The 15 Different Types of Yoga: Explained (2025)

Yoga is vast, spanning different cultures, goals, and techniques. Everyone has a unique version of yoga they swear by, pushing you into a puzzle trying to understand the different types of yoga. Right?

With so many names, schools, lineages… it can be overwhelming and you wonder where to even begin! After all, perhaps you’re simply looking to start doing some ‘yoga‘ and see where it takes you.

Or maybe you’ve been practicing yoga for years, yet now there are way more styles than you recall when you first started.

We’ve compiled this quick infographic on the 15 popular yoga styles that you’ll find in studios around the world today. And below that, you’ll find the benefits of each yoga type, and who it is best suited for.

CLICK and ZOOM to view it at full size!

What Yoga Means in 2025

Before exploring the different yoga types, it’s worth understanding what yoga means in 2025 and how it has evolved over the years.

What started as a spiritual discipline has significantly progressed into a spectrum of practices, goals, and cultural influences.

Yoga today is a blend of physical postures, mindful breathing/meditation, and even a flawless combination of other workouts practiced with multiple purposes and benefits.

Along with its deep-rooted spiritual features, it now integrates mental, physical, and emotional benefits as well.

And with this modernization, yoga’s purpose also shifted towards overall fitness rather than just spirituality. This also means we now have more evolved types of yoga, each favoring a unique purpose, difficulty, and benefits.

The 15 Different Types of Yoga: Explained With Benefits & Who They’re Suited For

Today, we have 15 popular types of yoga practiced across the world. Each yoga style is different with its unique set of purposes, intensity, poses, and benefits.

This is what makes yoga the perfect mind-body workout. There are enough yoga types to choose from that could fit your level of experience, lifestyle, and goals.

Are you a beginner, intermediate, or advanced yoga practitioner? It doesn’t necessarily matter, as yoga makes you feel right at home despite your level of experience.

Let’s find out more about these different yoga styles practiced today.

Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga

Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga is a dynamic style of yoga that was standardized and popularized by K. Pattabhi Jois. It’s essentially a modern-day form of traditional yoga from India.

Ashtanga refers to eight limbs or branches, of which asana (physical yoga postures) is merely one. There is a series of 6 set sequences, which requires intense dedication to progress through in stages.

Vinyasa Yoga

This yoga style focuses on breath-synchronized movements. Each posture links breath with specific body movements, creating a flowing meditation with each inhale and exhale.

Vinyasa yoga can be very fluid, and for the same reason, it is often labeled “Flow Yoga” or Vinyasa Flow.

Sequences may be creatively designed with no fixed sequence and a different theme for each class. However, taking an Ashtanga yoga class often helps with learning Vinyasa yoga as well.

Rocket Yoga

Developed by Larry Schultz in the late 1980s, this style of yoga is called “The Rocket” because “it gets you there faster.”

Rocket Yoga is a fast-paced, dynamic type of yoga rooted in Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga but made more accessible, playful, and less rigid.

It incorporates poses from the primary and intermediate series, allowing students of all levels to practice them without needing to progress in the strict order of these challenging sequences.

Dharma Yoga

Dharma Yoga is a specific style of modern yoga created by Sri Dharma Mittra.

It blends classical Hatha, Raja, and Vinyasa yoga traditions, creating a spiritual and physically challenging practice that focuses equally on asana (postures), pranayama (breath control), meditation, and ethical living.

This yoga type integrates all eight limbs of Ashtanga yoga, in addition to the practice of Raja, Kundalini, Bhakti, Mantra, and Tantra.

Students will aim to cultivate a devotional and mindful practice emphasizing “good health, a clear mind, and a kind heart.”

Jivamukti Yoga

Jivamukti is a modern, vigorous, and holistic type of yoga founded by Sharon Gannon and David Life. It combines a vinyasa-based physical style with adherence to five core tenets:

• Shastra (scripture)
• Bhakti (devotion)
• Ahimsa (nonviolence, non-harming)
• Nāda (music)
• And dhyana (meditation)

It is a physical, ethical, and spiritual practice that encourages veganism, social activism, and environmentalism. Classes usually include chanting and discussion of philosophy.

