Football players and yoga? Two years ago the San Francisco Giants won the Superbowl. And, just a few weeks ago, the Seattle Seahawks won the 2014 Superbowl. Did the two team's practice of yoga give them the winning edge???
I know, I know. The Superbowl ended several weeks ago and it may seem very late to bring this up. However, just last week when I was catching up on reading a recent issue of the Yoga Journal, I learned that a number of professional sports teams, including the Seattle Seahawks include meditation and yoga in their training. And this factoid was published before this year's game.
Two years ago, I wrote a post about then upcoming 2012 Superbowl in which the San Francisco Giants competed again the New England Patriots. Before the game, I learned that the Giants practiced yoga and I speculated in my post as to whether the Giants' would have an advantage going into the competition (biased as I am toward yoga's benefits!).
There's no way to prove any correlation between practicing yoga and winning the Superbowl.. but, the Giants did win! Two years later, the Seattle Seahawks also won. Does this make you go "hmm" or does it make you go "omm..." (sorry for the bad joke!).
The Seahawks' head coach Pete Carroll encourages his players to meditate daily and the team incorporates yoga into its strength-training sessions. The Seahawks team consultant and sports psychologist Michael Gervais says that meditation helps the players improve their focus and mental endurance during games. Their more "mindful" approach (i.e., their heightened awareness) to the game may help improve their performance.
I do not have a list of all the professional sports teams (or for that matter amateur sports teams either) who include yoga and meditation in their training. And, even if all teams practiced yoga, there would have to be a winner and a loser in every game, regardless.
However, I did find it more than coincidental that in two recent Superbowl games, the winning teams happened to practice yoga. And, I am not the only yogi to ponder this. I just came across a blog post (www.eatflowseat.com) from a yoga instructor and hot yoga enthusiast named Terri, who had the same realization the night of the Superbowl this year. She observed and wrote the following in her blog:
"Huh. Something was…different. The way they were moving. It wasn’t so much the plays they were executing, but the mechanics of their body movements. Not like any football players I’d ever seen before. And then suddenly Jermaine Kearse caught a pass from quarterback Russell Wilson in a bee’s nest of opposing players. In what they’re now calling the pinball machine, he spun on a dime in three separate rotational, mind-like-water moves to evade tackle by five guys diving for him from all different directions. He should have been brought down by either of the first two, even by my untrained eye. But his body kept twisting, and spinning…
The slow motion replay dropped in the last remaining piece of the puzzle for me. Yes. I’d definitely seen the blueprint to that move before. And then it hit me. Hot damn. Could it be?
Those dudes have been practicing yoga!!!!" What an astute observation, Terri!
What I said in my February 5, 2012 post about the Giants' practice of yoga bears repeating,
"I don't usually talk about athletes and yoga because I am all about motivating "regular" people to practice yoga. But, here's what we can recognize from football players' practice of yoga - if it can help them become more flexible, less injury prone, and able to cope with anxiety, can't it help you do the same? "
You don't have to be in the NFL or on a professional sports team to benefit from yoga! Just sayin'... So go roll out your mat - now!
Yours for being the winner of the "Superbowl" of your life by practicing daily yoga,
Laura Venecia Rodriguez, the Beginner's Yoga at Home Mentor
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