Loosen your hips, feel younger with yoga

Yoga gives athletes a mental and physical edge, instructor Eoin Finn says

So now, on top of everything, it turns out most of us have tight hips - and that's whether we're elite athletes or sedentary office dwellers.

Having tight hips means there isn't a lot of mobility in our hips, says Vancouver-based yoga instructor Eoin Finn, so that movements feel restricted and robotic, and we move inefficiently.

"And if you have any stress at all in your life, you are walking around with tight hips," he said from Calgary, a stop on a tour to promote his new DVD, The Pursuit of Happy Hips.

Finn, 40, will be in town Sunday to share his teachings in two workshops at Centre Luna Yoga in Old Montreal.

"Because body and mind are one connected unit, when we can't move in our hips, we feel old and rigid," he said.

Finn has been practising yoga since he discovered its benefits back in university as a warm-up to mountain biking, surfing and windsurfing. He has been teaching yoga for more than a decade and has counted among his students elite athletes, including Olympic skiers and National Hockey League players, for whom he created customized yoga programs to enhance their performance.

He said the idea for this DVD, his fifth, came about because the hips of so many winter athletes, including figure skaters, bobsledders and skiers, get tight because they use their legs so much. "The whole intention of the DVD was to do something that would help them," he said.

The video was shot in Whistler, B.C., with elite athletes who practise yoga - including Kimiko Zakreski, who is on the Canadian Olympic women's snowboarding team; Shannon Bahrke, an American freestyle skier and Olympic medallist, and Andrea Holmes, a Canadian para-Olympic skier. The video, produced in association with Lululemon Athletica, the yoga-inspired apparel company, also features someone demonstrating beginner modifications to the positions.

Finn said yoga will give athletes that extra edge they need from their bodies - and their minds.

As for the rest of us, "it helps you to be calm and centred when the pressure is on. Most of the time when we get flustered in life, whether we're giving a speech or performing at Olympic level, it is because we are not at our peak.

"The whole practice of yoga is one challenge after another; can you accept these challenges with calm and ease?"

Finn said thinks of himself as more than a yoga instructor; he sees yoga as a means to an end - a life of what he calls "blissology," which is "balancing our selfishness with love and connection and trying to find a perfect balance between those two polarities," he said. "Yoga puts you on the right path: It is a way to live a happy life and take care of others."

It takes awareness, though. "You have to take time to contemplate and consider the consequences of your actions," he said.

"You have to be aware of what the feedback is when you do something. That is the major thing we are missing as a species. Once you understand the pattern, you can see it in all things."

The importance, he said, is applying what you learn in yoga to all your relationships - personal relationships as well as those with the community and the environment."

source: montrealgazette