Yoga, Exercise and Health
People often ask me how I started doing yoga. Basically, I started doing it for exercise. 20 years later my relationship with yoga has evolved, but it sill provides me with my primary outlet for what is essentially exercise – a physical activity that helps me stay healthy. And while I also do yoga as a kind of meditation practice, training my mind to be attentive and present, the many health benefits I’ve experienced doing yoga remain a significant motivation for me.
Yoga can be used as effective therapeutic tool for a wide variety of health issues. Either personally or with my students I have applied yoga as a modality for reducing or eliminating back pain, knee pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, headaches, colds, indigestion, exhaustion, depression and anxiety to mention just a few. And while there is certainly a lot more to yoga than exercise and health, it’s not a bad place to start.
Yet for yoga or really ANY activity or exercise program I am doing for health reasons to be effective I need to be clear about one thing: what is health? The definition of health can be quite broad. For the purposes of this post I’m going to limit the scope of this discussion on health to that of a given individual person. I will also not go into a discussion of digestive health. This is not because I don’t don’t consider it to be important, but because health of the digestive system is mostly related to diet and this is a topic for another post. If I may simply say for now that diet and exercise are the keys to good health and we set aside diet for later, how does exercise contribute to health?
Let’s suppose that I am eating a good diet but I’m still having health problems, what am I missing? We’ve all heard the expression “you are what you eat.” The “you” in this expression is the physical body, which is made up of a variety of different tissues which can be further broken down into a variety of different specialized cells. Each of these cells is like a tiny specialized “you” in that they need food and oxygen to live, work and reproduce. Each cell also produces wastes that it needs to eliminate so that these wastes don’t impair the cell’s ability to function and replicate properly.
A somewhat more accurate expression might be “you are what you eat and the air you breath.” The little “you’s,” your cells, need both nutrients from the food you eat and oxygen from the air you breath and they receive these via blood flow to the tissues. When my blood flow is good and my diet is good, then the cells of my various tissues receive a good supply of nutrients and oxygen and the wastes from cellular metabolism are removed in a timely fashion. When my blood flow is not good my cells are not fed properly and their wastes accumulate and impair the health of the tissue. Therefore if my diet is good but my blood flow is not good my tissues are not necessarily benefiting from my good diet.
Certainly on the physical level, and to a great extent the psychological level as well, the degree to which a person is healthy is determined by the health of that person’s tissue, and the degree to which a person’s tissue is healthy depends on the degree to which that person’s tissue receives good blood and lymph flow. A major function of the muscles in our body is to pump blood and lymph into and out of the tissue. For a given muscle to function well as a pump that muscle must be able to contract and relax well. Therefore the degree to which a tissue receives good blood flow is determined largely by the degree to which our muscles can contract and relax well.
Few would argue with the assertion that for a person to be healthy that person’s cardiovascular system must be healthy and functioning well. In the U.S., heart disease is the leading cause of death. To promote cardiovascular health and therefore health and longevity we are encouraged to strengthen our hearts with cardiovascular exercise. The logic of this view is that if the heart is strong and can pump blood more effectively, then it can deliver more oxygen to tissues and better support the health and function of those tissues.
Unfortunately the above view of cardiovascular health ignores the role of other muscles in the body and their relationship to cardiovascular health. Most of the oxygen carrying blood in our bodies resides in the smaller vessels known as capillaries. The vast majority of these capillaries and therefore blood in general resides in our muscle tissue. When muscles contract and relax they pump blood from these capillaries into and out of the surrounding tissues. In fact our muscles have the capacity to pump much more blood than our heart. For this to happen, however, our muscles need to contract and relax well. The better a muscle contracts and relaxes the better it pumps and the more it helps to support the health of its tissue and the tissues around it.
For each muscle in the body there is a mechanism which involves that muscle, the brain and the nervous system that determines that muscle’s length. The brain and nervous system record and maintain each muscle at a particular length and often, this length is far from optimal. Muscles that are at an optimal length are strong and flexible. Muscles that are not at an optimal length tend to be weak and tight and these muscles don’t contract and relax well and therefore don’t pump blood and lymph effectively. Such muscles and the tissues surrounding them do not receive good blood flow and this impairs the health of these tissues. Cardiovascular exercise will do little to address this issue as most forms of cardiovascular exercise such as running or cycling make our muscles tighter.
My experience doing yoga therapy over years has shown me that, most of us have muscles that are simply too tight to be effective blood/lymph pumps. This leads to degradation of tissues which eventually leads to pain which eventually leads to further degradation and more serious health problems. Luckily with a bit of know how and some reasonable effort we can increase muscle length and improve our pumping system. To do so most of us need to emphasize postures and activities that emphasize increasing muscle length, such as stretching, rather than activities that emphasize muscle contraction such as weight training. The good news for those wishing to be “stronger” is that longer muscles are stronger muscles in that they can contract more quickly and more strongly and also have more resilience and better recovery when subjected to stress.
Furthermore, for a muscle to be strong it needs to be working in the first place. In my practice I see an almost universal tendency for clients to come to me with postural tendencies where simply by virtue of the position they are holding their bones, many large and important structural muscles are not being asked to do any work. If I stand or sit or walk with my bones aligned poorly, that is, in a way where many postural muscles that are designed to contribute to my movement are not working, then these postural muscles are not contacting and relaxing and pumping blood and lymph.
In addition, when important postural muscles whose job it is by design to support me when standing, sitting and walking don’t do that job, then the stress of these activities falls to my joints. When this is the case I put undue stress on my joints and they are subjected to significantly more wear and tear than they would be if my postural muscles were working properly and my bones better aligned.
From the standpoint of those interested in yoga this is good news as much of what we do in yoga involves increasing muscle length and muscular action with an emphasis on alignment. However, when doing yoga we need to be clear that we are lengthening the muscles that need lengthening and activating the muscles that need activating and not using the natural mobility of our joints as a substitute. This is the reason that understanding alignment in postures is so important. Deliberate and intelligent alignment of our bones in a posture will make the difference between a posture that promotes health and one that creates problems.
For those who don’t do yoga, alignment is still an important element of any activity, particularly one intended to promote health. In fact, if we practice sound alignment during our regular daily activities then everything we do can be in support of better health. I recommend that everyone, even those who do yoga, practice alignment principles when standing, sitting and walking since these are the activities we spend most of our time doing. If we incorporate good alignment and bio-mechanics into our daily activities then gradually all of our movements become health promoting movements, including those like in yoga that are intended to be.