Why Does Yoga Work?
How Hatha Yoga Can Improve Sport Performance and Body Function
Skeptics wonder how a bit of stretching can make a difference. It's what actually happens in body and mind during yoga postures that yields the benefits.
The Suite 101 article “Yoga for the Boys” describes the advantages of yoga for athletes in sports such as football, rugby, and martial arts. These include superior recovery; improved flexibility, strength, and spatial awareness; and better mental focus. It sounds almost too good to be true. This article provides more specific information on how the practice of yoga can achieve “winning” physical and mental changes.
So What Does Body Awareness Mean, Exactly?
Yoga teaches you to regard your body as an object, but that’s not actually a bad thing. Particularly when yoga postures are performed slowly and mindfully, your attention is focused on your bone and muscle structure, the alignment of your hips, or where your feet are in relation to the edge of the mat. While in a pose, you are constantly making adjustments to become more comfortable or to challenge yourself more.
This is a type of body awareness that is not achieved in most types of aerobic or conventional strength training. You will learn what comes quite easily to you, and what you need to work on. Understanding how to make adjustments to your body position is important to a whole range of sports. In indoor rowing, for example, the position of the chest in relation to the knees at the start of the drive and the degree of backward lean at the finish make a real difference to efficiency. All endurance sports require relaxing and adjusting the body to achieve the maximum comfort possible in challenging conditions.
With dedicated practice in yoga, you will also develop an intuitive understanding of where your body ends, that is, where you are in space, and how you are making contact with the floor, the wall or the yoga mat. This can also have a carry-through to grace of movement in sport and life. Awareness of the environment will help you to make practical decisions in sport, such as how to use the state of the playing field to your advantage.
A fringe benefit from yoga practice for many athletes and non-athletes can be an improvement in their body image. Women and men can hold sometimes dangerous negative views about their size and shape. In yoga, the focus on the real, grounded challenges of proper breathing and achieving excellence in alignment draws attention away from appearance issues. As Dan Millman wrote in Body Mind Mastery (Novato: New World Library, 1999), it becomes clear that “self-concept is no more real than the shadow of a shadow. It is an illusion imposed on you long ago.”
Mental Focus and the Zone
Millman, although not writing specifically about the contribution of yoga to sport, differentiates between aspiring “experts” (those concerned with physical development) and aspiring “masters”, who emphasize equal development of the body, mind and emotions.
One of the most important life-skills that yoga can teach is how to choose where to focus one’s attention. Attention moves in two basic directions, Millman observes: “outward, to the world of energy and movement, or inward, to thoughts. For most of us, attention bounces randomly back and forth…”
Yoga, with its admonition to “be in the moment” requires a constant focusing of attention. In a sporting situation this can translate to reading the game, or acute attention to what is required to (for example) shoot the basket. Top endurance runners can choose when to focus on tactics and competition, and when to tap into “the zone” when they are simply in the present, running.
A good yoga teacher can provide more information on how specifically yoga can work to make real improvements in body function and sporting performance, for people of all ages, women and men.
