Eight Most Popular Styles Of Yoga That Have Taken The World By Storm!

Every year on 21 June we celebrate International Day of Yoga. More and more people are recognising the benefits of yoga. People from far off, as far as from the other side of the globe, visit India to learn yoga and heal themselves. With the wide outreach of yoga to different corners of the world, it is embracing within itself different forms invented by people as per their convenience. Yoga in this sense is a very flexible discipline.

SheThePeople.TV lists eight forms of yoga that everyone should know…

Ashtanga Yoga

Ashtanga means “eight limbs” and encompasses a yogic lifestyle. Most people identify Ashtanga as traditional Indian yoga. Like Vinyasa Yoga, the Ashtanga Yoga asanas (postures) synchronise breath with movement as you move through a series of postures.

It requires immense physical work and one should not do Ashtanga Yoga if they are only a beginner.

Vinayasa Yoga

According to Doyouyoga, Vinyasa Yoga is popular and is taught at most studios and gyms. Vinyasa means linking breath with movement. The postures are usually done in a flowing sequence.

In Vinyasa Yoga classes, students coordinate movement with breath to flow from one pose to the next. Ashtanga, Baptiste Yoga, Jivamukti, Power Yoga, and Prana Flow could all be considered Vinyasa Yoga. Vinyasa is also the term used to describe a specific sequence of poses.

Iyengar Yoga

B.K.S. Iyengar was the founder of Iyengar Yoga. It works for those who have joint problems. It focuses on correct alignment of the body and precise moves. One needs to practice the holding of breath along with holding of the asanas for complete effect.

Bikram Yoga

Bikram Yoga is a hot system of modern yoga that Bikram Choudhury synthesised from traditional Hatha Yoga techniques. It became popular in the early 1970s. All Bikram Yoga beginning series classes run for 90 minutes and consist of the same series of 26 postures, including two breathing exercises.

Bikram Yoga is a trending yoga style. Room temperature is kept at 35–42 °C (95–108 °F) with a humidity of 40%.

Read Also : Five Astonishing Yoga Records By Women

Power Yoga

According to yoga journal, Power Yoga is a fitness-based vinyasa practice. An offshoot of Ashtanga Yoga, it has many of the same qualities and benefits, including building internal heat, increased stamina, as well as stress reduction. Teachers design their own sequences, while students synchronise their breath with their movement.

Sivananda Yoga

Sivananda Yoga is a proprietary, hierarchical yoga system founded by Swami Vishnudevananda.

Sivananda Yoga identifies a group of twelve āsanas as basic. The twelve asanas in the Sivananda Yoga system follow a precise order, allowing for a systematic balanced engagement of every major part of the body.

The five points of yoga are Proper Exercise (āsana), Proper Breathing (prāṇāyāma), Proper Relaxation (śavāsana), Proper Diet and Positive Thinking (vedānta) and Meditation (dhyāna).

 Jivamukti Yoga

Jivamukti Yoga is a path to enlightenment through compassion for all beings.

Citing Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, which states that asana should be sthira and sukham, Jivamukti Yoga maintains that one’s relationship to others (asana) should be mutually beneficial and come from a consistent (sthira) place of joy and happiness (sukham).

Kundalini Yoga

Kundalini Yoga is physically demanding and mentally challenging. It involves meditation, chanting, mudras and breathing exercises. The focus is to release kundalini energy in the lower spine.

It requires one to perform fast moving postures with periods of relaxation in between. In those moments one focuses on their internal sensations so that one can tap into their kundalini-shakti.

Read Also : Five Celebrities For Whom Yoga Is The Key To Fitness

Snigdha Gupta is an intern with SheThePeople.Tv