Perkasie, or the Yoga of Running

Perkasie Runner and I are usually on the same level, so it's not surprising he and I wanted to write about the same thing today.  That bastard got to it first, but that's not going to stop me from writing about a lot of the same stuff.

Hey, he uses it as his Twitter avatar.  This picture is fair game.

When I first started going to the Greatest Yoga Studio on the Planet, I was neurotic about how many times a week I should be practicing.  A few Google searches took me to Baron Baptiste's website, where I found out that for optimal results, I should practice 5-6 times per week.*

I called bullsh!t.

Perkasie Runner is a far superior athlete to me, but I know exactly what he's talking about when he says 100 percent maximum effort day after day is not a good idea, and I bet you do too.  Whether your physical activity is running, yoga, or something else, if you have a max-effort session one day, your body is going to be tapped out.  The classes at most US yoga studios are no joke.  If you come off the street not in your best shape and try to hit six classes a week, by the end of two weeks you'll be miserable, and you'll probably have torn, blown out, or broken something.  You need to give your body time to recover.

The standard yogic response to such claims is that yoga is about respecting your limits and that one of the great lessons yoga can teach you is that you are allowed to take child's pose and rest in the middle of a class.  I could not agree more.  Yoga has taught me how to go to my limits but to accept when I can go no further.  However, that's been one of the hardest lessons to learn.  We live in a culture that preaches that surrender is for the weak.  It's irresponsible and unrealistic to tell people to practice 5-6 times per week in a roomful of beautiful, fit people but to curl up in a little ball when it gets to be too much.  In most people's minds, you might as well ask them to wear a giant sign announcing they are a giant wimp.

The right amount of yoga, or running, or any aspirational activity you are just beginning is a little more than is comfortable.  You want to do enough so that you build strength and see improvement, but not so much that you can't enjoy the positive effects the activity should be having in your life.  I don't think anyone should do more than 3 power yoga courses a week when first starting out.

The postscript to this paean to responsible exercise is, like Perkasie Runner implies, you will eventually get to know your own body and understand what it needs.  I am up to the point now where I do yoga about 4-5 times a week, but I understand when to back off and try to make a pose look perfect and when to just say fck it and curl up in a little ball.  When I'm really on my game, I have days like today, where I was so stressed and fired up about a million different things before I got on my mat.  Once I started to concentrate on my breathing, everything slowed down a bit, and I understood what I needed to do to get right.  Even better, in losing myself in my breath, I lost the stress that I started the practice with.

Pretty cool stuff.  It's not something I could have done even a year ago, and it's a gift you get only when you've devoted yourself to something for a long time.

*To clarify, this information is taken directly from the Baptiste website.  I have no idea how much yoga Baron Baptiste or his staff recommend in individual conversations.  As for Franklin Street, you will not find more patient or realistic set of teachers than Lori Burgwyn, Mike Lyons, and the rest of the Get Fresh Crew at FSY.  All of my experiences there let me know that they will never push someone too far beyond their comfort level.