Yoga & Hiking: Complementary Practices for Health and Wellbeing

In my free time, I’ve been spending more time hiking and backpacking in the last couple of years. It doesn’t hurt that I live in this amazing state that has so many beautiful trails to travel and discover. It’s become an important part of my weekly routine and a great complement to my yoga practice. Throughout the pandemic, it’s also been an important point of connection to the natural world. Here are 5 reasons why hiking can be complementary to your yoga practice and an important component to your health and wellbeing.

Legs up the Sign Summer 2018 on Mt. Katahdin. My first 4K footer turned into a 5K footer. Whoops!

1. Cardio & Strengthening - In my classes I tend to focus on yoga not only as physical movement, but a wholistic practice that includes the mind, body and spirit. That’s not to say you won’t find some physically challenging classes. However, most yoga classes you’ll find don’t really qualify as cardiovascular exercise. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) defines aerobic exercise as "any activity that uses large muscle groups, can be maintained continuously, and is rhythmic in nature." While it may seem like yoga would fit the bill here, especially the vinyasa style that I mostly teach and practice, a typical yoga class just isn’t going to raise your heart rate enough and sustain that elevated rate long enough to really qualify. Hiking on the other hand can do just that and if you’re carrying a pack with any weight in it (did you know one liter of water weighs 2.2 pounds?!) you’re definitely going to be keeping your heart rate up for a longer period of time. In addition to strengthening your heart, you’ll also be strengthening your legs and core. This has been incredibly good for me personally for managing my back pain. Balance this with a yoga practice and you’re on your way to a more well rounded fitness routine and a stronger body all around.

2. Time to disconnect from devices - Technology rules our lives more than ever these days and it’s influencing our health. It’s messing with our sleep patterns, causing physical issues like “text neck”, and may even be causing mental health issues in some people. While you’ll definitely see me using my cell phone to take pictures and occasionally navigate when I’m on the trail, being out of cell phone range for a even a little while can be an amazing way to refresh our tired minds. While your 75 minute yoga class can be a great small break (provided you actually turn the phone off), even a day hike can give us a greater opportunity to experience this relief from the everyday requirement of being connected to devices.

3. Mindfulness practice - When we aren’t able to respond to every text message right away we create a space and an opportunity to bring ourselves more to the present moment and practice mindfulness. There’s so much to discover out there if you’re paying attention! I can’t tell you how many times I nearly walked by something small like a red eft or a snail, but since I was actually in the moment outside I got to see the finer details. If I’m hiking with other people, we get to talk and interact (even if it’s between gasping breaths) in a way that is seemingly so rare these days. We might even help each other notice the small details we’d otherwise pass by. What a great way to take what we’re practicing on our yoga mats for 75 minutes off the mat and into our experiences with others for a longer period of time!

4. Letting go of watching the clock - Your yoga class is going to begin and end at a certain predictable time. 99.9% of the things we do in our daily lives are like this and we need that structure in our lives. However, every now and then, to be able to do something without a definite ending time, especially when it’s something we enjoy, can be *so* liberating. I’ll often go out on a hike and tell my husband if I’m not back by dark, that’s the time to worry. I purposely don’t put too definite an end on this time I’m spending with Mother Nature and myself. There is something really freeing and mentally restful about that. If it’s a great day and the weather is amazing and my body feels good I can go for hours. If the bugs are swarming and I forgot to bring enough food and my feet hurt I can go home. There’s a freedom there we don’t often get in our daily lives. It can help us tune back into a more natural rhythm and relieve stress in a way that’s hard to describe.

5. Change of scenery - We all live with a variety of stressors in our lives. Some of these are welcome and others might be more than we’d ever wish for. Sustaining ourselves physically and mentally over the long haul of life requires times to refresh, get a new perspective and look at the world differently. You’re probably going to have a yoga class that you go to on a regular basis at the same location with mostly the same people, but that class will be different in some way every time and that’s a really good micro break. Similarly, hiking can be a good micro break as well. Even if you walk the same path every day *something* will be different. Being able to notice that change and recognize it can relax your mind and relieve stress in a way similar to your yoga class

These are just a few of the benefits you might find by getting out on the trails this summer. I’m sure you’ll find even more reasons once you’re out there!

