10,000 Vinyasas

I wanted to relate an experience I had last weekend, and connect it to yoga practice. If you’ve attended my Tuesday night class, you heard this already, but here goes. Last Saturday night we got together with some of my old running buddies; I used to run 10 miles on Saturday mornings with these guys, and sometimes a few more during the week. By the way, I always thought of myself as a lifetime runner; just couldn’t imagine my life without it. Funny how things change. Anyway, of course my new avocation (hah!) and passion got some interesting comments from these quite conventional fellas. They were all excited about running the half or full marathon that was being held this weekend, and were obviously puzzled that I wasn’t participating, and that I had, in the last five years since we got together, changed into something else. One guy had apparently attended a yoga class in Oklahoma where he lives and described it as being a lot of chanting and meditation. His view of yoga was “stretching,” and he demonstrated his lack of flexibility by trying to touch his toes and not getting very far, to put it charitably. This particular gentleman, I know, does weight work in addition to running, and so I had to wonder, just exactly how useful this exercise routine is, if it results in someone being incredibly rigid and inflexible? I can only contrast my own experience, since I was once in roughly the same position as my friend, and what I find is that yoga comes closest, of all the ways of moving your body, to being the complete exercise program, especially if your goal is to be able to undertake normal activities well into your advancing age. Running and weight lifting, while good, simply don’t offer that kind of completeness. My friend and wonderful yoga teacher Meg once described an early morning event in her kitchen when she reached deep into a cabinet and how good that bending over felt, and this post is my echo of that. It’s taken me quite some time to achieve real flexibility in my chest, shoulders, and hips, but oh how good it feels to have this, and to be able to use it in every day activity. It’s almost indescribable, this feeling of openness and freedom, but certainly achievable by most people, and this, I think, is really the unstated value of yoga: we all aspire to be able to continue our normal activities as we age, and yoga gives us a way to do that. People who find themselves addicted to yoga probably experience similar feelings to mine. When you think about it, it’s pretty understandable; yoga is ancient, five thousand years old or so, and you’d expect there to be some wisdom coming down from all that experience.