Which type of Yoga is best for you?

Image of a woman in upward dog pose, above a text 'Which type of yoga should you try?'

When you are new to yoga, it can be confusing to hear about all these different types of yoga. And you might ask yourself: “Which type of yoga will actually work for me? Which type of yoga is best for me? Which one should I try?”

To help you with your decision and to give you a little bit of an overview, I’m going to show you the most popular types of yoga.

The “main types of yoga” if you will.

You’ll get to know what they are, how they can benefit you, and what kind of person and lifestyle this type of yoga fits with.

While objectively there is no “best type of yoga”, you’ll see that some styles will be more your cup of tea than others.

In this article:

Ashtanga vinyasa yoga

Alright, so let’s get started with my personal favorite, Ashtanga vinyasa yoga. Ashtanga Yoga was founded by Pattabhi Jois.

Ashtanga practice is physically demanding exercise. It’s a flowing style of yoga, which means that you move with your breath in a flowing motion.

In Ashtanga Yoga, you follow a set sequence of postures. This makes it possible for people to practice without a teacher, after their initial phase of learning the sequence.

Ashtanga is a really strong practice, it demands a lot of you physically and mentally. Traditionally, the sequence, which in it’s full length takes at least 90 minutes, is practiced every morning with sunrise.

Obviously, through practicing daily, your body will get stronger and more flexible quite quickly. But this also means a lot of dedication and a strict routine.

Related: How do I get more flexible for yoga? 3 steps
Related: Yoga for strength: these 5 poses make you strong!

To give you an idea of what an Ashtanga practice session could look like, have a look at this video of advanced Ashtanga students taking a lesson:

This type of yoga is perfect for people who are willing to put a lot of effort into their yoga practice. It’s also for people who do have a basic level of fitness already.

If you’re looking to just get started, this might be a little too strong. You might be better off learning the basics first, and then, later on, transitioning into Ashtanga Yoga.

Ashtanga also works perfectly for people who like a routine and who don’t get bored too easily. After all, you’ll be repeating the same poses every day.

Related: The 8 limbs of Yoga explained in easy terms (+free printable)

Vinyasa Yoga

Vinyasa yoga is very similar to Ashtanga yoga, in the sense that it is also one of the flowing types of yoga.

But unlike Ashtanga, Vinyasa yoga doesn’t have a fixed set of postures. You or your teacher can adapt the flow sequence to incorporate poses with a specific focus, for example, the hips. Or it could be a flow focusing on a specific outcome, like feeling more energized.

The possibilities are endless.

Related: 5 Yoga hip openers to gently release tension

This makes Vinyasa Yoga the perfect style for anyone who likes a vigorous workout, but also needs a little bit of variation.

To get an idea, try this vinyasa flow for beginners:

If you have trouble quieting your mind, can’t sit still and get bored easily, Vinyasa yoga will keep you busy!

Iyengar yoga

Iyengar Yoga is named after its founder, Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar. This is a yoga style that focuses a lot on correct alignments and wants to put your body back into correct posture.

Related: Get it straight: 7 Yoga poses to improve your posture

As with any yoga style, you will get more flexible and stronger. But you’ll also get more “stable” in your whole body through the practice of this yoga style, because alignment is such an important part of Iyengar yoga.

Practically, the focus is more on doing the poses correctly. This means possibly doing fewer poses, but with perfect form. Using yoga blocks to help with correct alignment is very common.

Image of a woman in a forward fold, resting her hands on two yoga blocks to help correct alignment

Related: Everything you need to know about Yoga blocks
Related: What to use instead of Yoga blocks: 7 alternatives

You’ll also be holding the poses for quite a long time. In this way, it’s quite different to the flowing vinyasa yoga types.

Iyengar Yoga is not that well suited to start practicing on your own at home. Because there’s such big attention to detail and such a big focus on how to do the poses correctly, it’s going to be hard to do it on your own at home when there’s no one who can check if you have the correct alignment.

Who is Iyengar yoga for?

So this is not necessarily for beginners who want to do yoga at home. Instead, it’s more for people who like to follow the rules and who want to feel safe about aligning their body correctly, while being supervised by a teacher.

