Yoga can stop you feeling stiff after a heavy workout or a taut day at the desk, as well as providing general enlightenment – you just need to be a little more flexible with your thinking.
Everyone has a pretty firm idea of what yoga is right? Waifish devotees bending impossibly in stuffy rooms, all the while chanting their desire for inner peace – the cliché is well-established. But as 100,000 more people tried yoga last year in the UK alone and classes are becoming much more fashionable, the old binds are loosening.
The modern yoga class is as much likely to host inflexible body-builders and expectant mums as someone clad in hemp, and the process of stretch, hold, balance will aid them all differently. The problem is that it’s almost impossible to be sure of what yoga is and what it will do for each of them. But that’s the point – yoga will affect every body uniquely so it pays to find out for yourself.
“Whatever yoga is,” says Pamela Young, a yoga instructor at Virgin Active Hamilton, “it connects your body to your mind.” Whether that’s through difficult stretches or restorative poses, knowing exactly what will you will take away from it will depend on your own body and the type of class you undertake.
Classes that focus on Strength provide a full-body challenge. Based on the idea of Vinyasa, or flow, the quickened pace and little respite will have you sweating into your matt. They are tough, but perhaps the most physically rewarding of disciplines in modern yoga.
Align classes are more concerned with understanding the movement of the body in a controlled and accurate way. Resetting your shoulders, hips and back will improve form and efficiency of effort, especially in sport – an unaligned running stride is one that could be faster.
Whatever the yoga you choose the idea is always the same. “Yoga brings balance”, says Pamela “to any mental or physical program.” She, like many who practice yoga, believes it to be a truly effective way to deal with the stresses and demands of modern day life. “The world at the moment, it’s difficult to remain calm and focused,” she says, “where everything is go go go, [yoga] can slow things down mentally but speed them physically.”
For Pamela, yoga is a way to bring out her best in other sports. After years practicing Vinyasa, she completed an Ironman Triathlon. “Without it I don’t think I could have done it,” she says, “yoga taught me techniques to deal with fluctuations in the mind and kept me going.”
It’s certainly not about being the most flexible, or the most accomplished with each of the poses, but finding a yoga that best compliments what you already do. If you are more likely to grunt lifting weights than control your breathing in a yoga class, then you may wish to balance the scales with an Align class, resetting muscle structure and improving flexibility. Conversely, if you are new to fitness and wish to improve your strength, muscle-tone and flexibility then a class in the Strength variety would be more apt.
Of course, this is by no means a hard and fast rule – you won’t find many in these classes. Any yoga practice will build and balance the areas of your body rarely given attention in other exercises. “If you are a swimmer, or a cyclist,” Pamela explains, “then the balance of the body is going to be out as you work either the top half or the bottom.” Yoga, essentially, plugs these gaps. Your performance, regardless of your sport or lifestyle, will improve with yoga.
You just have to ask the swathe of modern athletes that bend with the times. Particularly in football and other high-impact sports, yoga is synonymous with longevity at the very top of performance – the German national football teams practice daily and Ryan Giggs, an avid yogi, played into his forties.
The usual reluctance comes from misunderstanding the connection between mind and body that yoga brings about, thinking it to be as much a religious endeavour as a sporting one. Its roots lay in Indian philosophy and Hinduism but contemporary classes vary massively in how much they subscribe to this. By doing a little research into the class and teacher you will be able to tell long before you hit the mat.
Crucially, you don’t have to be at all spiritual to benefit from yoga. “Yes there are spiritual elements, but they are accessed through physical activity and poses,” says Pamela, who views yoga as a way to tap into both your physical and mental ability. “It is more about focusing on the unique energy of you as a person and human being.” It evident that this has power beyond the dojo too, as time and again studies have proven the heightening of mood and readiness to deal with stress that comes from regular practice.
Like no other exercise, yoga finds a space between activity and meditation and draws on the benefits of both, and it’s a combination that has Pamela hooked. “It’s given me a sense of health and wellbeing that I never had before,” she says “but people have a fear of ending up in a cult in orange robes and not wearing deodorant ever again.”
Of course, this simply isn’t the case – unless you want it to be – and as yoga is popping up in mainstream sports more than ever, more people are willing to take the downward-facing plunge. Pamela is keen for as many people as possible to feel the benefits for themselves. “Keep an open mind and just try it, try all types of yoga and just give it a go.”