Yoga has benefits for everyone

Yoga – a mind and body practice originating in ancient Indian philosophy – offers many benefits, regardless of whether you are an endurance athlete or whether you live a pretty sedentary lifestyle.

Yoga can benefit everyone.

How yoga can help you

According to Platinum Yoga, a yoga studio, yoga is for everyone, regardless of your fitness level, age, gender or ethnicity.

Said Anil Kumar, 33, the Founder of Platinum Yoga, “Platinum Yoga offers a more authentic approach to Yoga as compared to other commercialised studios where our teachers are mainly trained from India. Our classes are specially tailored with different purposes such as back, neck and shoulder, as the name suggests. We work on the three main body parts that the general public always have issues on. We also offer Pilates, which usually only happens in a Pilates studio as well as Wall Yoga. Therefore our classes will help the general public to solve the general health problems as opposed to being an all in one solution.”

He continued, “Yoga helps to alleviate stress, improves blood circulation, heightens your awareness within your own body’s limitations, perfects your posture and spine and gives you better bone health, drops your blood pressure and much more.”

Yoga can relieve tension for marathon runners.

Yoga can relieve muscle tension for marathon runners.

Yoga helps relieve muscle tension for marathon runners

For endurance athletes such as marathon runners, practising yoga regularly will help to relieve the tension in their muscles. Said Kumar, “Athletes will always have tightness in their lower limbs – hamstrings, calves and tight muscles due to the amount of hours spent running or training. Because of the tightness, any slight jerk or tension may result in unwanted injury.”

He added, “Therefore to release such amount of stress in the joints and muscle groups, yoga helps to create more flexibility and space, allowing muscle groups and joints to relax and work more at ease with each other. The soft approach in yoga to relay the stiffness and the hard way in runners to harden both muscle groups complements each other in the long term.”

Beginners should come in with an open mind

However for beginners to yoga, Kumar stresses coming in with a completely open mind. He said, “Don’t freak out with the yoga poses! Social media is really blooming now with tons of people posting how advanced the postures are. As a beginner just come with an open mind. And if you are a male, never be afraid of stepping into a class full of females. So the ego is being tested here.”

Beginners should come into a yoga studio with an open mind.

Kumar pointed out that more often than not, your greatest enemy is yourself. He said, “The main challenge is yourself. The fear of stepping into a mat may put off a lot of people from trying yoga, the comparisons of a person around you sets you into a competitive mode which is not the main reason for practising yoga. So be yourself, really, and have an open heart and mind with yourself as well as with others around you.”

He added, “And when stepping into your first yoga class, wear comfortable sports attire, speak to the teacher if you have any injury or concern, stay well hydrated after the class and don’t practise with a full stomach. Always take light food and drink 2-3 hours before classes. And choose classes that suit you. As you progress, go deeper into the pose safely, with more awareness of course.”

Yoga goes beyond flexibility

At the same time, Kumar had stressed that yoga is about much more than flexibility. He said, “It goes beyond that. With flexibility you will have increased strength and endurance. It is a body weight exercise that goes beyond pull up bars, squats or push ups. Also, it is not a ladies sport – a lot of men have begun to practise yoga especially in Asia.”

Kumar added, “And yoga works on the overall muscle groups and joints as well as training – you have much more control over your breath. So it is not necessarily harder than other exercises. The integration of your mind, body and soul is a hard one yet not impossible to achieve.”

Trying out the Platinum Yoga classes

Platinum Yoga gave me a month of membership to try out some of their yoga classes at the Marine Parade studio, which had been the most convenient location for me.

So I tried out the following classes.

I tried out some of the yoga classes.

