Downward Dog Days in NYC 2009

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Bike Friday customer Colin Freestone is a long time yoga practitioner. "When I did a cycling trip and neglected my practice I became "unco" (uncoordinated)" he said. Read more.

BACK from a month of customer evangelizing in Arizona and Colorado I've headplanted myself into a 200-hour yoga teacher training course at a small, Chelsea studio called Joschi Body Bodega. Yup, as I told my Facebook friends, "this is the year for getting certified in everything you normally pay for". Certainly better than sinking money into high risk stocks!

I've noticed that my cycling life has probably created, shall we say, certain imbalances in my mortal coil. Crunchy knees, and a stiffish upper body which I sought to rectify by taking up poledancing. Only trouble with that one - you need a pole! I realized I can't be the only cyclist noticing these changes. I decided that with the right education, I could devise a yoga practise suitable for my bicycling brethren.

Why yoga?

Despite the plethora of new-fangled exercise regimes, yoga has been around for oh, 5000 years (according to chapter one of my course notes). Exercise fads coe and go like diets. They seem to use more and more complicated equipment. You can do yoga on a desert island - no fancy equipment required - just your body and gravity. Perfect for the New Sustainability.

Tonight I learned how important it was to breathe through your nose rather than your mouth. According to my notes, "mouth breathing can adversely affect the development of the thyroid gland. It can retard the mental development of children."

Yikes!

This seems to be ratified by Bike Friday customer and Nobel Laureate in Medicine, Lou Ignarro who I met at Desert Camp 2008.
"Breathing through the nose increases availablility of nitric oxide," he said. Why is that important? Read about it here.

Comments

Bob Immler said…
I think here, you should be GALFROMDOWNDOG
April 26, 2010 at 6:33 AM
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