BENEFITS OF
YOGA FOR SPORTS

10 ways yoga can benefit a sportsperson

1. Mind-Body Awareness

Yoga creates an improved mind-body awareness and connection, refines sports people’s awareness of their technique and enables them to focus better. Yoga is effective in training and strengthening the mind for improved focus and endurance – “Mind over matter” so to speak.

2. Equanimity

Yoga assists us in being able to note a feeling in the body and then to let it go and move on – this equanimity is useful in sport when you lose your cool or become stressed, especially in very competitive sports situations.

3. Flow State

In yoga, we are able to train ourselves into a “flow state” of mind and body, which creates a heightened calm, aware and alert state where performance peaks. This state is essential for success in competitive sports and also for learning new skills.

4. Body Efficiency

Yoga structures the body in more efficient way for improved breathing and for setting up healthy movement patterns.

5. Recovery Aid

Yoga physically aids recovery after intense exercise.

6. Stress Reduction

Yoga also activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which reduces stress and speeds up recovery.

7. Improved Breathing

Yoga breathing exercises and breath awareness, help to improve breathing volume, control and efficiency.

8. Injury Prevention

Yoga can help to prevent injuries – maintaining a healthy range of movement in joints and balancing the body helps to prevent many overuse injuries. Keeping the body more agile through yoga is especially good for endurance athletes, who repeat actions and movement patterns extensively.

9. Improved Performance

A regular yoga practice can make you better balanced, more agile and more ambidextrous. This all improves sports performance.

10. Faster Reflexes

Yoga speeds up your reflexes, which is invaluable in sport.

A great teacher from an authentic base of multiple disciplines. Clear, exploratory, fun, relevant. It has changed the direction of my teachings. I await the next course!

Diana Dearle

Jim is a very knowledgeable and experienced guy. His passion for sharing yoga is very evident, and he has a very reassuring, calm and grounding presence as a teacher. This is a great energy to learn with.

Scott Lowe

For the majority of us, yoga is about our own limits. For me is not about doing posture X – it’s about trying to do it, changing physiologically as you try, learning from it, making the impossible possible and defining a new limit. For that reason alone it contributes to the whole of my life.

Chris Locker

Yoga practice was a deciding factor in my success as a batsman” As a Junior, I would start my day early with some yoga stretching followed by focused breathing practice. Then at seven am I would go directly to batting practice and bring that calm focus along with me

VVS LAxman – Indian Cricket Team

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