So why are Americans who are eager to gobble up a fast-paced, calorie-torching workouts like Tae-bo and spinning, embracing yoga with such vigor?

Here are five of the top reasons:

1. Reduces Stress

Yoga attracts individuals who are looking for productive ways to reduce the stress in their lives. The postures in combination with the deep yoga breathing creates an inner awareness of our how our bodies and minds are intricately intertwined. For instance, as you enter into a difficult pose, you observe how your mind reacts to the challenge and how your breath and body work together to move through the posture in a non-reactive manner.

2. Spiritual Curiosity

Most of us in the West grew up going to church every Sunday. As we have gotten older, we may have started to question the doctrines of institutionalized religion and sought out on our own path to discover what spirituality means to us. Yoga, although steeped in Hindu tradition, does not require that you believe in a certain God or attend a specific church to be a practitioner. What it does is offer a holistic approach to how we view our selves and those around us. Its tenets of practicing non-judgment and harmlessness separates itself from denominational religions and instead promotes a whole-body approach to mental, emotional and physical health.

3. Improves Health

Studies from India to the National Institutes of Health are looking at how a regular yoga practice can provide health benefits such as reducing lower back pain, controlling asthma, lowering blood pressure and controlling weight. Yoga has also been shown to treat the symptoms associated with hyperactivity disorder, fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis.

4. It’s a great workout

Take an Ashtanga or Bikram yoga class and you’ll quickly experience how challenging yoga can be. The postures raise your heart rate and strengthen and tone your muscles as you lift your own body weight through a series of postures. It’s no wonder that fitness buffs like Madonna and Jennifer Aniston are dedicated yogis.

5. It’s for Every Body

Yoga does accomplishes two primary things that are so lacking in today’s processed and virtual world: It engenders peace and it does wonders for your physical body. With so many different styles of yoga to choose from, there is something for everybody.

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Top Five Reasons Why Americans Practice Yoga

In yoga, your body weight is your own gym. You rely on your own body weight to increase your strength rather than a hand-weight or bench press. The contraction and extension of yoga postures that use the arms like chatarunga dandasana, downward dog, hand-stands and hundreds of others strengthen and lengthen your upper and lower arms as well as your shoulders and back muscles giving your body a graceful yet strong look.

Here is a video of an Ashtanga yoga arm sequence. Sun salutations are a series of connected movements that are linked together by the breath. This particular sun salutation is one of the most traditional and also one of the most intense. It is both cardiovascular as well as strength-intensive.

Practice 5-10 repetitions of sun salutations each day and over a few short weeks, notice the changes in the appearance and strength of your arms.

Even though you may not have the privilege of having a personal yoga teacher come to your house like Jen does, there are scores of arm-strengthening yoga postures that you can do on your own which will you give you the same effect. Best of all, you’ll be dying to show off your new sleek guns in tank tops and bikinis by the time beach weather rolls around.

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Get Jennifer Aniston’s Sleek Yoga Arms

Nutrition 53 contains a small, but quality, line of three different health products. There is the Lean1, which is designed to help you create lean muscle mass and control your hunger, Neuro1, a supplement that improves mental acuity and focus and Sleep1, a product that helps you get to sleep fast and stay asleep so you wake up feeling refreshed.Each of his products come in a powdered form that are mixed with water to create a shake. Lean1, for instance, comes in a variety of different flavors like banana cream, chocolate, vanilla, cookies and cream, vanilla raspberry. It is rumored to be used by Britney Spears to revamp her new body.

Lean1 is used as a meal replacement and packs a whopping 30 grams of protein, fruit and veggie extracts, omega-3 fatty acids, and appetite-suppressing herbs in one scoop.

I haven’t tried this product as I’m usually suspect of anything that promises you the moon and stars in a bottle, but Lean1 seems to offer pretty solid nutrition in a concentrated form and it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll have a body like Jennifer Aniston or like Bill Romanowski after using it. Just to be on the safe side, talk to your doc before taking any of the Nutrition 53 products.

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Super Bowl Champ Romanowski’s Nutrition 53

Just a few months shy of turning 4-0, Jen is doing something right. Here are a few things that Jen does to keep herself in tip-top shape:

Yoga: Yep, here is one additional reason to invest in a $15 sticky mat and start down-dogging. Jen is a regular yoga practitioner and relies on her yoga instructor Mandy Ingber to custom-design private yoga lessons for her and come to her house to teach them. Mandy starts by leading Jen through five sun salutations, which are a sequence of movements that are synced with the breath. Additional postures like bridge, butterfly, tree pose and others are held for 30 seconds to one minute. Mandy also transforms these traditional postures into a strength training movements by having Jen do a series of scissor kicks, lunges or plie bends to build extra strength, but to also keep her muscles long and lean.

Jen first turned to yoga a month after separating from her now ex-husband. Before that, she felt very little connection to her body and her exercise as she worked out only on cardio machines. Now, yoga has bridged the mind-body gap that Aniston also feels infiltrate in other areas her life. She admits to feeling stronger emotionally  as well as physically and she has drawn on the patience she has cultivated in her own yoga practice to her own life as she holds postures steady for minutes a time.

Cardio: In addition to thrice-weekly private yoga sessions, Jen also breaks a sweat during regular cardio routines. The treadmill and elliptical trainer are her two fitness machines of choice. She usually clocks about 20 minutes or more on one of these before her yoga session. Jen feels that the cardio not only boosts her metabolism, but it gives her muscles a warm-up before her yoga class. According to an interview with Self magazine, after a five-minute warm-up, Jen alternates one minute of high-intensity cardio with two minutes of recovery at a moderate pace. On high-energy days, Aniston will even follow up this interval training, which she does on the elliptical, with a 10- to 15-minute run on the treadmill at a 5.7-mph pace on a 1.5 incline.

Diet: A long-time devotee of The Zone Diet, from the looks of it, Jen does a pretty darn good job at maintaining the 40-30-30 ratio of carbs to fat to protein. Once told by the entertainment industry that she needed to lose 30 pounds, Jen was introduced to The Zone Diet during her Friends years. She credits the diet for working for her mind, body and lifestyle as she shuns bad carbs. Although she’s pretty quiet about her diet secrets and occasional indulgences, she reportedly eats lots and lots of salads with lean proteins. One of her favorite style of foods is Mexican. One of her favorite Mexican eats: Chips and salsa.

Locks: You can’t talk about Ms. Aniston’s beauty without mentioning that hair. Her trailblazing haircut on Friends inspired women to flood beauty salons and simply ask for “The Rachel.” Stylists knew precisely what to do. Her combination of multiple layers, California-sun-kissed highlights and the magic of the flat iron has everyday looking like a bad hair day for me. For those of you who miss seeing your favorite, lovelorn Friend Rachel every Thursday night, this fall she’ll be make a guest appearance on NBC’s 30 Rock as Alec Baldwin’s stalker. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to watch Jen again and see her comedic and lovely self on my television set.

Learn more about the Jennifer Aniston Diet.

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Jennifer Aniston’s Diet, Beauty and Body Routine