January 2016 I attended a weekend workshop at Kripalu that set me on a new course. I wrote of my experience for Active Vermont. You can read it again here if you’d like:  http://lindafreemanfitness.com/2016/02/09/yoga-for-athletes/ 

That was my first visit to Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I vowed then it would not be my last, and so it hasn’t been.

When attending a workshop or training program at Kripalu, the participant has the option to enjoy privacy and personal space or to engage in community whether choosing to bunk in a dorm setting or eat alone in the silent dining room. Furthermore, there are multiple daily classes from which to choose, discussions to attend and indulgences to be savored such as massage, facials, and Ayurvedic or Yoga personalized private consultations.

In 2016 I thought perhaps I had simply dropped into a happy coincidence of people and events when my experience was as good as it gets. I learned ever so much, appreciated the opportunity to meet and interview Sage Rountree, and bonded with my roommates to the extent that we have continued to keep in touch since.

Having also vowed to return in 2017 for the longer training “Teaching Yoga to Athletes,” you can imagine my delight when I checked in and found that my bunk mate was none other than one of my 2016 friends and another roommate was a professional and personal friend from my home state. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. As the week progressed, all of us in the training connected on what I feel confident will prove to be a deep, meaningful and lasting way.

I tell you this because connection is perhaps what our training is all about. Whether we are competitive athletes or individuals seeking health and fitness, training must be about ever so much more than running faster, lifting more, or achieving maximum performance while letting everything else fall by the wayside.

Here is what Sage Rountree wrote in part in her Manifesto: Yoga for Athletes:  “Yoga aids athletes by increasing holistic, organic strength; by creating enough flexibility in the muscles and range of motion in the joints so that they can move fluidly; and by sharpening mental focus. Yoga, then, is an approach to balance: balance of the body in space; balance between strength and flexibility, sthira and sukha; balance between work and rest, doing and being; balance of mind, body, and spirit.”

Yoga for Athletes is NOT athletic Yoga. (We quipped that Yoga for Athletes could also be called Yoga for Tight and Tired People!) An athlete’s training schedule is periodized to functionally perfect his or her sport and sport’s season. The practice of Yoga during that cycle must not compete with the sports specific training, but balance and enhance it. Sage continues: “Yoga offers a system for connection, not just exercises or workouts.”

In the weeks and months ahead I will continue to blog about Yoga – Yoga for every and any body, for every and any purpose. I am new to the practice of Yoga, having begun only two years ago. I could not presume to have more than scratched the surface of this ages old practice, but what little I have learned, I am eager to share with you.

The practice of Yoga, as Rountree points out, connects opposites that need to be connected: stress and rest, strength and flexibility, stability and mobility, what we want and what we need, to name just a few factors of duality.

If you have not already added Yoga practice to your life, I encourage you to do so. Won’t you join me in this journey? Once begun, we will connect the dots: explore the relationship between practicing Pranayama, or breathing, Asanas, or physical poses, core strength and stability, meditation, and Savasana – how all integrate to enhance what is perhaps the ultimate connection of mind and body. Then we will begin to explore the possibilities that our newfound connections present to us, the opportunities heretofore limited and the goals and objectives we dare to dream.