Bikram Yoga or Hot Yoga

Bikram Yoga is also called hot yoga. The simple reason for this is that you practice this specific type of yoga in a hot room. The room gets heated up to 95–108 °F (35-42 °F), and the humidity should be about 40%.

Usually, a class is about 90 minutes long, and you practice the same series of 26 postures, including a couple of breathing exercises.

Bikram Yoga is a style of yoga that was quite controversial at some point because the combination of pretty high temperatures and physical activity can be too much for quite a lot of people.

For me, for example, hot yoga is not the best style. I don’t deal well with heat at all. But other people actually benefit from the heat and really like the style. It makes you sweat, it can help you lose weight and heat also makes you more flexible.

Related: Yoga for weight loss – all you need to know

Another amazing benefit of Bikram yoga has to do with your blood sugar levels: there was actually a study that showed that Bikram practitioners had much lower insulin resistance. Pretty fascinating, huh?

Who benefits from the hot yoga style?

Like Iyengar yoga, Bikram is not really for anyone who wants to practice yoga at home, because it’s going to be difficult to have exactly these conditions.

And, more importantly, you only want to do this type of exercise under supervision. You want someone to be there to see if you do get any problems because of the heat or dehydration.

People who thrive in heat, who want to be flexible and who like the routine of practicing the same poses over and over again will love this style of yoga.

To get an impression of what a hot yoga class might look like, check out this video:

Kundalini yoga

Kundalini Yoga is this type of yoga that goes a little beyond just the physical practice. For people who are absolutely not into spirituality this style of yoga will probably be offputting.

Kundalini a mix of different practices like chanting, meditation, and then also the physical yoga. It contains dealing with a lot of concepts like chakras in your body, a snake in your spine, and these types of things.

To really explain in detail what Kundalini Yoga is about and how it works, I would need way more time than fits this occasion. For now, I’ll just refer you to this article so you can learn a little more about it. (It’s quite a bit to learn.)

Illustration of a person sitting cross-legged with the chakras painted over the body, an image alluding to one of the more spiritual types of yoga, kundalini yoga

Does this type of Yoga suit you?

Kundalini is for people who don’t want their Yoga practice to be strictly physical, but also a spiritual practice.

It’s for people who don’t mind chanting and imagery like snakes in their spine.

If that sounds like something you would love to explore, Kundalini Yoga is the perfect Yoga style for you!

Yin Yoga

Yin yoga is a type of yoga that wants to be the opposite to strong, muscle oriented styles of yoga.

Those strong practices like, for example, Ashtanga Yoga, are also called yang style-yoga. (Yin and Yang: You see where this is going, right?)

Yin yoga focuses on the connective tissues of the body, instead of working on the muscles.

It wants to help you lengthen and relax, which means that you need to hold postures for much longer than in other yoga styles. With this type of yoga, you hold postures up to a few minutes.

A woman in child's pose, a common resting pose in a type of Yoga called Yin Yoga

Who is Yin Yoga for?

Yin Yoga is perfect for anyone who wants to work on their flexibility, who wants to de-stress and possibly lower their cortisol through yoga. It’s also amazing for women when they’re on their period. During that time you might just not have the energy to do strong workouts but instead want to help the body relax, and deal with cramps.

Lastly, it’s good for anyone who wants to be more mindful. You’ll have plenty of time to meditate while holding the poses, I promise!

Hatha yoga

Last but not least, I want to explain the term Hatha yoga.

Calling something Hatha Yoga sometimes leads to a little bit of confusion because beginners think it would be a specific yoga style.

In reality, hatha simply means the practice of yoga postures. So any yoga style that I’ve talked about above has at least some hatha yoga in it.

In simple terms: if you’re doing yoga postures you are doing hatha yoga. This might be a little confusing if you don’t know the whole concept where Yoga is an 8-limbed path of different practices, like breathing techniques, like specific philosophical concepts, and physical activity is just one part of it. Because in the West, when we say Yoga, we usually refer to the physical practice.

Related: The 8 limbs of Yoga explained in easy terms (+free printable)

Go and practice your favorite Yoga style!

I hope this cleared up some of the common questions about different yoga styles, and I hope it gave you some idea of which type of yoga is best for you.

As always, if this helped you, why not share it with a friend?