I’m considering guiding some outdoor experiences beyond the outdoor yoga classes in the late summer or early fall.

Interested? Leave a comment below!

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Leave No Trace is a Form of Ahimsa

One of the good things, in my mind, to come out of the pandemic is the number of people that are reconnecting to public lands and outdoor spaces. Given the extra hours all of us have been spending in front of screens to find safe forms of connection to others, to learn, to take a yoga class and so much more, time away from screens in the three dimensional world is all the more important. But if you’re going back into nature for the first time in awhile (or the first time), you may not understand the impacts of your presence. In this post I’ll give you a few ideas and some information that might help you draw your awareness practices from yoga out into your interaction with the outdoor world so that you can see the connection between Ahimsa and Leave No Trace and make your interactions with nature less negatively and more positively impactful.

Yoga is, in so many ways a practice of awareness. One of the most important points of awareness we can have, especially these days, is our impact on our natural world and outdoor spaces. Yoga philosophy goes beyond the physical postures and addresses our mental and emotional interactions with ourselves and others. Many people often describe these principles as the ethical principles of yoga because they guide our interactions and are a code of conduct. Ahimsa is a foundational tenant of yoga philosophy that asks us to do no harm to the best of our ability. That includes our thoughts, words, deeds and actions. Without awareness, none of that is possible.

Leave No Trace principles explain how we can bring more awareness to and minimize our impacts on nature, whether we’re spending time in the “backcountry” or the “front country”. Practicing these principles keeps our wild spaces wild, leaves things for others to experience as we got to experience them and may even encourage us to leave those spaces BETTER than when we arrived. They are also an ethical code in that they guide our interactions and conduct, specifically with the natural world in this case. Many of them may seem obvious when you look at them, but as with yoga, when you dive deeper into the details and can be truthful with yourself, you’ll find that there may have been things you missed along the way. The seven principles are:

1. Plan ahead and Prepare.

2. Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces

3. Dispose of Waste Properly

4. Leave What You Find

5. Minimize Campfire Impacts

6. Respect Wildlife

7. Be Considerate of Other Visitors

(© 1999 by the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics: www.LNT.org)

So in my mind, Leave No Trace is a form of Ahimsa. Both give us ethical guidance on how to interact with our world outside of ourselves. Both ask us to be kind and consider others whether that’s other people that we’re sharing the environment with or the plants, animals, etc. we may encounter when we’re outside. Both ask us to bring greater awareness to the impact of our actions from a perspective outside of ourselves and our immediate needs. And both ask us to recognize that when we are aware of our actions through thought, word and deed we can have great positive impact on our world.

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To inspire you to learn more about and put LNT into practice, here are some ideas, experiences, information and thoughts that I’ve been sharing recently on my social media channels. In preparing each of these, I certainly learned a few things along the way! I hope you enjoy some of the pictures from my outdoor adventures too!

Plan Ahead and Prepare

I had a conversation with my Dad on my way home from a recent hike where he was surprised to find out I had a complete change of clothing in my pack. I was hiking Mount Jackson, a 4000 footer here in NH and a place like many in the White Mountains where conditions can change on a dime and one false step might mean waiting for search and rescue. When I told my Dad I packed to stay overnight if I had to, he suddenly understood. While you might not be climbing mountains, even when you go out to the local park, a sudden change in weather, a wrong turn or an accident may have an impact on not just yourself, but that park you’re enjoying. So be sure to plan ahead and consider what you might need if you had to be out there longer than expected.⁠⁠

Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces

It’s what we all affectionately refer to as Mud Season here in New England and it’s a time when we may be having impacts on our local trails more than we might think. Some places in NH and VT actually “close” trails this time of year because most of us don’t really want to walk through that big puddle of muck that’s right in the middle of our path. But when we walk off the designated path we may be trampling plants that will never grow back and “blazing a trail” for the person behind us that was never meant to be there. With so many people trying to get outside these days due to the pandemic we’re seeing this impact on a lot of places. So the next time you come up to a mud puddle in the trail, knowing that you already planned ahead for it, channel your inner child and just jump right in!⁠

Dispose of Waste Properly

I know many of my students are dog owners and lovers (and you know I love dogs too), so I thought a reminder about dog poop in the outdoors might be helpful for y’all. Leave No Trace Center had some very interesting facts about why this is so important in a recent instagram post. We all know it’s unsightly, but there are far worse impacts.⁠
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The high nutrient value in dog food when left behind in dog poop and leached into streams from run off can cause algae blooms. Dog poop can have all sorts of bacteria and disease vectors that find their way into waterways in the same way. Thousands of POUNDS of poop get left behind in parks every year all across the country. No one’s saying you’ll always be perfect, but if you do plan ahead to pick up fido’s droppings you’ll be doing Mother Nature a solid (sorry, had to get a poop joke in there somehow! 😂💩)⁠
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Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CJZMBzijsM9/⁠

And please, please don’t leave that poop bag behind and think you’ll get back to it later. Things happen! Take it with you now!

Leave What You Find

I’m particularly guilty of this one, but we’ve all done it. You pick up that one cool rock you found on the trail and take it home with you as a souvenir of your time outside. Now imagine that the person after you does that. And the next one. And the next one. If not a rock, maybe a flower. Or an acorn. It seems like such a little thing. How could it possibly be that big a deal? One of my favorite little quotes is shown here. We can choose to do small things for the greater good or the opposite. Which will you choose next time you’re outside enjoying our amazing outdoor spaces?⁠⁠⁠⁠

Respect Wildlife

“A fed bear is a dead bear.” 😢⁠

⁠This is a sad but true saying I’ve heard a lot in the hiking community. We all know to bring in the bird feeders in the spring because Yogi (see what I did there 😉) is looking for his free lunch. But if you head out to a state park or other campsite in the warmer months it’s really something to think about there too. Most campsites in parks (not backcountry) have wash sinks and dumpsters just for this reason - to control food and waste smells to certain areas. And while it may not seem like a big deal to wash out a pot or plate and toss the dishwater into the woods or to leave the ketchup on the picnic table overnight, the food smells can attract all sorts of animals and make the next person’s experience a little “hairy-er”. Some estimates say that a bear’s sense of smell is 7 times better than a blood hound!! Let’s let Yogi find his own lunch, shall we?⁠

(Picture is the closest encounter I’ve ever had with the biggest bear I’ve ever seen in GSMNP in 2019! Video will be posted to social media on 4.24.21 if you’d like to see the bear in action!)⁠

I hope this post as inspired you to learn more about practicing Ahimsa in the great outdoors! Please visit https://lnt.org to learn more about the 7 principles and how you can practice them when you’re outside.

If you’re ready to take your yoga practice outside my Outdoor Yoga Class offerings begin May 2, 2021! To learn more and sign up

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Hiking and Yoga Reflections

Have you really looked at our logo for our Yoga and Hiking series? If you look closely you’ll see that what appears to be the air pathways in the lungs are actually upside-down trees! I purposely had this created (thanks Laurie!) to reflect a vision I had while driving back from one of my own hikes one day.

We talk about it in yoga all the time - the idea that we’re all one, all connected, all part of a bigger whole. I think we often think about other people in that context, but we don’t often think about all the other living beings that surround us.

As I looked at the trees around me on this drive home, I suddenly noticed how much their underlying structure - the trunk, limbs and branches - looked exactly like the illustrations we often see of human lung tissue and the pathways the air travels through in order for us to exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide. It then wasn’t a big leap for me to consider how that without these trees and their ability to photosynthesize, that life-giving oxygen I breathe would not be nearly so readily available. And if we take it one step further, the carbon dioxide I exhale feeds the trees and gives them the raw materials for their own life sustaining needs. And so the cycle continues.

