How many days a week should you do yoga in order to see the best results?
The answer probably isn’t as straightforward as you think.
As with most things related to your health, the ideal number of days and time spent doing yoga will depend on several different factors, including your general fitness, your goal, and your personal circumstances.
No matter what your unique situation may be, however, there are several benefits of practicing yoga that make it worth fitting into your schedule at least three times a week.
Finding the right frequency for you
While a single day of yoga a week might be enough for some people, others may find that they feel more benefits from doing yoga three to four times a week.
Still, others may find that they feel best with a more intense schedule of up to six days of yoga a week.
The best way to find the right yoga frequency for you is to experiment.
Start with one day a week, and slowly increase the amount of yoga you do until you feel like you’re getting the most out of your practice.
When you decide how many days a week you should do yoga for weight loss, take into consideration any other forms of exercise you do.
When combined with other forms of exercise, yoga can help you get an even better workout.
You can use yoga moves to warm up your muscles in preparation for other forms of exercise or to cool down after a more intense workout.
When done in combination with other workouts, yoga can help you build strength, increase flexibility, and improve your posture.
And what’s more, yoga is a fantastic exercise for stress reduction, and it can help you sleep better throughout the night.
Let’s take a look at the different reasons people do yoga and how often they should do it:
1) Yoga for general health
If you’re interested in general health benefits from your yoga practice, three days a week is the ideal number.
It’s not enough that you’d see much of a strength – or flexibility-related increase, but it’s enough that you’ll experience significant reductions in anxiety and stress and improve your mood and sleep quality.
That said, you might want to add a fourth day of yoga to your schedule if you have a lot going on in your life.
2) Yoga for strength
When you decide how many days a week you should do yoga for strength, you’ll want to make sure that you’re including some other forms of exercise as well.
While yoga can help to build strength, it’s not particularly heavy-duty.
If you’re looking to build muscle mass, yoga alone probably won’t be enough.
Instead, you’ll want to combine yoga with another form of exercise that focuses on building strength, such as weight training or resistance band exercises.
Adding these types of exercises to your yoga routine can help you build much more strength than yoga alone.
When choosing how many days a week to do yoga for strength, take into consideration any other forms of exercise you do, as well as your current fitness level.
If you’re a beginner, you’ll want to start with a lower-intensity yoga routine, and then slowly increase the amount of yoga you do as you get stronger.
A lot of people are eager to see results overnight and end up doing too much, too quickly. They try to do intense yoga stretches daily instead of starting small.
And what happens?
They get muscle aches and more often than not, give up, saying that yoga is not for them!
So please, start with beginners yoga, 2-3 times a week, and slowly work your way up to advanced yoga positions 5-6 days a week.
3) Yoga for flexibility
Yoga is a great way to improve your flexibility. It can help you improve your range of motion, balance, and core strength while also increasing flexibility in the spine and hips.
Because yoga focuses on breathing, it can also help increase lung capacity and relax the mind and body.
As with any exercise program, start slowly and build up your practice gradually over time.
Once you become more comfortable with the poses, work toward doing them more frequently. The best way to achieve all of these benefits is to be consistent and do yoga each week.
I’d say that three to four days a week is the ideal number of yoga sessions to increase your overall flexibility.
Like with strength training, the more you do yoga, the more benefits you’ll see.
In general, you can expect to see flexibility benefits after about eight to twelve weeks of consistent yoga.
4) Yoga for mental health
First, if you want to do yoga for your mental health, you should think about the specific techniques and benefits you’re looking for.
For example, if you’re hoping yoga will help you reduce anxiety and panic attacks, you may want to look for a class that also includes meditation.
If you’re looking for help sleeping better, a class that includes a lot of restorative poses may be your best bet.
And if you’re hoping yoga will help you improve your overall mental health, you probably want to find a class that includes several different types of yoga.
This is what we often call “hybrid yoga,” and it’s the best way to get the maximum benefits from your practice.
If you’re a beginner, you’ll want to start with a lower-intensity yoga routine, and then slowly increase the amount of yoga you do as you get stronger.
And listen, you really should wait for a crisis to start doing yoga.
Instead, incorporate yoga into your life now. This will create a stronger and more balanced version of yourself that will be able to handle most of the challenges life throws at you.
5) Yoga for weight loss
Yoga can be helpful in losing weight, but it’s not enough on its own and needs to be combined with a healthy diet and other activities.
I mean, think about it: You can’t keep overeating and bingeing on junk food and expect yoga to fix it all.
What’s more, for best results it’s important to be consistent. It only makes sense that if you choose to do yoga regularly, you will burn more calories than if you are only doing it sporadically.
You should always check with your doctor before starting a new fitness routine, especially if you have any preexisting health conditions.
One of the main reasons why yoga is such a great tool for weight loss is because it helps to increase your metabolism and improve your overall health.
By engaging in regular yoga sessions, you will be able to boost your energy levels and help your body burn more calories throughout the day.
You should also make sure that you are drinking plenty of water while practicing yoga. By staying hydrated, you will be able to reduce the risk of cramps and dehydration, which can lead to muscle soreness and bloating.
So how many times a week should you do yoga for weight loss? Depending on your other activities, I’d say between 3-6 times a week.
The benefits of doing yoga for an enhanced life
When we think of yoga, it usually leads to associations like practicing asanas (body postures) and ending with a “namaste” (thank you).
But beyond these familiar images, there is so much more to this practice. There are many ways in which yoga can be beneficial for an enhanced life.
