Yoga is one of the most popular forms of the practice in the world today, it is not well understood. As with many things in yoga, the definition is dependent on the context and on who you ask. Below are the more common definitions.