Yoga has been a mainstay practice in the west for over a century. Today, yoga is hardly the fringe activity it once was, and most US cities host scores of yoga studios, and yoga classes are found at such mundane locations as gyms, retirement homes, and rec centers. While many people treat yoga as a workout, it’s also seen as a meditative act as well. There’s a good reason for this view. Yoga is a Sanskrit word meaning “yoke” or “union” and connected with ancient Vedic texts outlining practices to cultivate divine union. Westerners tend to associate yoga with the movement-based Hatha Yoga, but this is only one small facet of yogic tradition and practice.
My first exposure to yoga was when I was 19, when I became involved with something called Siddha Yoga, a devotional practice that included meditation, chanting, community meetings, and reading spiritual texts. But Siddha Yoga —made famous a decade after my involvement in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love —had little emphasis on the body or movement. A few years later, a friend introduced me to a movement-oriented practice called Ashtanga Yoga. My friend was a student of a well known Boulder-based teacher, Richard Freeman. Like other forms of Hatha Yoga, Ashtanga moves practitioners through a flowing set (vinyasas) of postures (asanas) performed in close connection with conscious breathing techniques (pranayama). At my high point, I was practicing Ashtanga 3-4 times a week, though the more serious students like my friend practiced every day. In the ensuing years, I’ve done Kundalini, Yin, Iyengar, and Bikram yoga (the latter rebranded as ‘hot yoga’ after some controversies with Bikram), though my time at Freeman’s studio set the bar for what I consider a serious yoga practice. For the committed practitioner, yoga wasn’t a drop-in affair (how I practice yoga nowadays), but a sacred, lifelong devotional practice to bring one’s body, mind, and spirit in closer union with God and their indwelling divinity.
Our bodies often reflect our inner states. An upright, aligned, and flexible body often reflects an upright, aligned, and flexible mind. A slumped, unbalanced, and tight body often reflects a slumped, unbalanced, and rigid mind. While the direction of causality may seem to flow from mind to body, yoga and other physical practices (teaser: like running) show the opposite to be true: that moving our bodies moves our minds.
One of the best examples of how bodies move the mind is breathing. Breathing is an autonomic function, meaning it will happen unconsciously, or it can be conscious. We don’t need to think about breathing while asleep, but we might take a deep breath when tense. Breathing is like life: it can be done automatically and unconsciously or intentionally and consciously. The former approach takes little effort and tends to yield unintended, often negative outcomes. The latter approach takes effort and tends to yield intentional, often positive consequences. This dual nature or breathing is likely why the word “spirit” is derived from the Latin word for breath.
While many might not think of it this way, I’d argue running is a form of yoga, where the runner can practice aligning the body, mind, and spirit with their divinity…or potential, if “divinity” has too much baggage.
One of the reasons running might not be seen as a spiritual practice is pedagogical. Though running’s history is older than human history, it doesn’t have yoga’s ancient texts and practices that were handed down and refined over hundreds, even thousands of years from guru to devotee. In running, the only thing resembling a guru is a coach, and a coach’s fealty to tradition is more likely to be seen as a liability than asset.
The other reason running may not be viewed as a spiritual act concerns the somewhat nebulous concept of intention. In much the way Hatha Yoga has morphed from devotional practice to fat-burning workout, running can be seen as a divine communion of body, mind, and spirit or a way to lose weight and crush races. The approaches look the same, but have different impacts on the runner: one fostering greater levels of contentment and peace, the other greater levels of striving and dissatisfaction.
The aforementioned considerations aside, I see running as having yogic characteristics. First, it’s very much a practice. Perhaps there are runners who have found their stride, a state of ideal running economy, where the body, breath, and mind is marshalled to propel the whole body forward. But for most of us, realizing our ideal stride is a lifelong practice, filled with progression and regression, learning, unlearning, and refinement. And just when we think we grasped it, it’s gone. Like my Ashtanga Yogi friends, most serious runners I know practice almost every day. These run practitioners find freedom and growth in a consistent, disciplined approach to running…and life.
Needless to say, running requires a lot of breath work, which has a huge impact on performance and running economy. It takes practice to harness and bring consciousness to the breath, especially in the grips of discomfort —this is every bit as true doing 400 meter repeats as it is holding a Warrior II pose.
Running is also a meditative act, a moment-by-moment meditation of how our bodies align with the path in front of us. The meditation can change depending on the on run format. Long runs can be like long sitting meditations: the mind may make many excursions, and yet we train ourselves to just sit there, or put one foot in front of the other. On a fast run, the awareness becomes fully absorbed by effort. On the trail, the awareness becomes absorbed by adapting the body to a constantly changing terrain. This focusing and settling of the mind is one of, if not the principal reason I run (frankly, there are easier ways to stay fit).
I adhere to a Buddhist view that we humans are born to realize our fullest potential. Buddhism calls this realized potential enlightenment, but similar concepts exist in most spiritual traditions and secular paths. It’d be nice to think we could simply make a decision to be that fully realized self, yet that’s seldom the case. Most of us need tools and tons of practice using those tools. Yoga, Hatha and otherwise, are wonderful tools and practices I respect and use regularly. But as assessed by my Strava feed, the main way I bring union to my body, mind, and spirit is running. It’s a tool and practice that continues to challenge me, an act that shapes my approach to my life and to the world, always asking, sometimes begging, for greater effort, balance, and calm. I think it deserves credit as the holy act it is.
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