Lots of weird, seemingly complicated positions that rival the training exercises of a professional contortionist. A variety of breathing patterns that is too diverse to mater.

Philosophical principles that you must hold close to your heart, even if you fail to understand most of them.

Welcome to the wonderful world of yoga, a meditative and recreational exercise that became so popular in America during the so called "New Age" boom in the nineties. Today, yoga isn't only treated as a healthy way to commune with one's self, it is also being seen as a fantastic way to lose weight.

But can yoga really help you lose weight? Is this claim a fact? Or is it a lie propagated by a yoga studio owner?

Let's deal with the facts first and foremost: yoga is primarily a meditative process that helps participants commune with themselves and their environment. Yoga is all about breathing and positioning of the body to aid the same. Yoga is both a spiritual and a physical experience. It's ultimate goal is to improve one's health by cleansing one's system of all sources of pain and suffering. Such a release is called the Moksha.

Now for the biggest misconception about yoga and weight loss: yoga- particularly the "most active" kind, which is Hatha yoga - involves physical activities that will help you lose weight directly. This isn't true. Though yoga may entail demanding body positions, it is never physically taxing. Yoga exercises are not cardiovascular in nature. You won't burn that many calories while pursuing this meditative regimen.

Yoga is about changing one's lifestyle for the better. It's not about what transpires in the yoga studio, it's about what you learn during yoga sessions and how you follow the same outside the confines of the classroom.

Hence, yoga's weight loss benefits are never direct.

Instead, yoga teaches the participant how to live a healthier lifestyle and make him more aware of his body, which consequently will promote less weight gain and better weight loss.

Additionally, since yoga - in any of its form - will most definitely improve one's breathing patterns, the body will get to enjoy better oxygen flow. Oxygen is essential in every bodily function, including metabolism. Hence, better oxygen flow would mean a more efficient metabolic rate, meaning more calories burned and fewer fats retained.

In summary, it is wrong to enroll in a yoga class with the sole purpose of losing weight. That's like going to Paris just to see the Eifel Tower. Yoga has so much more to offer - eventual weight loss being just one of them - that will surely enrich the life of its practitioner.