Cultivating Agility with Yoga

by Baxter and Nina

Nina's Great Aunt Isa, who danced with Nijinsky

Once when Nina was flying across the country and she was sitting in the middle seat, she reached that point when she really, really needed to go the restroom. The problem was, she was flying with her yoga teacher, and he was sitting in the aisle seat, deep in meditation. So rather than disturbing her teacher by asking him to stand up, she just quietly stepped over him using the two armrests. Later on, she told her teacher how two of the flight attendants had stopped her to talk to her about how she had climbed over a meditating yoga teacher. She said, “They seemed more fascinated by the fact that I climbed over you than by the fact that you were meditating.” He just nodded sagely and said, “Duh!” She thought for a moment and said, “Oh, you mean, they’re not used to seeing a woman my age being so agile.”

Agility means having the coordination and reflexes to respond quickly and nimbly to physical challenges in the real world. Whether this translates into being able to navigate through a crowd, dance the salsa with a partner, or dribble a soccer ball down a field, being agile allows you to move through all the activities of your life with grace and ease (not to mention preventing injuries).

Learning a wide range of yoga poses helps you maintain and even increase agility because the subtle movements you make as you do them wake up the nerve endings in your joints and muscles (your proprioceptors) that send signals to your brain to let you know where you are in space, which direction you are heading and how fast you are going. This increased body awareness will aid you not only in mastering your yoga poses but also every other physical activity in which you engage.

And by learning new sequences of yoga postures—especially dynamic sequences, when you change poses after just few breaths—your coordination and response time is challenged and improved. Even making small changes in your flow sequences, such as Sun Salutations, will encourage you to stay attentive and nimble.

While you might not be climbing over meditating yoga teachers any time soon, there is a good chance you’ll want to get in and out of a kayak without tipping it over, walk down a steep, rocky path, or squeeze yourself and your suitcase into a crowded train. A regular yoga practice will keep you prepared for that—and more.

And with a good mix of held and dynamic yoga practices, you are cultivating better balance and reducing the chance of falls, which, as many of you may know, are a leading cause of morbidity (increased chance of disease) and mortality (death) in the elderly.

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How Yoga Affects Breathing

by Baxter

Jellies by Melina Meza

As I was reading an interview in my latest yogauonline.com newsletter with physician and yoga therapist Loren Fishman, MD and his collaborator Ellen Saltonstall called Can Yoga Preserve Freedom of Movement? (hell, yeah!), a short statement from Dr. Fishman about how physical movement and the breath are connected caught my eye:

“…something that is really very poorly recognized in the medical or the yoga literature: that moving your joints is one of the strongest stimuli to breathing properly and deeply. There are little movement receptors inside all of our joints, and they send signals that go directly and indirectly to the apneustic center, one of the centers in the brain that regulate breathing.”

You may remember that a while back Nina and I wrote a post Falling for Yoga Myths about some of the things that really do stimulate and regulate our breath, and that I also did a post How Breath Affects Your Nervous System detailing the relationship between the Autonomic Nervous System and the breath. Part of my purpose for writing these posts was to correct some common misconceptions about breathing that continue to exist in the yoga community. You may recall that I mentioned that the levels of carbon dioxide (NOT oxygen) in the blood stream are monitored by the deep brain structures, and it is the CO2 levels that have some of the greatest influence on changes in breathing moment by moment. In addition, the brain and the periphery of the body are also assessing the acid/base balance of the blood, or the pH.

But now, Dr. Fishman adds in a new twist to our understanding of breath! Turns out that the same nerve receptors we have talked about in relationship to balance, called proprioceptors, which are located in the muscles, tendons and joints, affect breathing, too. Not only do they tell the brain where you are in space, how fast you are moving and in which direction, but also the movement of joints, tendons and muscles stimulate part of the brainstem that regulates breath called the apneustic center. Located in the part of the brainstem called the pons, the apneustic center is involved in stimulating our inspiration or “in breath.” Movement—physical movement—stimulates increased depth of breathing, known technically as “hyperpnea.” In a serious, life-threatening situation in which the breathing was slowing and shallow, moving someone’s limbs could stimulate the breath back to healthier levels. Cold water and pain can have a similar effect on breathing.

This connection between bodily movement and improved depth of breathing is helpful news, especially when it comes to people who have been previously inactive, have become stiff, suffered a loss of vitality and notice that their breathing does not respond well to physical stresses such as an increase in work load for their body. By beginning to move the joints and limbs systematically, as we would do in a beginning level yoga class, we are (without even mentioning how to breath) going to stimulate an increase in the depth of breathing. I am sure many of you have had this experience: at the start of class, during an initial sitting meditation or centering practice, the breath and chest feel slightly tight and restricted, but when your attention is brought to the breath at the end of a balanced yoga asana practice, the breath seems to have greater freedom and depth with less effort. This body-to-brain connection of the proprioceptors and the pons of the brainstem are likely at work. Just one more reason to keep moving your body!

To read all kinds of nerdy details on the physiology of breathing, check out the article Regulation of Breathing.

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