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Benefits of Cardiovascular Exercise and Yoga

This is a modern term for a workout regimen that has come to replace aerobics. Before going into how much cardio you must practice, you should be aware of the importance of cardio. Cardio means cardiovascular exercise. In short this means any exercise that benefits your heart. The focus is particularly on activities which raise your heart rate to a level where you work out, but are still able to talk. Originally, cardio was restricted to aerobic training; however, modern day research has discovered that even weight training benefits the heart.

Some of the benefits of cardio are as follows:

• Helps burn calories and lose weight
• Strengthens the heart muscles
• Increases overall lung capacity
• Brings down high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol and risk of heart attack
• Is an excellent stress buster
• Improves sleep
• Makes the practitioner feel good and healthy

What is Yoga?

Yoga is an eightfold path consisting of the following steps

1. Yamas (restraints)
2. Niyamas (observances)
3. Asana (yoga exercises and postures)
4. Pranayama (breathing exercises)
5. Pratyahara ( inward withdrawal of the senses)
6. Dharana (concentration)
7. Dhyana (meditation) and
8. Samadhi (a state of super-consciousness)

What is popularly known as Yoga, nowadays, mostly concerns itself with steps 3 & 4; the exercises, poses and breathing techniques. Yoga is however a lot more than that. Even as far as physical culture goes, Yoga is a holistic science and art of toning up the body, the internal organs and muscles with a view not just to developing a beautiful physique but overall good health. While it is true that in the process, you may develop your muscles, this is not the ultimate aim. The ultimate goal of yoga is attaining good health, peace, tranquility and happiness.

Cardio v/s Yoga

A lot of yoga practitioners are known to have sculpted beautiful muscular bodies through the dedicated, protracted practice of Yoga. Cardio, on the other hand, has nothing to do with muscular development. So without doing injustice to either, we must say that if muscular development is your aim you would be better off doing weight training, swimming, aerobics or Yoga. Cardio is mainly designed to develop a strong healthy heart and, if at all, it only helps strengthen the muscles of the heart, not the external musculature. It is quite natural therefore that the muscles you develop from another form of physical fitness regimen seem to disappear once you switch to cardio.

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