Might Yoga Help Prevent Jet Lag? It’s Not That Much of a Stretch

I’m a frequent traveler and a sometime student of yoga. These two activities, one draining, the other restoring, can converge in beneficial ways, I have discovered.

About 28 million Americans pursue yoga, according to the Yoga Research and Education Center in Santa Rosa, Calif. The ancient Indian physical and spiritual regimen that has swept this country has even made a showing in the travel industry. Yoga retreats abound in beautiful places: the pine forests of Montana, the beaches of Hawaii. You can take a yoga cruise or vacation at a yoga center, as I did last year at Kripalu in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts.

People who don’t know cow and cat from downward-facing dog--two common yoga poses--and wouldn’t dream of taking a vacation devoted to tying oneself in a knot may notice that yoga is turning up in travel in other ways. JetBlue, the economy airline that started service two years ago, teamed up with Crunch Fitness, which operates 19 health clubs nationwide, to design an Airplane Yoga card, placed in the seat-back pouch. It shows passengers how to keep relaxed and comfortable by doing four simple exercises without ever leaving their seats.

JetBlue marketing Vice President Amy Curtis-McIntyre thinks of the cards as small, powerful gestures of humanity, uncommon in airline travel. “Yoga practitioners are thrilled to see them,” she says. “Others just laugh at the unexpected and delightful surprise.”

Yoga has arrived in travel gear shops too, in the form of portable decks of cards that help travelers remember the different poses. Cyndi Lee, a New York yoga teacher and author of “Om Yoga: A Guide to Daily Practice” (Chronicle Books, 2002), and a record producer friend created “Yoga in a Box” (distributed by Hay House in Carlsbad, Calif.). It comes in beginner, intermediate and advanced levels and includes two yoga CDs, a yoga deck, a yoga strap (used to help practitioners with stretches), a stick of incense and a candle. When the box is open, it looks a little like an altar.

Lee thinks yoga helps rejuvenate travelers after long, cramped, dehydrating, jet-lag-inducing plane trips. But you don’t have to take it to extremes. “If you have just one minute, do downward-facing dog,” she says. “Holding it that long is hard.” In seven minutes, she says, a yoga student could do downward-facing dog (with palms and feet on the floor and the body in an inverted V), a twist, a headstand and that favorite yoga position called savasana, or corpse pose, which involves lying on your back. Upon arrival, Lee suggests a 20-minute practice that includes a simple inversion pose, lying on the floor on your back with your legs propped against a wall; downward-facing dog, which moves the blood around the body and opens up the joints; cow and cat, a series of contractions and back arches done on your hands and knees; any twist; and a sinus-cleansing form of breathing that involves quick, forceful exhalation.

Of course, different yogis have different approaches gleaned from years of intensive travel to teach workshops and retreats. John Friend, the developer of a popular yoga system called Anusara, travels 250 days a year, including three world tours, but he never feels jet-lagged. He favors a strong practice on arrival, emphasizing seven- to 10-minute holds of inversion poses such as shoulder stands and headstands that help travelers feel reenergized. For beginners, he suggests the same easy legs-against-a-wall posture that Lee likes, held for 15 minutes. “I’m not sure anyone knows why reversing the blood flow [in an inversion] works so well. But it definitely affects vital force,” Friend says.

Baron Baptiste, another popular American yogi who teaches students an athletic form of “power yoga” at his Cambridge, Mass., studio, does get jet-lagged and feels the pain of flying in his lower back, hips, neck and shoulders.

“Flying makes the body contract. Yoga is an amazing way to work out the kinks,” he says. He does his daily yoga routine as soon as he arrives at his destination.

As a former student of his, I can attest to the fact that it is grueling and sweat-producing. The idea, he says, is to “rinse your body out like a sponge so you feel clear physically and mentally.”

Santa Monica yoga teacher Shiva Rea combines a light yoga practice on arrival with her knowledge of Ayurvedic medicine to rebound after a trip, keeping hydrated by drinking water and taking steam baths. This rectifies physical imbalances caused by flying, she says. And Elise Browning Miller, coauthor of “Life Is a Stretch: Easy Yoga Anytime, Anywhere” (Llewellyn Publications, 1999), makes sure she schedules an extra day in her trips so she can do her own yoga practice before getting down to the work of teaching. “Not planning too much in one day helps to guarantee a practice,” Miller says. “I have learned to say no to things. That’s a hard one.”

I believe there’s a yoga state of mind that can enrich travel. For Friend, it involves learning how to be comfortable and happy on the road, whatever the surroundings; he thinks aversions create bodily dysfunction. Baptiste says yoga helps release people from their self-centered worldview so they’re more present and better able to connect with others. And Miller puts it like this: “After doing yoga, you’re open to letting things happen rather than controlling them and content with what the adventure is bringing you.”

It’s all about traveling with peace, or namaste, as yoga students say at the end of class.