Yoga involves not just asanas but also breathing techniques, meditation, and much more. It goes beyond the physical poses but touches on many aspects of an individual’s life from body and mind to spirit.
The positive effects of practicing yoga are abundant and they have the potential to transform your life in a positive way too. Here are some advantages of doing yoga for an enhanced life:
1) Improving your breathing and lung capacity
Breathe = life.
Breathing is an essential aspect of yoga, and it is something that is practiced in most yoga poses, including the most basic one of all, “savasana” (corpse pose).
Proper breathing can be a great way to train your mind and body. When you breathe deeply, you get more oxygen to your brain, which can help improve concentration and focus.
But you can also breathe for other reasons: for example, if you’re stressed out, it can help to take a deep breath and focus on your breath.
A key part of yoga is learning how to control your breath.
When you’re really relaxed and in a state of peace, your breath will naturally slow down. You can practice taking long, deep breaths anytime to help calm your mind and body.
2) Toning and firming your muscles
Every time you perform a yoga pose you engage your muscles and put them through a similar process to that which happens as we exercise.
Over time, this can have a significant effect on the muscles in your body. When you do strength-building exercises, your muscles grow bigger, but with yoga, your muscles are toned and firmed rather than noticeably bigger.
Yoga can significantly help to firm up the muscles in your body, including your core and the muscles of your lower back. This can help to reduce the risk of injury.
As we get older our muscles naturally lose some of their firmness and flexibility, so yoga can benefit you in two ways:
- Firstly, you will be able to keep moving and doing the things you enjoy for longer
- Secondly, it has the potential to help you to avoid becoming “old and creaky” even if you are already in the latter stages of your life.
Actually, one of the reasons I took up yoga is because a woman in her 70s doing yoga inspired me. She was so flexible, strong, and in control of her body that I was in awe of her.
She was old enough to be my grandmother and yet she was in better shape than I was.
That’s when I decided that I wanted to be like her, then, and at 70!
3) Boosting your brain function
We know that yoga helps to regulate the nervous system and reduce stress, which is important for optimal brain function.
When your nervous system is in a state of high arousal, your brain gets flooded with cortisol and other stress hormones that can have a negative impact on your cognitive function.
Studies have shown that yoga can significantly lower cortisol levels in your blood. This can have a positive effect on your whole body, including your brain function.
What’s more, yoga can help to improve memory, and your general cognitive function, as well as help with concentration.
4) Enhancing your immune system
Yoga has been found to have a positive effect on the immune system by increasing our levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines.
This helps to reduce our risk of contracting infections and diseases.
Furthermore, yoga has the potential to help heal some kinds of chronic illnesses like depression and anxiety, which can have a significant impact on our immune system due to the stress they cause.
5) Increasing flexibility
Yoga poses have the potential to help us to become more flexible in our bodies.
This can come about both because of yoga’s effect on our muscles and also because of its impact on our nervous system.
When our muscles are tense, they are less likely to allow us to move freely.
Yoga is designed to help release these tensions from our muscles, which can have the bonus of helping us to become more flexible.
6) Making you more confident
The more you practice yoga, the more you will discover about yourself and what you are capable of.
You will have a better understanding of your strengths and limitations, which will help you to feel empowered and confident.
In addition, yoga has been shown to reduce anxiety, which is something that many people struggle with.
Anxiety can have a significant impact on how we feel about ourselves. When we are anxious, we can feel like we are under a lot of pressure like we are not in control of our lives – and this can contribute to a lack of confidence.
Yoga can help to bring your anxiety levels down, and it can help to increase the sense of control that you have over your life.
7) Mental clarity and focus
Yoga practices can help you to focus on the present moment and bring you into the now, which can have a significant benefit on your level of mental clarity.
When we are in a state of hyper-arousal, our minds are filled with a constant stream of thoughts and worries. We are unable to silence these thoughts and they can be very disruptive.
When our minds are relaxed, they are much more clear and focused.
Yoga practices can help to calm and relax your mind so that it is easier to bring it back into a state of focus. This can benefit all areas of your life, whether you are at work, at home with your family, or engaging in leisure activities.
8) Self-awareness
Practicing yoga regularly can help you to develop and increase your level of self-awareness.
When we are in our heads, we are not living in the present moment, we are living in our thoughts, fears, and worries.
We’ve all been there.
Yoga can help you to slow down, ground yourself in the present moment, and bring you into a state of awareness.
When you are more aware of your thoughts and feelings, you have a better chance of controlling them and not letting them take over and disrupt your life.
This is something that many people struggle with and could have a significant positive impact on your life.
Yoga has certainly helped me to be more mindful and present, and worry less about what was and what could be.
9) Better sleep
I don’t know about you, but before yoga became a part of my life I used to wake up several times a night. I just couldn’t get a proper night’s sleep and I was constantly tired.
So, how did yoga help?
When you practice yoga poses, you are relaxing your muscles and bringing your body and mind into a state of rest.
This can have a positive impact on your sleep.
The thing is that yoga reduces sleep onset latency (the amount of time it takes to fall asleep) and also the amount of time it takes to get into a deep sleep.
Final thoughts
Yoga is a fantastic all-around practice that offers a long list of benefits.
It can help you become more flexible, improve your posture, relieve anxiety and depression, strengthen your muscles and bones, lose weight, improve your sleep, and even boost your sex life! (I kid you not)
However, if you want to see the best results from yoga, you’ll need to do it frequently. So once you’ve found your frequency, you need to stick to it.
With so many benefits, it’s no wonder that yoga is such a popular option among fitness enthusiasts everywhere!