What Is Aerial Yoga And What Are Its Benefits
Aerial Yoga gives you the thrill of using a hammock to arch, curve, bend, turn and twist your body into various Yoga shapes and postures. For the slightly more daring, you can use a combination of your arm and core strength, to lift up and flip yourself over and enjoy many acrobatic flows. AY Aerial Yoga makes for a fun, high impact workout whilst continually challenging your sense of body rhythm.
How is AY Aerial Yoga practised?
The practitioner sits on a soft, fabric hammock that is made out of special, high-density nylon material that can support up to 100kgs.
The hammocks are held up by carabineers, support chains and webbing straps. You can adjust the height according to personal preference, or for better manoeuvrability. Throughout the yoga class, you do various traditional yoga poses or aerial adaptations of traditional poses using the hammock for support.
Some of the most basic poses involve simple stretches while seated on the hammock, while other poses progress to hanging upside down and grabbing your thighs, ankles or feet for support and balance.
Benefits of AY Aerial Yoga?
AY Aerial Yoga offers many of the same benefits and enjoyments of regular yoga, but it also has some additional benefits as well:
· Greater Flexibility
Since you have more freedom of movement, you can move your body into new positions. In some cases, this can result in a deeper and more fulfilling stretch than what traditional yoga offers. Hanumanasana, half -splits, Pada Uthanasana etc are some poses that can be done to build on your flexibility.
· Better Focus
By putting yourself in a more challenging situation than usual, aerial yoga forces you to be more alert and aware of your surroundings. You will likely also try to concentrate harder because you’re not used to being suspended in the air during your yoga practice. Practice Adomukha Vrkasana, Sirshasana, Sarvangasana for focus, concentration and memory.
· Strengthened Muscles
Because gravity is working harder on your body than usual, your muscles work harder too. Aerial yoga is also a great core workout because you have to engage your core muscles to balance and stabilize yourself during your yoga session.
· Stress-Relief
Much like traditional yoga, aerial yoga is great for stress relief. Not only do you use poses and stretches common to other forms of yoga to relieve stress, but you also experience the joy of knowing that you did something new and exciting, which makes you feel good.
Inversions and Core Strength
Aerial Yoga allows you to hang on to the hammock with your upper body and then engage your core in order to move your lower body off the ground. This mid-air swinging action challenges your body’s balance forcing it to find its center. Alternatively, there are several postures like Plank and its variations where feet are supported by the hammock and the upper body trains for strength.
The most useful and important aspect that AY Aerial offers is to help you perform somersaults in air, this advance moves demand a lot of work from your core resulting in rapid weight loss. However, in order to progress to higher levels of difficulty, our foundation needs to be strong and steady. Practising a few simple exercises regularly will help build your core and arm strength preparing you for advance postures and also tone the body in the process.
Weight Loss
AY Aerial Yoga can also help you lose weight because it engages your muscles to complete the yoga poses while you are in the air. This can help you build toned and lean muscles while you burn body fat. The practice with the hammock challenges your whole body to do more. Slowly and gradually it will improve your metabolic rate. Regular practice will keep your metabolism high and will maintain it throughout the day.
