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IMPACT Magazine > Running > Features > Yoga for Runners

Redefine your physical fitness through yoga and become a better runner.

In the Beginning, I Was Fit

Or so I believed. At one stage of my life I was a respectable runner, competing for my university’s track and cross-country teams, running marathons in decent times, and finishing near the front in the annual race up the Grouse Grind. My body fat was really low, my VO₂max very high. I was pretty good in the gym as well, knocking off fifteen pull-ups, fifty push-ups, or two hundred sit-ups without a second thought. I wasn’t just fit; I was super-fit.

The Epiphany

"The running breath is rapid and superficial, but the breathing in yoga is slow, focused, and deep."

Then one day, ablaze with superiority, I found myself in a yoga class. I can’t remember exactly why I was there, but I’m sure it had something to do with the fact that I was married at the time to the teacher. Something quite profound must have occurred, because I began to practice yoga with the same dedication and effort that I brought to my running. What started as a simple gesture of spousal support began a journey that forced me to examine what physical fitness is and why current definitions are lacking. Because it was there in that class, somewhere between the sun salutations at the start and the deep relaxation at the end, that I learned I wasn’t the fitness machine I thought I was. Stated simply: yoga kicked my ass. If I was so damned fit, why couldn’t I make some very simple shapes with my body without shaking and sweating as if possessed? The simple answer is that my body was frozen from years of athletics. And my mind, well, that was a mess too—clouded, scattered, unfocused—and as dense and unyielding as my body. Yoga forced me to redefine my idea of both physical and mental fitness and how the two are complementary necessities as a true measure of health.

In her book Power Yoga: The Total Strength and Flexibility Workout, Beryl Bender Birch writes that sports don’t get us in shape, sports get us out of shape. Too true! As runners, we have to face the fact that as much as we like to run, it can be traumatizing to the body. This is because running, like most sports, is a one-dimensional action that stresses the same muscle groups, tendons, ligaments, and bones in almost exactly the same way hundreds, if not thousands, of times whenever we run.

The smart ones understand: they do yoga (or something similar) and begin the process of preserving or restoring their bodies. One of the highest profile athletes to compete at the 2008 Olympic Summer Games was American swimmer Dara Torres. To prepare her forty-year-old body to compete against other swimmers—some half her age—Torres worked with a small army of coaches, including two stretching experts. She eventually won a silver medal.

The reason yoga is such an effective tool is because it is a multi-dimensional mind and body discipline that takes the physical body through every possible plane and range of motion, while at the same time asking the mind to be absolutely composed.

Open Body = Open Mind

Practicing yoga trains the body and the mind, actively nurturing and developing mind-body interaction. The mind-body is a single interactive unit, much like the Yin and Yang symbol that expresses a set of complementary opposites, with the seed of one found in the body of its opposing twin. So if we believe there exists a powerful interaction between the mind and body—and science has certainly proven this to be the case—then the welfare of one is inextricably linked to the welfare of the other. And we then have to believe that chronic and unrelenting tension and imbalance in the body’s musculature will not only lead to an impaired ability to perform optimally on an athletic level but will also lead to a mind that is, at a minimum, unrelentingly tight and unbalanced. Yoga tells us that body is a creation of mind, so it follows that because the practice of yoga creates an open and spacious body, this will in turn develop spaciousness in the mind, and the practitioner will become literally more open-minded. And as with any of the Eastern practices such as Tai Chi, Qi Gong, or the martial arts, yoga is as much about training the mind as it is about training the body.

Listening (But Not Hearing)

Yoga teacher Richard Freeman says that yoga begins with listening, and when we listen we give space to our own bodies and minds. The problem, of course, is that we don’t listen, at least not to our bodies. Go into any fitness facility and watch people go through their routines, eyes glued to a TV or magazine, iPod blasting their tunes, completely distracted and out of touch. What is the point of going to the gym and working-out, to watch TV and read magazines? I am absolutely convinced, without a shred of evidence to support my theory, that blaring music, TV, iPods, and magazines do nothing more than add to our stress levels. We go to the gym to work out and achieve good health so that we can cope with stress, but instead we are met with more stress. The gym should be a temple to the cultivation of fitness and health, a place where both muscles and mindfulness are strengthened, but it has become just another extension of our vastly over-stimulated lives. The author and meditation teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn summed it up perfectly: “It is amazing to me that we can be simultaneously completely preoccupied with the appearance of our own body, and at the same time completely out of touch with it as well.”