It’s this kind of realization of our connectedness to nature and each other that I hoped our Yoga and Hiking Series would allow people to start to experience. Over the course of our 9 week series we had such a wonderful time taking in so many beautiful spaces within a 30 minute drive from the studio in Milford. We made new friends, took the time to really notice our surroundings and our own bodies, were inspired by the beautiful words of many great writers and poets (thank you Iris for your beautiful readings!) and saw pieces of Mother Nature that we may not have noticed without the awareness we cultivated through our yoga practice.

Thank you to everyone that joined us over the course of the summer! If you haven’t heard, we’re cooking up some ideas for continuing these experiences through the fall and into the winter, so stay tuned for more!

Here are a few pictures from some of our outings.

Don't Quit on a Bad Day!

As many of you know, I’ve gotten a bit more into hiking in the last couple of years. With an amazing state to live in like NH, it’s not hard to see why! I’ve been fascinated by the Appalachian Trail for years, which just happens to run through our beautiful state. In the context of our focus on Patience this month, I’ve been really struck by one bit of advice often given to people that are attempting to hike the whole trail.

If you aren’t familiar with it at all, the Appalachian trail begins in Georgia and runs up the east coast all the way to Maine. The part that runs through NH starts in Hanover and makes its way through the White Mountains, giving it a well deserved reputation for being some of the hardest miles on the trail. Just the idea of thru hiking this 2000+ mile footpath is daunting. Most people who attempt it start in February or March and end their journey in Maine sometime in September or October, hoping that the weather cooperates enough to allow a safe and snowless passage to the northern terminus on Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park.

For those keeping score, that’s about six months of walking through all kinds of weather with somewhere in the neighborhood of (for most people) 30-50 pounds of gear on your back. No small undertaking!

Needless to say, there are a lot of people that don’t make it the whole way. In fact, 1 in 4 that start don’t make it to the end. There are many reasons people pack it in and go home. I can only imagine when it’s raining, cold, you’re sore all over, you’ve got very little food left in your pack and you have to climb one more hill before you can finish for the day, every cell of your being must scream, “Why the *(#$&# am I doing this?!” Nevermind, having some kind of injury.

But the advice I keep seeing offered to the people that are thinking they can’t make it over and over again is, “Don’t quit on a bad day!” Interesting, right? Don’t most of us quit when things are at their worst? When we just can’t go one more (proverbial or otherwise) mile? When things look so bleak we just can’t fathom continuing or muster the energy to do so?

But consider the idea of waiting for a “good day”. In the case of the trail, you wait until the weather is beautiful, you’ve got a belly full of food, maybe a beautiful view, some nice people surrounding you and your body feels pretty good. You’re making progress, you’re dry and comfortable and then and only then, if you still want to go home and end your epic undertaking, you go home.

In my mind, that really speaks to patience and trust.

The patience to see yourself through until that good day comes is paired with the trust of knowing that the sun will shine again. If you didn’t trust the clouds would part, you would never be able to wait long enough to see it happen.

In our yoga practice, when we focus on the breath, we let go of our exhales only because we know that the next breath is right there waiting for us. If we didn’t have that trust how could we release our breath? We trust that some day we might make it into that difficult pose we’re trying to master. Through that trust we are able to bring ourselves back to the mat over and over and over again.

So maybe the next time you’re ready to throw in the proverbial towel, you think about all those people out there who are walking from Georgia to Maine and remember this great wisdom. Maybe you cultivate the patience and trust to remember that when the sun shines again, that might be the best time to make that big decision. The view from on top of that sunny hill will be far more clear and help you make the best decision possible.

[Incidentally, someone in our own back yard is going to attempt a thru hike in 2019! Best wishes to Sara Hikes! I’ll definitely be cheering you on!]