W hen the world of the business traveler turns upside down — whether because of a missed connecting flight, lost luggage or an uncooperative volcano — Steve Boerema knows just what to do.
He finds a convenient corner in the airport and stands on his head.
Boerema, who is 45 and lives in St Augustine Beach, Florida, travels an average of 150 days a year, most of them overseas, as a consultant to the yachting industry. He has also been practicing yoga daily for four years. That practice has now become as essential a part of his business travel as his frequent-flier mileage.
“Initially, it helped me dealing with homesickness and melancholy,” said Boerema, who is married with two teenage children. “All of us on the road suffer some sort of guilt, being away from our families. Yoga really calmed my head, helped keep me from thinking about things I had no control of.”
Several million Americans practice yoga at least once a week, according to surveys by the sporting goods industry. Many are college-educated professionals in their 30s and 40s, demographics that match those of business travelers, so it is logical that they would adapt their practice to their life in transit.
There is even an app for it: Yoga Journal magazine’s iPractice 2.0, a mobile yoga class for iPhone and iPod Touch. “I knew I had to find something to keep me centered,” says Sarah Howell, a 29-year-old sales trainer for a software company based in Austin, Texas. She started traveling for work three years ago and is now on the road two to three days a week, most months of the year.
Howell, who writes a business
travel blog called the Road Warriorette
(roadwarriorette.com), describes herself as “a better person and certainly a better employee,” when she practices yoga while on her business trips. “I’m better able to focus on the task at hand,” she said.
“Research has shown that those who practice yoga and Pilates have improved sleep quality,” said Michele Olson, an exercise physiologist at Auburn University-Montgomery in Alabama. “That’s a big plus for travelers.”
“If you’re sitting for hours on a plane, your hip flexors and hamstrings and other muscles shorten, and we know that can lead to back problems,” Olson says. “Yoga, because it involves a lot of moves and positions that lengthen those muscles, can be very beneficial in combating joint stiffness at the hip joint and preventing back problems.”
Christopher Berger, an exercise physiologist at the University of Pittsburgh, is leading a task force for the American College of Sports Medicine called “Exercise Is Medicine on the Fly,” designed to promote physical activity among travelers and airport employees.
“Since 9/11, we have very long lines, unpredictable searches and more demands on people,” he said. “There’s certainly psychological stress associated with that. One of our goals for this task force is to get people to use airports as places to blow off that steam.”
Some major American airports
do seem to be trying to offer passengers more opportunities to get blood flowing instead of boiling. Detroit Metropolitan Airport, for example, has a marked
1.6km walking trail on the airport grounds, and so-called Reflection Rooms in each of its two main terminals
where yoga and meditation can be
comfortably practiced.
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