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| This is almost semantics, but I have been trying to mix Yoga and other exercise to get a few more calories burning and found that doing the exercises as Yoga (in a sense) is making it much more satisfying. What I mean by that is easiest for me to explain by example. Jumping rope can be a great cardio exercise, but like most cardio exrcises it is very repetitive and can get boring and tiresome. When I do Yoga, I begin and end the session with meditation and I am really meditating throughout the session to some degree. I have found that if I incorporate jumping rope bypicking up the rope and rising into Mountain Pose and then begining to jump (for some reason the alternating foot - "running in place" - style works best for me) I can maintain something of a meditative state and wind down with hands to feet going into Downward Facing Dog and I am back into my Yoga routine.
I have tried some other cardio exercises with less satisfactory results. Anything that involves a machine seems to blow me out of it as does anything that causes me to move very far.
As I said, it is mostly semantic curiosity, but can rope jumping be Yoga?
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| Fantastic. In line with your goal (given in your post), you are doing great. |
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| In the seventies, I was a distance runner. I occasionally did something I called "mantra running", which entailed repeating a mantra over and over while I ran. I said the rosary, as an "experiment". It's a Catholic tradition with very repetitive prayers. I ran FASTER without thinking about it...as I said, this was an experiment. It worked!  |
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| Yeah, when I used to run a lot (more difficult to do these days for various reasons), I often went into a trance like state. It's interesting to think about it in retrospect. When I was in high school in the early 70s, I ran cross country. My coach had us concentrate on breathing steadily and adjusting pace to breathing instead of breathing to pace. He never said anything about meditation and I don't know if he had any background in it or not. It was explained as a very logical thing - your most efficient breathing is fairly full breaths. Rapid shallow breaths don't clear out the old air so the air in your lungs has less oxygen in it. If you let your natural impulses get the better of you and started gasping for air, it was a downward spiral. So you would slow down a little instead until you found the pace that you could keep with the breathing. My mile times were terrible but for longer distances I did okay (because I ran every mile, the first or the fifth, at roughly the same pace).
This is one of those questions where the answer is sort of "Who cares?". It would be one thing if I were a teacher (I am not) and was planning to have people jump rope in a Yoga class. When I look at it that way, I think the answer is that it isn't Yoga. But my practice is a conglomeration of things and the more I can do in a meditative state, the better.
On a tangent, a friend has pretty much convinced me that I really need to work on power more right now anyway. Cardio becomes much more effective at burning calories after you gain more muscle mass and I am not exactly at my peak right now. I will still do some cardio work but it isn't going to have a prominent place in my daily routine just yet. |
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| All life is yoga. |
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| Jumping rope can be Yoga with the appropriate mindset.
When you say cardio, are you referring to activities for weight loss or actually working the heart?
If you want to work the heart (and assuming you have no previous BP/heart conditions) then spend as long as possible in headstand.
Jonathon
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| jonnie - 2007-05-10 7:00 AM
Jumping rope can be Yoga with the appropriate mindset.
Jonathon
Fantastic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
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| Thank you |
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| My running has been yoga for me for years, without even knowing it was that when I first started. For one thing, I would never run any races, because the thought of combining a competitive element with something that I do that relaxes me (though not relaxing per se) is counterintuitive to me. For me, running has always been about synchronizing my breathing with my movement, and attempting to feel light in the air with my strides. It's such a simple repetitive movement that I'd get lost in it, occasionally even forgetting that I'm running, just a still point as the scenery moves past me. Energetically, when I run, my heart opens. It's amazing, considering that's the one area in my normal everyday life that is constantly blocked. Well, more protected than blocked, which is by my own subconscious doing, for sure, but still, certainly not ever open by its own accord. But as my feet make constant contact with the ground in my stride, I experience that expansiveness that is usually such a struggle for me. I don't think it's a runner's high, since I don't feel especially "high" or especially anything. I'm just balanced for once, and it feels very right and good. I don't run far, nor very fast, but whatever running I do, it's to find that still point in me that isn't bothered by anything, not even the aching in my body from the miles that I'm covering. If that isn't Yoga, I don't know what is.
Edited by OrangeMat 2007-05-10 10:34 PM
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| Oddly enough, since I posted that I have varied my feelings on the idea. I do a little yoga to stretch every day and generally try to end with a short meditation, but for the bulk of a day's exercise routine, I either run, do yoga or weighttrain with dumbbells anddon't mix it up in the session but rahter I usually do some thing diferent each day. The cardio is heart exercise and my BP was 116/71 the most recent time I checked it. I have lowered both numbers about 15% from what they used to be and lost some weight. |
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| I competed in wrestling until I was in my forties . No big deal but I developed many injuries and my muscles became very tight.At present I go to the gym 5 days/wk. -A combination of cardio ,weights , with a small splattering of yoga . I find that without the yoga I seise up . I'm not sure how much of the yoga contributes to my cardio development but it is an essential compontment of my training regime . My yoga trainer assures me that yoga by itself does all . I haven't been sold on this |
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| Many personal trainers disagree that yoga does it all. The one I am thinking of gets irked at the idea that yoga is a panacea, or that anything is a panacea for that matter.
I understand the perspective he has. It is one of science, research, study, text books. And these things are good. But they are not definitive either and there's simply no feeling to them. They uniformly discount the fact that the human being is, well, human! This muscle is an agonist and that muscle is an antagonist. This muslce only releases this way. Yoga does this but doesn't so that (usually the reference is to pulling or devloping the middle fibers of the latisimus dorsi). Yes yes Tim but yoga isn't asana dude.
A well rounded yoga practice can embody health and well being. It may not fit into "fitness" but so what. I'd much rather have a health kidney and liver than six pack abs or a toned tushy.
With yoga as vast as it is, it is sad when folks chose to see it only as "exercise" to be scheduled in between work and dinner. Sure some of those people deepen their practice and yes everyone is at a different stone on the path. But my goodness, there's so much there. Imagine walking into Home Depot on a day where everything is free and walking out only with one nail. Yikes!
Edited by purnayoga 2007-05-15 1:09 AM
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| It sounds like perfectly good yoga asana to me... because your intention is to be mindful.
I like to use my Sun Salutations as cardio work-out too. Do 12 salutations as energetically (&mindfully as possible). I break ourt in a sweat then relish the corpse pose afterwards! |
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| "Mindfulness" and "speed" are exponentially diverging concepts. |
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Cardio as Yoga?
