Yoga is not a religion. It’s an artful and creative science that combines physiological and psychological techniques to calm the nervous system and quiet the mind. After a great yoga practice, some people experience states of peace and calm and they may equate such feelings with something greater than themselves. And although this is why it’s often confused for religion, the interpretation of such feelings is purely and properly left to the experiencer. 

In my opinion, quieting mind chatter for any length of time within the context of our overscheduled lives is a feeling of great relief—and I’ll thank anyone for it! But if yoga is not a religion, what is it? Ask ten yoga practitioners and you’re likely to get ten different answers because it truly has different meanings for everyone. But, at its core, yoga is a scientific and systematic approach to guide one toward experiencing stillness in the mind. It outlines many components and techniques such as postures, breath and meditation that in conjunction lead one toward experiencing a sense of serenity and bliss or “Samadhi”, which describes a state of total equilibrium. 

But why is it so important—especially for athletes—to calm the mind and the nervous system? Because doing so helps to avoid experiencing burn out. In training, athletes place stress on the muscles in order to make them grow stronger. Muscles respond to this stress by thickening and strengthening but when athletes over train them, they can be injured. Similarly, when the nervous system is taxed it can start to break down.

In order to succeed during actual competition, athletes must accesses the sympathetic nervous system. In doing so, they activate the body’s “fight or flight” response and adapt this hyper-adrenalized response state to a particular skillset within a sport. When the body is in this state, blood pressure and heart rate increase and blood flow moves away from the vital organs and into the muscles of the arms and legs. But this response is designed to be a short-term state; thereafter, the body must be brought back to homeostasis, which is a sense of balance. Otherwise, athletes risk harming themselves through overproduction of chemicals and hormones.   

That’s where the practice of yoga is so helpful. Central to the practice of yoga is proper breathing technique. By controlling breathing we control other functions of the body, like blood pressure, heart rate, brain waves, circulation, insulin levels and oxygen consumption. More importantly for athletes, this process allows us to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxation and healing in our body. The parasympathetic response can be accessed by either focusing the mind on something repetitive, like breath or movement (as is the case in a flow class) or by making a conscious effort to reduce mind chatter via meditation (for instance, Savasana, the concluding yoga pose). 

Nicole Doherty

“Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), one of the most widely used mindfulness training programs, has been reported to produce positive effects on psychological well-being and to ameliorate symptoms of a number of disorders, concluded a Harvard-based psychiatric resource study this year. In the study, (MR) images from 16 healthy, meditation-naïve participants were obtained before and after they underwent an 8-week program, and the results suggest that participation in MBSR is associated with changes in gray matter concentration in brain regions involved in learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking.” 

Athletes often describe this state of being as “in the zone”—a time where everything appears to move in slow motion and all seems effortless. It’s almost as if time stands still, say experiencers. If you’ve ever heard an athlete express the sentiment, “It was like I was one with the ball,” you know what this means. For instance, in many ways Michael Jordan equals basketball. We can’t fully explain his talents or success—and maybe he can’t either—but there is no doubt he became one with the ball and with the sport. 

If you have felt like you experienced a time when everything “just came together” and this state was followed by a period of true happiness and contentment, you have experienced a glimpse of what the practice of yoga can provide on a more regular basis. As such, yoga is not just for “hippies” or “spiritual types”. It’s for anyone who seeks clarity of mind and wishes to experience a state of being that brings calm, contentment, healing and joy.