Yoga for recovery and fitness - a personal perspective.

For most of us when we think of being fit, we consider our aerobic fitness. Can we walk up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath or run a reasonable distance or 5km at a respectable pace? Strength is also extremely important for our long term health as it dictates so much in relation to our health from our metabolism to our hormones and how we feel as a result. Yet then there is recovering from all of this endurance and strength based activity, whether working with weights, body weight, running or walking or cycling...and all of this was why I initially came to yoga myself.

Yoga was something I decided to try as a way to recover better between workouts and also to have an activity that suited me on a lower-impact day. I have to admit, I was also quite curious too — Why was it I asked myself was it that was yoga so popular? It definitely wasn’t a fad, I knew that, and yet I didn’t actually know anyone looking back to my twenties or thirties, who did yoga.

So, my first attempt during the early stages of pregnancy with our first child didn’t worked out (turns out that wasn’t the ideal time to start due to the abundance of hormones that make you very prone to over-stretching: especially with a competitive mind-set! ).

So it wasn't until some years later that I revisited yoga and not while I was pregnant (although this can be fine.. with suitable caution); and, I noticed how much better I felt! I found I was getting stronger in different parts of my body, yet I also felt a lightness — more at ease, and somehow calmer too. Over time, I realised this wasn’t just flexibility; it was genuine wellbeing.

I was soothed, not exhausted, and felt more balanced both physically and emotionally. This was from only one class a week, and I found myself quite impatient for the next.

Through my early to late forties, even when I wasn’t outwardly reacting in anger, I could feel the stress building inwardly. This was a more demanding time in life it turns out, and I began to recognise that all the running and strength training alone were not really supporting my nervous system. I was often exhausted and increasingly anxious. I realised it might also be a part of the peri-menopause, a time when as females, our hormone levels naturally decline. This was not something (thanks to the work of Davina McCall and the work of others including the British Menopause society) I thought needed to be either feared of underestimated. However was I calculated a transition that certainly needed to be taken into account. So Yoga really fitted into this picture for me, and I think can be of huge service to any other women who have not yet discovered yoga up to this point in their lives too.

As a personal trainer, I’d long understood the impact of menopause and the lead up to it, as well as the power of breath, movement, nutrition, and recovery. Honestly though I hadn’t expected the profound effect of slowing down a bit as I moved doing yoga. By holding poses with awareness I was both getting stronger as well as calming down at the same time. This became a very effective tool for me to manage the daily stresses and straings and I found myself more resilient and calmer. So instead of asking, “What is it about, this yoga?” I began asking, “Why didn’t I discover yoga sooner?”

This was a big moment.

I signed up for a 200-hour teacher training course, and as I explored different styles of yoga in the months before the course started, a friend’s husband — who happened to run retreats and meditation workshops — gave me some valuable guidance. He was clearly proud of the tradition he was part of, and he helped me see that yoga is far more than just another way to exercise. He told me about the history of yoga and the reasoning behind the many different approaches — all rooted in thousands of years of philosophy that address the whole human, not just the physical body.

In today’s wellness-focused world, this may sound almost clichéd, but yoga recognised the connection between the physical, emotional, and spiritual long before we bought into nootropics* or hot–cold treatments for nervous system optimisation. I found this insight into that world history fascinating, and it helped me understand that the asana, or physical practice, isn’t the end goal but part of a much bigger, more meaningful journey. I realised I didn’t have to be the most flexible or athletic person to practise yoga — it could suit me at any stage of life. And more than that, it would probably help every stage of life suit me better too.

Certainly this has been the case recently. I'm still in peri-menopause and feel like I have a say in how it goes. Yoga provides another tool for managing myself and my fitness more broadly, and certainly for me running and strength training have been much better. I feel like I am still maintaining and building strength, still running with power and combined with recovery days as the years go by I am able to optimise recovery and also reduce the risk of injury. Plus whilst this is my own experience to date and I hope will remain so, is infact also backed up by the growing body of evidence based science (see references below).

My conclusion

None of this would be possible minus the yoga, and I am excited to be able to fully enjoy more of my fitness thanks to Yoga.

• Nootropics: substances or supplements that may improve cognitive function, such as focus and memory.

Asana: the physical postures or poses practised in yoga.

Ref: Yoga as part of sports medicine and rehabilitation, Int J Yoga, 2023, Manjunath Nandi Krishnamurthy, PMCID

The effects of yoga compared to active and inactive controls on phuysical afunction and health related quality of likfe in older adults-systematic review & meta-analysis of RCT's. 2019, Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act, Sivaramakrishnan, Fitzsimon, Kelly,Ludwig, Mutrie, Saunders & Baker, PMCID