In his June 30th blog Morning Cup of Joe, fitness writer/iconoclast Joe Stankowski writes the following:

[The] yoga/pilates idiots freaks enthusiasts [call this] the ‘mind-body connection’.  The rest of us can just lump it under the category of "proprioceptive awareness"

In this passing comment, Joe sums up the the weight-room crowd's general opinion on ‘softer’ fitness methodologies:  to wit, that they're a waste of time, aren't challenging, and are basically for incense-sniffing wusses.  So it’s with some trepidation that I tip my hand about being something of a yoga believer.  Blasphemy?  Maybe.  Some explanation:

A few weeks ago, at the urging of my wife, I participated in a three-night yoga workshop led by the redoubtable Sofia Diaz, a yoga teacher from Colorado who’s such a master of her art that she hates being called a yoga teacher.  Yes, her website is filed with flowers and flowing water and pastel colors--don't let that throw you.  She teaches yoga the way Jordan played basketball, Einstein did physics, and my friend Ty ducks praise of any kind.  You get the idea:  she’s busted through the shackles of her art into some richer territory where, though the vocabulary is spine-lengthening, planks, and down-dogs, she’s really teaching you how to live your life. 

Sounds hokey, but frankly I think that’s what good coaching is, regardless of what’s ostensibly being taught.  How many times have we heard former athletes credit their coaches for teaching them about teamwork, sacrifice, struggle, cooperation, hard work?   All sport is metaphor.  All coaching is life coaching. 

Confession:  I’m not a real yogi.  I went through a 'yoga period' about eight years ago, which consisted of a yoga class exactly once a week, plus another 10 minutes at the conclusion of my more macho-styled regular workouts.  I stopped because the 15-dollar per class price tag was just too much for this stingy fitness freak to bear, but to this day, I still conclude my workouts with about 10 minutes of yoga-style stretches that I learned back in the day.  These days, that’s about it. 

Strike that:  a few months ago, due to the copious peer-reviewed studies that indicated that 30 seconds was an adequate time period to hold static stretches-- instead of the minute-long periods I had been using--I cut my stretching workout down to just five minutes.  Why do more than that what all those fancy studies said were beneficial? 

But the classes with Diaz reminded me that yoga is WAY more than just a variation on your gym teacher’s static stretching exercises.  That it can re-route the way you move, instantly relieve chronic pain, improve posture, coordination, and what I can only think to call sensory ("proprioceptive") awareness, if, and this is a huge ‘if’, it’s taught by a master like Diaz. 

This is a pretty major payoff for an investment of a couple of hours of time, and significantly more benefit than I’ve ever managed to reap from static stretching as it's typically taught. 

Now I’m usually a fan of the hard sciences—they’ve kicked things up in the realm of exercise knowledge a few dozen notches over the last decade or so – but when it comes to yoga, I believe that the science is lagging.  If your garden-variety toe-touching exercise is the equivalent of a barbell preacher curl, than yoga is the equivalent of a squat or a deadlift:  an exercise that improves and challenges not just a single, specific body part, but that challenges the whole body, improving not just flexibility, but coordination and overall athleticism as well.

You read that right, I said yoga was athletic.

The day after my first yoga class, I truly felt that my whole body had gone from a crunched-up series of disparate parts to a unified, coordinated whole.  I felt lithe, light, integrated.  I remember mowing the lawn that afternoon and feeling like the job—with all the bending, twisting, shoving and yanking it involves--was practically doing itself. 

Now I’m a guy who’s in pretty good shape here, so it wasn’t like it was my first experience with physical activity:  it was most assuredly THIS physical activity.  In a word, my body felt as though it had stopped fighting itself.  And I wasn’t even aware that I’d been fighting myself at all;  I was under the impression that I was a finely tuned athlete. 

Hah. 

I can’t say exactly what’s going on physiologically, but if you’ve got a great teacher like Diaz, you’re taking a guided tour of your own physiology, and you’re being reminded at each moment of how muscle x works with muscle y but against muscle z.  These reminders come not so much as verbal descriptions as physical sensations to which Diaz expertly guides your attention.  The more fully you experience those mechanics—meaning, the longer and more intensely you can endure each posture—the clearer these relationships become to you, and the more profoundly you can feel the benefits. 

Let it be known that in Diaz’s classes, you will experience these relationships like never before:  the relationship between hamstring and quad, between spine, feet, and hands, between the core and the limbs.  The way she instructs and challenges you, you’d sooner die than come out of each posture, and believe me, after just ninety seconds in the overhead half-squat as Diaz teaches it, dying is exactly what you feel like doing.

For anyone who has dismissed yoga as a stretching class with incense and a vague whiff of spirituality, I’d say, for the love of God, find a great teacher (they're all over the place) and give it another try.   You might even look up Diaz—she travels a lot, and may be coming to a studio near you.

Anyone other weight room/endurance sport junkies have a comparable or completely opposite experience with yoga?  Comments welcome.