If you’re new to yoga or to Boulder in general, you should know that there’s a new kind of beginner yoga workout in Boulder that people are loving.
This new workout experience can simply be put as yoga for people who don’t know they like yoga.
It’s also much more fitness-fueled than what you might find in many other yoga studios in Boulder. And we don’t have to tell you about how important it is to switch up your workout.
So we won’t – here’s Arnold Lee, M.D. saying it.
“When you do the same activity all the time, your body gets used it and becomes very efficient. Eventually, that adaptation will mean that you burn fewer calories even when you’re doing the same amount of exercise.”
The all too common “plateau effect.”
Not everyone wants to be totally serious in their approach to yoga workouts and many people would like to inject a little more fun and intensity in the process.
It’s about making your full body workout more enjoyable and keep you excited for your next visit to the studio!
Learn why these new yoga workouts might be for you, too.
What makes this beginner yoga experience more fun and enjoyable?
Yoga for people who don’t like yoga 🙂 Sounds a little funny but it makes a lot of sense, we promise!
The thing that makes Bulldog Yoga so much different than all the other beginner yoga in Boulder studios, is that we don’t adopt the dead-serious approach to yoga that many other studios have.
Try not to take yourself too seriously, we don’t.
I mean we literally wrote a blog about experiencing one of our full body yoga workout classes through gifs.
You can enjoy the great benefits yoga has to offer without the intimidation factor of not knowing every beginner pose. We stress to everyone who attends classes at our studio to get the most out of their sessions. From a sense of enjoyment and from the sense of personal accomplishment, it’s all about continuing to improve and better yourself.
With specially selected musical playlists, this beginner yoga in Boulder helps to enhance the sessions for everyone, and this deepens the sense of appreciation for each session.
This approach allows you to enjoy your yoga workouts in two different ways and provides you with a much deeper experience than you might find at other yoga classes in Boulder.
Yoga classes for beginners + expert yogis
Whatever your level of experience with yoga, from none at all right up to expert, you’ll find an appropriate class to attend at Bulldog Yoga.
The Bulldog Basics class is perfect for individuals with little or no prior yoga exposure, because it teaches you simple breathing techniques and some of the basic poses to start out with.
Once you’ve mastered the basics, you’ll have the opportunity to move into a more advanced class, where you will learn additional breathing techniques, and poses which are more difficult.
Other classes are available for yogis who have much experience and wish to challenge themselves with some of the more difficult techniques and breathing methods.
If you’re the kind of person who enjoys working up a good sweat and challenging their mental and physical capabilities to the utmost, we have a class for you in that area as well.
No matter what level of exposure you’ve had to yoga before, you’ll find just the right class at Bulldog Yoga to challenge you and make you a better practitioner of the art.
Wanna give it a try? Only $25 for 25 days
How often should you do yoga?
A good rule of thumb to follow when thinking about how often you should get in a full body workout is to always listen to your body.
Everyone’s different.
A minimum of once a week is a good start, and as you get more comfortable with yoga, you can increase your frequency. Some people get up to doing yoga and other workout routines every day of the week!
There are a lot of predictable benefits of regular yoga workouts like increased flexibility and added muscle strength but here are 10 Benefits of Yoga That Make The Workout Totally Badass from Shape.
Regular exercise, whether it’s once a week or multiple full body workouts, is important to get the full benefits of beginner yoga in Boulder.
We recommend trying to do some at home yoga when you can’t make it to the studio and even normal body weight workouts like the Plank Shoulder Toe Taps below.
Now you can start teaming up those studio workouts with an at home full body workout routine as well.
If you only do yoga every now and then, your body won’t start to change the way it does with regular practice.
So as you start doing yoga to achieve your health and wellness goals, it’s a good idea to develop a schedule and stick to it. But if you’re new to Boulder yoga, don’t try to do too much too soon. If you do, you might get discouraged and not keep up with it.
As your flexibility improves, your overall yoga Boulder experience most likely will as well.
Use yoga for flexibility benefits
Many people are afraid to embark on the practice of beginner yoga in Boulder, because they feel that they are not flexible enough to execute all the poses necessary in yoga.
This is a very common misconception.
Most yoga poses don’t require that you pull your leg behind your head or even to have to touch your toes.
The real purpose of yoga is to increase flexibility in your body while building strength, and connecting your mind and body through special breathing techniques.
Beginner yoga in Boulder can help you better enjoy your full body workout and to take the body through various poses, but you don’t have to be flexible, strong, or even slender in order to begin yoga.
There are several different kinds of yoga for flexibility, but all of them aim at making your body stronger and more flexible by working from the inner person outward.
Using mindful awareness, you will connect all your bodily movements to your breathing, and attempt to go as deep into each of the poses as your body will allow.
As you progress, you will go deeper into those poses, stretching connective tissues, ligaments, and muscles, and creating muscle memory.
Once you’ve established some muscle memory for any given pose, you’ll be able to go deeper into that pose afterward. The deeper you go into any particular pose, the more you will stretch your muscles and increase your range of motion, and you can challenge yourself as much or as little as you want to.
Yoga for flexibility benefits has been proven.
I mean, just look….
*Warning: This is an experienced, extremely flexible Bulldog*
You will undoubtedly end up increasing your body’s overall flexibility no matter how deeply you challenge yourself, but to get the most out of your workouts, you should legitimately push yourself to go a little further each time.
It’s also a good idea to think about your breathing in these fitness-fueled classes.
3 Breathing techniques you can utilize in your next workout
Breathing is sometimes overlooked in yoga, or at least de-emphasized, in favor of the poses which everyone associates with the practice.
