Cultivating the body, mind, and soul are the main objectives of yoga.
Yoga helps to tone the body, be more flexible and resistant, and to improve the blood circulation. It also restores our emotional stability, and it helps us to concentrate better and to rest deeply during the night.
There are different types of yoga with the same purpose of aligning body and mind. Hatha yoga and Vinyasa yoga are among the most popular styles.
Hatha yoga is the origin of all types of yoga. On the other hand, vinyasa is a word that means flow, and more than a kind of yoga. It works to make a yoga class with sequences in movement, more dynamic and without any pause.
HATHA YOGA
Hatha Yoga is the most popular and practiced type of yoga throughout the world, especially in the Western world.
Anyone can practice it, and its primary goal is to achieve the union of body, soul, and mind through physical postures, meditation and, breathing exercises. In Yoga terms: Through asanas, meditation, and pranayama.
By maintaining the postures, we will seek to balance the energies of our organism, train our body to be more comfortable while making it stronger and more flexible. We also are looking to coordinate our breathing through the maintenance of these asanas.
It is an excellent exercise to improve our flexibility and reduce stress. The practice rhythm is somewhat slow and static, focused mainly on the concentration of the posture. For example, some asanas can be held for up to 60 seconds, accompanied by deep and rhythmic breathing.
VINYASA YOGA
Vinyasa yoga is also one of the most practiced branches of yoga and it focuses on the movement. People who choose this yoga style seek to activate the body and focus on breathing as the key to achieve chained different postures.
It is a more dynamic variant of yoga, where breathing is the cornerstone for carrying it out in the best possible way. However, although the movement is the key to Vinyasa Yoga, you will also need to control your breathing and stay in the posture for at least a sequence of three breaths.
There are many benefits that include weight loss, health improvement of the body’s organs, and reduced levels of anxiety, and much more.
MAIN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HATHA YOGA AND VINYASA YOGA
In summary, we can consider Hatha Yoga as “the mother” practice of yoga. The traditional branch of this discipline is focused on holding postures during some cycles of breathing.
On the contrary, Vinyasa Yoga is more dynamic, it seeks to coordinate movement and breathing, and direct our energy.
Balance or movement; pause or energy. Which is better?
We can’t say that one is better than the other. It will depend on what you want to achieve with the practices. In both cases, we should work on body and mind.
For beginners, Hatha Yoga is an excellent start. Once you get the experience, Vinyasa Yoga will also give you many benefits. The idea should be to combine them and choose one or the other according to your mood and physical state of each day.
Whenever you feel tired or if you need to spend some time meditating on your important decisions, Hatha Yoga will be your best ally. But, if you need to release energy and forget about any problem, Vinyasa Yoga can leave you as good as new.