Power Yoga: Focus on Physical Fitness and Health

Power yoga is said to have been developed in the 1990s by two students of K. Pattabhi Jois, Bryan Kest and Beryl Bender Birch. Both were based on separate coasts of the US and created the style independently of each other. Though both originally studied through different yoga masters, they spend a period under the direct tutelage of Jois. They decided to try to make yoga more exercise focused and emphasize its ability to improve flexibility and strength.

Power yoga is based upon the general ideas of Ashtanga yoga, so it shares many principles with its predecessor. Unlike Ashtanga yoga, it puts the choice of asanas and sequencing in the hands of the individual teacher. It is generally vinyasa-based, meaning it is structured through a series of different poses in succession.

Ashtanga and Power Yoga require more patience, discipline and a solid foundation of fitness because they are more vigorous, fast-paced and demanding than traditional styles of yoga. There is hard work and sweat that comes with it.

It will often incorporate sun salutations as a warm up and move on to more balance-focused postures.

Power yoga teachers have gone out of their way to stress that power yoga is not merely exercise and can very easily facilitate the other seven limbs of yoga beside the “asanas”  that are the third limb: “yama”, or moral codes; “niyama”, self-purification and study; “pranayama”, or breath control; “pratyahara”, or sense control; “dharana”, or concentration; “dhyana”, or meditation; and “samadhi”, or contemplation.

Bryan Kest, for example, stresses that it is primarily about overall health, not fitness. His yoga program incorporates tips for meditation, improving mental and spiritual health, and diet advice. Books such as Beryl Bender Birch’s Beyond Power yoga: 8 Levels of Practice for Body and Soul shows ways in which students of power yoga can explore beyond its strength as a type of exercise to realize the full benefit of a yoga practise.

With it’s focus on continuous movement, vigorous vinyasas, and strength, power yoga can be viewed as an effective form of exercise and is offered in many gyms around the world. Teachers claim that a regular power yoga practise can increase flexibility, balance, core strength, and stamina. It can be considered a cardiovascular exercise.

When combined with a healthy diet, it can potentially help with weight loss and increase muscle tone. Some claim that it can increase one’s metabolism, especially when used as a supplement to regular cardiovascular exercise.

An elevated heart rate is the source of power yoga’s cardiovascular benefits. According to a 2018 study, participants’ heart rates typically stayed in the moderate-to-vigorous range throughout a 45-minute power yoga class, which is ideal for burning calories and toning muscles. A study published in the International Journal of Yoga found that practicing yoga for one hour a day for one month significantly lowered participants’ body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure.

Studies have shown that a regular ashtanga yoga practice can help keep one’s mind sharp. Due that both power and Ashtanga yoga involve intense concentration to complete many of the movements, it is natural to assume that both can help improve one’s coordination and balance.

Another study has shown that yoga can also improve a general sense of well-being and short-term memory. Again, this was not directly studying power yoga, but given its similarity to Ashtanga practices, it may have similar effects.

Yoga in general is being used as a supplementary therapeutic practice that can treat a variety of emotional and mental disorders. Some researchers have looked into the possible use of a regular yoga practice as a type of therapy for emotional or mental problems.

Studies suggest that it can be effective in reducing anxiety or depression, though the study did not look specifically at power yoga.

Power yoga does not progress at the careful pace as the more structured Ashtanga yoga, so there is a chance that students may be encouraged to complete poses their bodies are not fully prepared for. This can lead to injury. Teachers such as Larry Schultz take a priority in opening the joints before moving on to more extreme poses to reduce the dangers of injury.

Given that it is a more exercise-based and intense form of yoga, it is not recommended for people who suffer from arthritis, pregnant women, or those who are not at least somewhat fit.

Because the classes move quickly, it doesn’t hurt to have a basic familiarity with typical yoga poses and vinyasa sequences. These factors make it generally not recommended for beginners.

Updated: July 27, 2024. – This article was originally published on February 3, 2021.