Why Yoga is so important for athletes and (actually) everyone else...

The pandemic shook our way to exercise. Gone are the day when we could gather 30 people in a small class and have everybody going crazy on a bike or exhaling loudly through the mouth. We needed to adapt, businesses and Yoga studios had to adapt. I feel very lucky to belong to Yyoga in Vancouver as they keep finding ways to stay open. No matter how online classes keep the ball rolling, going to a reel class and gathering with other people makes the practice of yoga complete.

Photos Anne Marie Comte. At the UBC Museum of Anthropology.

I started hearing seriously about yoga in 2002-2003, obviously knew about yoga before but being an athlete and consumed by the training, this was really just another activity like dancing or reading, for me it was totally unrelated to sports training. But living in Vancouver and not hearing about yoga was just an oxymoron. Back in those years the yoga tsunami was going full blast in the city, I was even late in my awareness, Lululemon was founded in 1998 and by the 2000s every single fitness related space offered yoga classes.

My first contact was indeed in a fitness Centre, just for a try, in a freezing cold space… I was puzzled and had difficulties connecting old Hindus wisdom with my body shaking and not able to bend or stretch.

Fast forward few years after, the Fitness Centre is no more, a building has replaced it, Lululemon is striving and in October 2006, I decided to give another go, this time in a hot place – The Bikram Yoga. Now we were talking! What an energy in the room, sometimes with some instructors, it felt a bit like the army or the Bolshoi, we were here to push and push and pushhhhhhh! But the studio was great, the staff, the owners, everybody was making sure that who ever entered the room, had a constructive and fulfilling experience. I stayed 11 years.

My ‘Bikram’ or I should say my ‘Vancouver Hot yoga’ years – Bikram after all his successes end up showing his real face: a bully and a sexual predator – taught me the discipline and the focus that can be acquired with yoga. The initial session was 90 minutes of the same 26 postures repeated twice (1 min and the second for 30 sec) in a 40 Celsius room with sometimes 50 people around. You have to focus on your own world, use your breathing and adapt whenever a posture is too difficult, you feel tired or the room is too hot, you use your mental to go through physically.

During an IRONMAN®, you need as much as possible, to be in an aerodynamic position when biking. Thanks to the stretching, my back felt totally fine and when pushing on the pedals as much as I could, I was thankful to the practice.

The beginning of 2018 started with a new direction for my triathlete’s endeavours. I already finished two IRONMAN® and was now a certified coach, this year, I wanted to try to qualify for the World Championship in Kona, meaning you have to race and finish in the 3 to 4 first in your age group. As soon as you want to race it, your preparation shifts and you need to incorporate so many other details than just swim, bike and run. The past experiences showed me that – One, to train way harder and longer and Two, to work on the mental fitness.

One of my big issue was fear. I knew what was coming regarding training load and very often, especially before falling asleep, I was building up fear and anxiety, yoga and meditation was a way to manage fear.

Yyoga is a studio offering diverse yoga and meditation classes with different teachers, sharing their passion with their own styles and personalities.

There’s tons of various yoga studios, styles and philosophies. The point is to find the one we like. We’re all different. Explore, usually each studio has a cheap introduction package. Just do it and try different places. Yoga is a great way to cultivate ourselves. A happy person brings happiness into the world – Win win here!!