The following story, which I wrote, first appeared in The News & Observer on Sept. 14 (a similar version ran the same date in the Charlotte Observer). It appears here with links.
It’s hard to imagine a better yoga studio: as the hourlong class goes on, the temperature drops, the light dims and the obligatory relaxation music is as soothing as an eventide symphony on the front porch. And when teacher Claudia Conty gently instructs the class to “make sure you are rooted to the Earth,” that’s not faux teak laminate you’re digging your heels into.
Conty’s Sunset Yoga on the Docks at Durant Nature Park in North Raleigh is outdoors, an increasingly popular place to do yoga, tai chi, fitness hikes, boot camps and a variety of other workouts.
More and more people are finding that sweat and sore muscles are more bearable in the great outdoors than in a stuffy workout room at the local gym.
“The data and research on green exercise – that is, exercise done outdoors in natural settings – continues to grow,” says Michael Kirschman, division director of Nature Preserves and Natural Resources for Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation.
“For some time now, we’ve known through health studies that contact with nature offers a range of medical benefits,” including lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, enhanced survival after a heart attack, more rapid recovery from surgery, fewer minor medical complaints and lower stress,” he said. Kids with attention disorders and teens with behavioral disorders also benefit from playing outside, Kirschman said.
Such research and a 2008 parks survey – showing that outdoor-oriented health and fitness programs were among the department’s most popular – prompted Mecklenburg Park and Recreation to institute a “Fit in Nature” program that includes yoga, tai chi, trail runs and Fitness Fridays, which incorporate aerobics into nature hikes.
“Last spring,” says Kirschman, “we offered 38 programs specifically designed with exercise/outdoor fitness in mind.”
Several factors appear to be driving us to sweat outside. One is a growing absence of sunshine in our lives.
“We’re not getting as much exposure to Vitamin D as we once did because we’re inside at computers all the time,” says Gregory Florez, CEO of the Utah-based FitAdvisor Health Coaching Services and a spokesman for the American Council on Exercise. Vitamin D, long recognized for helping build bone strength, has recently been shown to help ward off various diseases. “It’s a super hot topic,” Florez says.
Agreed, says Shalyn Marion, who’s been taking Conty’s outdoor yoga class for two months. “After being confined under fluorescent lights all day at work,” she says, “I don’t want to be under fluorescent lights at the gym.”
Florez says, “Working out outside is also a boredom killer, a way to change your routine. Would you rather be indoors on a treadmill or outside taking a walk?”
Mother Nature also tends to be more nurturing than your neighborhood gym.
“Women in particular tend to be less intimidated working out outside than in a gym,” says Brigette Spurgeon, who runs outdoor boot camp classes in North Raleigh.
In part, it’s the “perfect image” ordeal of your body in sweat pants working out next to a 20-something fitness buff in Spandex, in part it’s being unclear on how to use the complicated equipment and being too shy to ask. Besides, who needs complicated equipment?
“I could probably do an hour workout just using a [park] bench,” says Spurgeon. “Actually, just a curb.”
For Angela Hawkins, who teaches Yoga in Nature at the Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve in Cary, there’s the attraction of not having to fret over good mood music. “The birds, the breeze, they help to reconnect us.”
There’s another element of the typical gym that, for many, is gratefully missing.
“There are no mirrors out here,” says Dana Yarborough after Conty’s yoga class. “You can focus on your inner self.”