Heart Rate Health and Yoga

Is Heart Rate or Data Tracking in Yoga Ever a Good Thing?

If you wear a smartwatch or fitness tracker, you likely already have access to a steady stream of data about your heart health. Beyond basic heart rate monitoring, smart watches and trackers can also measure and track heart rate zones, heart rate variability and heart rate trends - but is this what yoga is all about?

In heated yoga and workout classes, new students often arrive with a fear of the unknown and want reassurance from data that they are going to be fine in the heat and their heart rate won’t exceed where they want to be. Many factors — stress, weather and sleep, for example — can impact your heart rate, so it’s important to consider your own sense of effort alongside your heart-rate readings.

Consider your goals, if you are more interested in experimenting with a structured zone training plan, programs like Orangetheory and Peloton offer heart-rate based workouts however, yoga focuses on a very different philosophy for both your physical and mental wellbeing. In yoga the focus is more on how we are feeling, how we are breathing, and staying in tune with these factors without the need for external data and distractions. For instance, the highest heart rate zones for athletes, Zone 4 and 5 are where there is no space for conversation because breathing is labored and maxed out.

Instead of checking a watch or tracker, in yoga you can be more aligned with your breathing and know when to decrease effort and keep breathing slower and more controlled, which in turn will decrease the heart rate to a more manageable zone. While data serves us in many areas of modern life, in terms of yoga practice and working out in general, it’s important for us to consider how much that data actually helping, or how much is it deterring us from the more important issues at hand, like learning to be in tune with our bodies and our minds, free from distraction and more centered, calm, and relaxed.

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