How Many Calories Does Restorative Yoga Burn?

Restorative Yoga calories by weight & duration

The ~141 calories per hour figure is an estimate for a 155 lb person practicing at a typical restorative pace, and your actual number will be higher or lower depending on your body weight and how deeply you settle into the work. You can log your sessions and track burn over time in the Mariposas app, which is useful for seeing how restorative yoga fits into your broader weekly activity picture.

Calculated as MET (2) × body weight (kg) × hours. How this works.

What to expect in a restorative yoga class

A typical restorative session involves five to eight poses spread across a full hour, which means you might spend ten minutes or more in a single shape. The teacher will walk you through how to stack your props before you enter each posture, and there's usually a brief verbal cue about where to release tension, the jaw, the hands, the backs of the eyes. Transitions are slow and intentional, and the room is often dimly lit with minimal music. Don't be surprised if the hardest part is simply staying mentally present while your body is completely at rest.

Tips for your first restorative yoga class

• Bring or rent every prop the studio offers. New students often try to get by with one blanket and find themselves uncomfortable ten minutes into a hold. A bolster under the knees in supported savasana, for example, changes the experience completely.
• Wear your warmest workout clothes or bring a layer to put on. Your core temperature drops when you're still for this long, and getting cold is the main thing that pulls people out of the relaxation response mid-class.
• If your mind races, focus on the physical sensation of your breath rather than trying to clear your thoughts. Counting the length of your exhale (aiming for it to be longer than the inhale) gives the brain a job and tends to quiet mental chatter faster than trying to think of nothing.
• Arrive five minutes early to set up your mat space. Part of what makes the practice work is not rushing into the first pose, and teachers usually start the room-settling process before the official start time.

What affects how many calories restorative yoga burns

Restorative yoga carries a MET of 2, which places it just above seated rest, and the calorie figure reflects that: this is genuinely low-intensity work by design. Heavier body weight does push the total slightly higher, as the body expends a bit more energy maintaining position and breathing deeply, but no amount of effort will dramatically change the number the way interval training would. The format isn't about energy expenditure; people choose it for nervous system recovery, joint mobility, and sleep quality rather than caloric output.

Three things move your number most: body weight (a heavier body burns more for the same activity, that's why the table runs from 125 to 225 lb), duration (calories scale with time), and intensity. A restorative yoga you push hard burns more than an easy one, because effort is what the MET value of 2 represents, an average for this activity. Your fitness level and how much you rest between efforts shift it too, so treat these as a solid estimate rather than an exact count.

How we calculate restorative yoga calories

Every number here uses the standard energy-expenditure formula: calories ≈ MET × body weight (kg) × time (hours). The MET value of 2 for restorative yoga comes from the published Compendium of Physical Activities, the same reference researchers and fitness trackers use. We convert your weight to kilograms and multiply through, no fudge factors. See our methodology for the full formula and sources.