If the health of any relationship depends on the quality of the communication, then the quality of that communication depends on our capacity to listen. Why is it such a radical idea for most people to simply sit still, watch the breath, quiet the mind, and listen to our body’s story? If we stop and listen to what our bodies have to tell us, even for five minutes, and truly develop an open and unquestioning awareness to what our body has to say, our approach to running, and by extension health and fitness, would be grounded in an attitude of balance and symmetry.

Discomfort and Focus

One of the many benefits of a regular yoga practice is that the mind can be taught to endure discomfort as a means to achieve a quality known as equanimity, a state of calmness and non-reactivity while under duress. During practice, a conscious breath is cultivated as a means to warm the body, stimulate the nervous system, and provide an anchor for the wandering mind. Breathing that is short, choppy, or ragged reflects an uncomfortable or wandering mind; breathing that is smooth, deep, and focused tells us the mind is present, centred, and calm. So the breath becomes both a means to self-control and a measure of it. Breath cultivation in yoga is like a safety gauge, designed to measure the practitioner’s level of physical effort and the quality and overall presence of the mind. “Quality of mind” means a mind that is focused, clear, and aware. Who wouldn’t want to be more relaxed and focused while competing in a marathon? What athlete wouldn’t want to achieve a deep, almost meditative, level of calm and focus before and during a competition?

This is not to say that an inevitable outcome of performing a particular yoga posture is discomfort. That is certainly not the case. But certain styles of yoga are undoubtedly more challenging than others, and these “athletic” styles do tend to attract people who love to push the limits of whatever physical endeavour they undertake. These yoga styles, which can be grouped loosely under the heading of Power yoga (but which also includes the subtly intense Yin style of yoga) are quite dynamic and muscular and can place the practitioner at certain points of the practice into postures with a high level of discomfort.

Yoga Versus Running

Yoga is the antithesis of running; that’s why it’s so necessary—and so challenging—for so many people, because it represents everything that running is not: running tears down and depletes the body, yoga rejuvenates and restores it; running activates and stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, while yoga stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system; running tightens, compresses, and shortens the muscles and other soft tissues of the body, while yoga opens and releases the body’s musculature, creating space, suppleness, and resiliency; the running breath is rapid and superficial, but the breathing in yoga is slow, focused, and deep; the mindset in running tends to be unfocused and shallow, whereas the mindset in yoga is quiet, calm, and meditative; finally, running weakens, and yoga strengthens.

Relaxation Versus Fatigue

If we’ve had a hectic and stressful day, we can find it challenging at the beginning of our yoga practice to break free from the reflexive “flight or fight” sympathetic nervous system mindset that our bodies and minds operate under, to our detriment, much of the time. Paradoxically, this usually happens at the end of a run as well. Here, people mistake their seeming sense of calm with relaxation, when what they are actually feeling is extreme fatigue. Through the effort expended running we burn ourselves into a state of exhaustion, then return home after a run and collapse onto the couch. Our minds may seem focused, but all that’s happened is we’ve burned off the body’s nervous energy and mistaken this for being calm. This is certainly not relaxation, and the effect on the body and mind from running is very different from being relaxed. The extreme physical exertion has stimulated the sympathetic nervous system, but by practicing yoga, sympathetic arousal can be reduced or eliminated because the parasympathetic system is stimulated, eventually leading to what is known as the relaxation response. This is the true feeling of calm and relaxation that we’re looking for.

Finally, a few tips: First, don’t expect quick results. Like any physical exercise, progress in yoga is gradual and incremental, with peaks, valleys, and plateaus along the way. Small improvements in flexibility can lead to huge changes in how the body feels and performs. Second, find a good teacher. The way to tell what’s right for you is by actually taking a class. Practice once per week at a minimum; two or three times is optimal.

How then should we define physical fitness? An essential element of any definition should be mens sana in corpore sano—a sound mind in a sound body. To me, it makes perfect sense.

About the Author

Michael Dennison is a long-time Vancouver yoga teacher and competitive runner. Following an lengthy running career, he began practicing yoga in 1996, began teaching in 1998 and founded Vancouver’s City Yoga the same year. Dennison is the host of Runner’s Yoga, http://yogarunners.net/blogsite/.

"Yoga for Runners" was originally published in IMPACT Magazine's March/April 2009 Running Issue.