Mysore Style

Mysore style is a traditional Ashtanga Vinyasa practice done in a group setting with others practicing at their own pace and abilities. A teacher will offer adjustments and guidance, tailored to each person’s needs.

Unlike a led class, where everyone moves together, Mysore-style practice is self-directed, where you memorize the sequence over time and progress gradually as your body and mind become ready.

Ashtanga practitioners may choose to dedicate themselves to one teacher for long periods, to develop a deeper relationship and learn from someone who can observe their progress.

Yin Yoga

A Yin Yoga practice typically includes a series of long-held, slow-paced, passive floor poses that mainly target the lower part of the body (the hips, pelvis, inner thighs, and lower spine).

It’s a type of yoga that targets to engage deep connective tissues like ligaments, fascia, and joints, rather than muscles. Poses are held for long periods, typically three to five minutes (or even longer).

SUP Yoga

Stand-Up Paddleboard is a recent trend in yoga. It’s a fun and adventurous type of yoga, with the main component being practicing postures on a paddleboard on calm water (lake or beach).

The instability of the board will challenge balance and coordination while moving in and out of poses that put your core and focus to work. Part of the fun is cooling off by dunking in the water if you lose your balance!

Acro Yoga

A dynamic yoga type that centers around partner poses. This combines acrobatics and cheerleading with yoga, and can include challenging strength or flexibility moves.

Acro yoga is usually practiced with two key roles:
• Base: The person on the ground providing support and stability.
• Flyer: The person lifted into the air performing poses and transitions.

Hence, it involves one person acting as the “base” and another as the “flyer,” using poses and movements that require cooperation, trust, and communication.

Some poses may be balancing postures; others might involve ‘flowing’ from one pose to the next like a dance.

Hatha Yoga

Hatha is a broad term used to refer to a yoga practice done with the physical body. It is not actually a “style.”

Hatha yoga emphasizes the importance of meditation, combined with postures, breathwork, energy locks, dietary selection, or other external means to increase awareness and understanding for achieving harmony in the seemingly dualistic aspects of mind and body.

Bikram Yoga

Bikram Yoga is a form of hot yoga designed and trademarked by Bikram Choudhury. The poses are taken from traditional hatha yoga techniques and introduced to the West during the 1970s.

Classes are 90 minutes, consisting of the same series of 26 postures, including two breathing exercises. Postures are challenging, practiced in a heated room (around 40 °C / 104 °F) with high humidity.

Iyengar Yoga

This method of yoga emphasizes precise anatomical details and the alignment of each posture. To achieve this, it highly encourages the use of props, and the practice can be modified and made accessible for anyone.

Iyengar yoga is a slow and steady style designed to systematically cultivate strength, flexibility, stability, and awareness, and it can be therapeutic for specific conditions.

Restorative Yoga

This is a gentle and calming type of yoga to soothe the nervous system, increase immunity, and create deep relaxation, similar to the effects of yoga nidra.

It does this by activating the “rest and digest” parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), counteracting the “fight or flight” sympathetic response.

A restorative practice will typically use blankets, bolsters, cushions, or props to set up a comfortable pose that helps the practitioner release tension and feel at ease. No experience is necessary to join this type of class.

Hot Yoga

Hot yoga is practiced inside a heated room, designed to be more intense than traditional yoga for several benefits:

It might also sometimes refer to non-authorized classes that teach a set sequence similar to trademarked “Bikram Yoga.” But unlike Bikram Yoga (which follows a fixed sequence), hot yoga can include varied poses and flows depending on the teacher or studio.

Therapeutic Yoga

This is another broad term for a healing-oriented style of yoga that aims to benefit the practitioner in various ways. It’s also commonly called Yoga Therapy.

Therapeutic yoga uses gentle postures and breathing exercises to ease pain or discomfort while helping restore balance and wellness. Appropriate and beneficial for everyone.

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