Alexandru West 
Experienced yoga practitioners or those just getting started can both benefit from exploring various types of yoga. From restorative to power yoga, there’s something to satisfy everyone.
Yin yoga involves holding passive poses for several minutes to help strengthen and increase flexibility.
Restorative Yoga
Restorative yoga is an innovative practice devoted to relaxation and healing, focused on alleviating muscle tension while creating space within the body through passive stretching. Students typically move very little during classes while holding poses for extended periods.
Class may be low-energy and restorative, featuring relaxing music and dim lighting. Props are used to support poses and minimize strain – for instance, regular forward bend poses such as Paschimottanasana can become restorative by placing a bolster behind each knee.
Restorative yoga’s soothing poses help activate the parasympathetic nervous system, providing relaxation and restoring balance to your system. This style of yoga provides important wellness benefits as today’s fast-paced world can deplete our energy reserves quickly, making it difficult to identify our needs or desires. Through restorative yoga you’ll develop self-awareness so that you can choose things which replenish rather than deplete energy stores.
Vinyasa Yoga
Vinyasa yoga emphasizes fluid movement. This fast-paced style can improve cardiovascular health while strengthening balance and increasing strength.
Vinyasa yoga derives its name from Sanskrit and means to place in a particular way. Unlike alignment-based classes, Vinyasa connects breath with movement by linking one pose after another in an endless chain, such as sun salutations sequences.
Classes usually combine standing, balancing, sitting, inverted, backbends and forward folds into their classes to develop full body strength- and flexibility training (think crow or boat poses).
Vinyasa yoga classes can be energetic, yet difficult for novice students to navigate. If this type of yoga is something new for you, make sure to listen to your body and move at a comfortable pace–you don’t want to risk injuring yourself! Additionally, use props when necessary as this will help avoid injuries in class.
Iyengar Yoga
Iyengar Yoga is a form of Hatha yoga which emphasizes precise body alignment when performing posture (asana). It uses props such as blocks, straps, bolsters and blankets to assist students in performing poses correctly.
Iyengar teachers possess in-depth knowledge of anatomy, enabling them to adapt postures for all levels and sequence classes that build skill and awareness from pose to pose.
Practice of Iyengar Yoga can strengthen and increase flexibility, promote relaxation, develop equanimity and enhance brain-body coordination, as well as increase proprioception (the sense of movement in space and time). A study revealed that people who participated in an Iyengar yoga class experienced less pain and improved function after only 6 weeks of classes1.1
Power Yoga
Power yoga is a fast-paced style of vinyasa yoga that incorporates dynamic poses. Also referred to as gym yoga, athletic yoga or hot yoga for its sweat-inducing sessions.
Power yoga classes provide an amazing workout that will leave your body feeling rejuvenated and revitalized, as well as being an effective stress reliever – making this class perfect if you struggle with high blood pressure or anxiety.
Focusing on breathing quality and aligning it with movement are the hallmarks of power yoga classes, while the stretching exercises help improve flexibility – an important asset to help avoid injuries in daily life and facilitate more comfortable movement. Furthermore, power yoga has been proven to increase sleep quality by decreasing symptoms of insomnia; try adding this exercise into your routine to experience these benefits for yourself.
