Om on the Range: A foundation in the forest

AMC Outdoors, May 2003

To begin with, there is this oft-overlooked fact: Yoga’s roots are firmly planted in the outdoors. As our instructor, Josephine Russell, pointed out, “Yoga started thousands of years ago in the forest, not in a building or in a temple.” First practiced in India, yoga — which means “union” in Sanskrit — is an age-old art of unifying body, mind, and spirit. It is, simply put, an attempt to connect the individual with the universe.

While the literal relationship between yoga and the outdoors has diminished over time, especially in the West, Russell points out that many postures so carefully practiced in studios and gyms today bear names gleaned from nature: Mountain, Tree, Cobra, Rabbit, Camel, Half-Moon, Crow. That’s why the New Hampshire-based yoga teacher and long-time hiker decided to combine her two passions.

Today Russell has expanded her classes to include outdoor workshops in her home state and in the Catskills, finding satisfaction in the migration. “When I teach indoors, I’m always saying, ‘Reach for the sky, reach for the ground,’” she says. “But outside, you really can.”

As Matt Solan, senior editor of the national Yoga Journal, points out, “Most studios try to capture the essence of nature with lighting, temperature, or music. But it feels so much better outdoors. It’s the same with any exercise: if you’re running on a treadmill, you’re getting the workout, but it doesn’t compare to running outside.”

The magazine estimates that 15 million people participate in yoga in the U.S. today, compared to 5 million in 1998 and a few hundred thousand in the 1980s. Along with that growth has come an overlap with other activities, says Solan, as more people are exposed to yoga through health and fitness magazines and in gyms. Now it’s not only those who are loyal to its roots who take yoga outside, but outdoor enthusiasts who want to integrate its physical and mental benefits into activities they already enjoy.

When Russell started teaching yoga and hiking six years ago, she says, she hadn’t noticed the combination anywhere else in the country. But today, enter “yoga” and “hiking” in an Internet search engine, and page after page of offerings come up. Yoga and hiking trips to the Andes, the Berkshires, the Alps, Red Rock Country; in daylong, weeklong, monthlong formats; for men, women, families, Elderhostel groups. Outdoor retailer Eastern Mountain Sports even has a fitness and yoga page on its Website. This ancient practice, it seems, is moving back to the forest.

The AMC has offered hiking and yoga workshops for the last six years in the Catskills and at Mohican Outdoor Center in the Delaware Water Gap. The programs, which total about seven a year, consistently fill, usually with urbanites eager to get out into nearby woods and waters. “Being in nature restores your sense of balance,” says Anthony Sadasiva, who teaches the course at Mohican. “You become aware of the water flowing, the trees, the earth. It’s like nectar, listening to the birds, hiking with your friends, connecting your inner and outer nature.”

Sadasiva, 43, grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., where, as a young child, “my whole world was the abundant nature of our backyard.” His curiosity about yoga formed at the same age as his interest in the outdoors: He would often watch a yoga program on TV that preceded his favorite cartoons. He began formally studying the philosophy as a teenager, and leads classical yoga and teachers’ training courses year-round today through the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres and his own organization, Yoga Synthesis. Sadasiva, who enjoys hiking and camping and has devoted most of his life to living at an ashram, is one of many who have found solace in practicing yoga outdoors, both professionally and personally.