“Ever since one particularly clenched day of columnizing years ago, when I found myself curled up on the floor of my house davening, I’ve tried various remedies for the ravages of stress: better nutrition, caramels, gym, green tea Popsicles, kavakava, kale, kombucha, cupcakes, chocolate, chardonnay — sometimes in concurrent combinations.
The one that works best is yoga.”
Says the longstanding New York Times Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd in her latest column on Times science writer William Broad’s new book, “The Science of Yoga: The Myths and the Rewards.”
In the book Broad who “made his name reporting about space weapons and biological warfare” and is a practicing yogi for over 4 decades, tackles subjects ranging from yoga making you fat, injured and insane to the benefits of better sex and the elusive yogasm. Not to mention how Greta Garbo taught Hollywood how to stand on their heads.
Needless to say we’re intrigued, horrified and teased all at once.You can preorder it now, but the book will be released February 7, 2011. We’ll just have to risk it til then! Hand us the cupcakes and chardonnay. Oh and the yoga, yes of course.
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Earlier…
So someone is suggesting that yoga makes you fat? That certainly doesn’t tally with my experience.
I went from 6’1″ and 235 lbs. at age 47 to 192 lbs. at age 59 through an ordinary moderate hatha practice. Oh well. That’s only one person’s experience, but I think most of us long term practitioners are going to require a great deal of convincing before we will believe that yoga makes you fat.
The hard and fast yoga practices could raise your cortisol levels (instead of relax you), while at the same time, without being sufficiently aerobic to raise your heart rate and counteract this undesirable stress-effect, thus producing fat in the abdominal regions. This is a less healthy and desirable place for it to be. In addition, such hard vinyasa may not sufficiently work the largest muscles in the body—which is the lower body.
You are right in pursuing a moderate practice (you also must have changed your eating habits due to desirable parasympatheic effects …) …
Great choice.
Btw, I am a vinyasa student – a relatively soft style of vinyasa with mixed influences … I have maintained my weight for well over a year after lost 85 then gaining about 10 back …