Hot Yoga – Done within a confined heated studio up to 40 degrees C, hot yoga relaxes the joints more, thus allowing you to move deeper into the pose.Sweating buckets during this class was a given, but apart from that, this being my introduction to Platinum Yoga, the class was actually not as bad as I had thought.I tried my best to follow the instructor at the front of the room, and was surprisingly able to perform most of the yoga poses, though not quite to the same ability as the instructor and some of the more experienced practitioners.This class had been done on a Saturday evening – after a 21km morning training run and I would say that it also went some way in terms of helping to loosen my tight and aching muscles out, after the run.At the same time, the sweating, I must also admit, had made me feel as though I was burning a lot of calories and had made me feel very refreshed when I had come out of the class.
This is also one of Platinum Yoga’s popular classes, together with Pilates. According to Kumar, many of their students love the amount of sweat as an effect of detoxication.
Hatha Hip Yoga – A lot of stress is placed on our hips due to prolonged sitting. Flexibility movements around the hip joints allow you to have a healthy spine especially when you fold forward or practise back bend. Opening the hips give us more freedom of movement as it is the connector to the upper and lower body.As the name suggests, the yoga sequences in this class, had been very hips focused, including poses such as deep splits – some of which were quite hard to do. But I coped as well as I could.
Yin Yoga – This is a slow paced yoga class that allows you to sink deeper into your connective tissue. The holding position of two to three minutes on average, provides you full control of your own body. The passive method of this practise tests you on your overall patience, calmness and peacefulness within you.To some extent the slower pace of this yoga class had meant that I was sweating a bit less than the other sessions, but for someone relatively new to yoga, I do admit that I had a bit of trouble with holding some the poses for the required two to three minutes. But nevertheless it had been a good learning experience for me.At least the slightly slower pace of this particular class though, made it a little bit easier to follow, and I could take some time to calm down and relax a little bit at the same time.
Yoga Slim – This is a popular class for those who wish to lose more weight as opposed to depending your yoga practise to another level.I found that this class in particular had been very core muscle focused; I guess that is because in order to lose weight you need to lose the fats around your core and keep this area toned. At the same time such poses are also suitable for runners when done on a regular basis, in order to run well you need to have a strong core.The teacher for this class, Claudia, was really on-the-ball in terms of ensuring that everyone was doing the poses as correctly as they could, and correcting students on the spot, for slight misalignments.
She also constantly moved to the front, middle and the back of the room, to keep an eye out on different students at a time. I thought this was good, as it helps students to learn and to be able to correct themselves more quickly.

Other thoughts on the yoga classes

There is a wide range of classes to choose from.

Besides the actual yoga classes themselves, I also quickly came to realise that the system of Platinum Yoga is very electronically focused – classes are booked up to three days in advance via the yoga studio’s smartphone app, and students would then check in via an iPad at the front desk of the studio. It took me a while to get used to this innovative e-system.

I also feel that Platinum Yoga could make it more clear, as to which classes are being held inside each studio at a time, there were occasions when I thought i was running late for my class because I would enter the studio and there would be a class in action, only to find out about 5 or 10 minutes past the hour, that the class that I was in, had actually been the previous yoga class and not the one that I had signed up for.

However, this issue may also have been resolved though, if the classes had started on time, rather than being about 10 minutes late.

Lots of classes to choose from

But what I had really liked though, was the sheer number of classes that were on offer and at all times of the day – from the early mornings to late evenings.

Platinum Yoga offers a good environment to give yoga a try.

The spread of classes available was really extensive, and depending on the amount of time that I had on my hands, there was always the opportunity to fit in an hour-long Platinum Yoga class; the classes took place every hour, occasionally with two or three different classes taking place during the more popular time slots. So Platinum Yoga students are really spoilt for choice indeed.

It is definitely a good environment to give yoga a try, no matter whether you are a complete novice or whether you have been exposed to yoga before.

As Kumar says, “The start is always the most challenging and difficult; as to how you start working for the first time, start being a new parent or start putting your body into an exercise routine that you have never done before.”

Photos used in this article are courtesy of Platinum Yoga.

Thank you Platinum Yoga for the trial membership.