Here are some excellent breathing techniques you should know for beginner yoga in Boulder.
1) The Basic Breath Awareness method
This yoga breathing technique encourages you to focus on exactly how you’re breathing right at this moment.
You might be taking shallow breaths or you might be breathing rapidly, but however you’re breathing, this is a simple mindfulness technique which has you focus on each breath you’re taking at the moment.
2) The Ocean Breath technique
This one takes its name from the soft soothing sound of ocean waves gently breaking against the shore, and it calls for the practitioner to breathe through their nose, then open the mouth and slowly exhale, making a ‘haaaa’ sound.
3) The Breath Retention method
This method requires you to take a deep inhale and then hold it for 10 seconds before exhaling. It causes pressure to build up inside the lungs, and forces them to fully expand so that their general capacity increases.
This sends more highly oxygenated blood to your muscles, brain, and heart.
Here’s a great piece by Jenny McCoy about why the way you breathe during your workout really does matter.
And Jenny would know. She’s a Boulder-based journalist that specializes in fitness, food, and human interest.
So take it from her and her research – breathing really does matter.
Yoga for weight loss benefits you might not have thought about before
“I have found that women who regularly practice yoga become more in tune with their bodies and, almost by default, they start eating healthier.”
Says Keri Gans, R.D. and author of The Small Change Diet.
There are a number of ways that beginner yoga in Boulder can help you lose weight, and it goes far beyond the simple calculation of calories in versus calories out.
Yoga classes in Boulder will put you in much better tune with your body, so that your self-image and sense of well-being are both much improved.
By reducing stress, you will also reduce stress eating, which is something that many people are prone to, even when they’re not hungry.
Beginner yoga in Boulder also encourages a healthy lifestyle so that you be able to maintain any weight loss you achieve.
One of the most powerful factors in achieving weight loss through yoga is that the practice will cause you to listen to your body much more closely, and that can have a powerful impact on people who have tried other methods of losing weight.
There are also yoga class types which include calorie-burning cardio exercise, and this can dramatically speed up the process of losing weight.
Altogether, yoga can play a very significant role in the holistic approach to losing weight.
You should check out these women’s incredible yoga-fueled weight loss transformations from Women’s Health that will blow your mind!
It is also smart to team up yoga for weight loss and its meditation benefits.
The power of meditation for beginner yoga in Boulder
When meditation through beginner yoga in Boulder is practiced regularly, it can have some amazing results on the emotional, mental, and physical aspects of your being.
The three aspects of meditation include relaxation, interiorization, and expansion.
First, you need to completely relax mentally and physically, then you need to focus all your attention inward, concentrating all of your attention on some aspect of your interior self.
By doing this regularly, you will naturally expand your consciousness, and you will find a deep sense of inner peace.
When all the five senses have been completely aligned, the mind can become more deeply focused, and you can be in touch with the super-conscious, rather than the conscious mind.
When your inner powers of intuition are totally awakened, you will experience a tremendous flow of energy that you didn’t realize existed. This is a discipline that takes regular practice, but if you achieve success through meditation, you will find a deep sense of joy in life.
So here at Bulldog, we challenge you to find your favorite and most effective form of meditation for you.
Whether that means taking an Activate class to get started or an Exhilarate class to get the blood flowing, it’s best to understand what works best for you.
And maybe you want to bring a friend…
Here are our top 4 yoga poses for two
If you have a partner that you enjoy sharing yoga classes in Boulder with, this can be a wonderful way of mutually experiencing the joy of yoga with these top two person yoga poses.
Here are a few ways you can conduct poses with your companion, so that you both get the maximum enjoyment from a workout session.
1) The Double Plank Pose (Above)
One person starts in a regular plank, then the second person places their hands on the ankles of their partner and steps up and places the tops of their feet onto their partners shoulders.
If you’re struggling you can modify this pose by doing the following. The base partner lies flat on their back while their partner places their hands flat on the floor on either side of the base partners ankles.
The base partner then takes hold of their partners ankles and straightens their arms so that the top partner is in a plank position. Squeeze those abs!
2) The Seated Cat-Cow position
This yoga pose has you and your partner reaching for each other’s forearms, and then drawing your shoulders backward and down.
Then you both inhale deeply, and liftyour head toward the sky, extending your spines and allowing your heads to arc backward. As you exhale, both partners should draw chins to your chests, gazing inward at the belly button.
3) The Seated Spinal Twist
Start with both partners seated and facing each other with legs crossed.
Then you both cross your arms while reaching for the other person’s hands, and you start to twist in opposition of your partner, using their hands to accentuate the twist.
4) The Back to Back Shoulder Stretch
has both partners standing back to back, with arms extended wide into a T position. Then both interlace their hands and press palms together.
While keeping arms engaged, one partner gently pulls on the other person’s palms, creating a stretching action through the shoulders and chest.
Yoga poses for two can be as fun and challenging as you want to make them. Just make sure to stay in your limits as both of you continue to get stronger and more flexible.
Is this new, fitness-fueled beginner yoga in Boulder for you?
Whether you’ve never tried yoga before or you’re looking to take your workouts to the next level, this cardio-infused and fun yoga experience at Bulldog Yoga may just be the thing you’ve been looking for!
Along with helping you achieve your physical health goals like losing weight and improving flexibility, beginner yoga in Boulder can help you improve your mental health and wellness, too.
Don’t let what you think you know keep you from trying something new.
It’s your health. It has to be a priority.
Why not have more fun doing it?
Which class type is best for you?
***Check out our Fun Lifestyle Blog for more guidance on this path we call life.
Can’t make it in? Get the bulldog experience anywhere, anytime with our online classes or via our app (App store | Google Play)