Yoga is a mighty big word, often misused or used in a way that implies 'exercise' as it is matched up with Pilates and other forms of movement in the West. If I asked you to perform some sort of yoga, you might perform some lunge of a description, or perhaps bring your thumb and forefinger together and mouth 'Om'. It might look like Yoga, or at least the Yoga that you are aware of and seen via social media.
The first main point to stress is Yoga is part of the bigger family (Darsanas') of eastern practices such as Buddhism, these two practices in particular share many common features such as Mantra (repetitive singing and phrases) and Breath practices(meditation). The other point, and a fairly obvious one, is that the practices have been part of the fabric of human knowledge for thousands of years. Yoga is not a 20th Century phenomenon, lineage and the passing down of knowledge is a key aspect of my own teachers. They can track their teachers back to about the 10th Century.
The other point to stress, and I suppose being constructed here, is that looking at our running through an eastern lens does give us a more connective or more awareness to our mind/body connection. Western approaches have tended to view the mind and body as two separate entities. We treat the mind under the umbrella of psychology or psychiatry, whilst the body is treated under the discipline of medical science and rationalism. Nothing wrong here, without science and mathematics our understanding of our world would not be complete. I should point out that my first degree is in Physics. The moon is a long way without Newton:). However, the Chinese and Arab worlds had their forms of physical science and mathematics, long before the West emerged from the dark ages. This is not about West v East. There has been too much of that. Integration of western minds and eastern thoughts is the only direction of travel.
The eastern approach is, in general, to unify and treat the mind/body as one entity. Yoga means to 'connect'; bring together, here the use of the word Yoga is about bringing together and amplifying the connection of the mind and body to help us gain clarity, inner balance, lightness of mind and of the body. We use a similar word 'synergy' which means to add value when two or more things combine, but this word only gives a flavour, a taste of Yoga.
Through a Yoga lens the mind and body, cannot be separated. From a running perspective you will sense this, run angry, run tired, run sad, note how the feeling permeates your entire body and mind, regardless of how fit you are. Your mind has influenced the macro and micro state of your body. I remember teaching a group of teenagers in a school. Their gut feeling about the point of yoga was really interesting, they had less clutter and were keen to experience not only the physical practice but also the meditative and breathing practices. I stressed to one student 'we don't do Yoga, we are IN a state of Yoga, you should feel, light, clear and easy with your mind and body' (this is the Sattva state, more on this later). I did not give much thought to the interaction but the next week this particular student came back to me and said in her geordie tone 'how, sir, you waz reet, I was IN yoga definitely' and she smiled. This is the bigger point, when you and I run, we might feel in a state of ease and clarity, the troubles of the world have disappeared even for a fleeting moment, we sense the inner Self more than the I of roles, age, gender, health at the point you could say our minds are in a state of Yoga, the feeling of minimal effort, rhythmical breathing and inner calm is the state we sense. A yoga practice is about carrying this feeling into our wider lives, a yoga practice refines, amplifies and cultivates the mind/body connection.
I have coached a lot of runners who have a lovely lightness with their sense of Self, but I have coached an equal amount of runners ( of all abilities, ages and background) who have a very strong attachment to their running but they are almost running away from the fear of themselves, either trauma, stress or anxiety(this would be the Rajasic and Tamasic states of mind, more on these later:) ) .
Running books, of which there are plenty, have stressed either the training approaches or the mind/body connection. Books. George Sheehan's 'Running and Being' (Sheehan, 1978) and Sakyong Mipham 'Running with the mind of meditation' ((Mipham, 2012) bridged the gap between this mind/body connection. Other books such as the newly published 'Out of Thin air' (Crawley 2019) look at culture and the development of running, in this instance in Ethiopia, through an anthropological lens whilst Daniel Liebermann's book exercised (2020) takes a wider holistic of running as part of our evolutionary heritage. I could go on, the list is endless(I have a few books myself) as the continuum moves between western minds and approaches (technique and training) to eastern thoughts (flow and somatic experiences). Authors almost demand a 'piece of the running action', newness is to be shared, explored and sold on Amazon. However let me share an extended quote from one of my favourite books 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance' (Pirsig, Robert, M, 1974)and a view that newness and fashion results in plenty of distraction as we move from one idea to the next in a rapid scatter gun fashion. We are, in a way, as Jon Kabat-Zinn observes in a state of attention deficient.
"What's new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one
which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of
trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be
concerned with the question "What is best?," a question which cuts
deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the
silt downstream.(Pirsig, 1974, page 17)
They key phrase 'the silt of tomorrow' will you be leafing through that running book you bought in 10 years time? Probably not. Will you be running in 10 years time, I really hope so!
Why do we run? The action is primal, we are wired to move, walk and run. It is the most efficient way to increase aerobic capacity, to oil our engine and improve our metabolism. It is part of us, there is no escaping this basic fact. I am not stressing athletics and top end performance, these achievements of which I am a very real and engaged spectator are the ferrari's/F1 of humanity. The fine tuning sports car with mechanics and background staff that do support the athlete. However as Kipchoge stated 'without discipline, you can never be truly free'. Here we get the sniff and sense of something subtler going on when we choose to run.
Running is a discipline, I have coached and played many sports in my time. I was the annoying young man who was a 'jack of all trades' when it came to sports. The number 7 at cricket, the flanker, the badminton player, the doubles partner, the Volleyball spiker, the handicap 3 golfer aged 16, etc. However none of these sports are as pure as Running. There is a very straightforward connection to Yoga from a Running practice. This is the exploration, this is the journey. It will go beyond running for sure. Running is the tool by which to lever and explore the human condition.
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