Has Yoga Been Sabotaging Oregon Duck Basketball?

The University of Oregon is very proud of the academic successes of the five seniors on the basketball team. They have already graduated and are filling in the required classes with (among other studies) yoga. And Mama just has to wonder if perhaps this isn't in part, at least, one of the reasons behind our up and down play.

Now, before everyone gets their mats ruffled, I'm not attacking yoga. Some of my best friends go to yoga class, and I've had to do my share of deep breathing over the years. So yes, friends can let friends do yoga. But I'm just asking the question: should die hard fans let their favorite players do yoga?

According to an article in The Oregon Daily Emerald, Coaches Ernie Kent and Kenny Payne encouraged the players to study yoga because it increases flexibility and is an "injury deterrent". O.K. I'll go along with that. And certainly athletes will benefit by increasing flexibility.

But something is weird when one night the players look like a small high school basketball team against Stanford on a Thursday evening and roll over Cal 2 days later on Saturday by shooting the lights out and dominating the boards. So what's up with that? (Keep in mind that we beat Stanford just a few weeks ago)Coach Ernie Kent said that the team had a couple of "meetings" that seemed to help. But could it be, could it just maybe be that we were on the road so there was no yoga class? Hm.mmm.mm.

Yoga isn't a new concept to me. I'm a baby-boomer, and back in the sixties lots of folks were doing yoga, and they were quite peaceful, mellow and non -competitive. (Though I was never sure if it was the yoga or the funny smelling stuff they were smoking). I just don't think that I want a basketball team that went to the Elite Eight last year, and has all the potential in the world to go all peaceful and mellow on me. I want our players to be aggressive...go after the loose balls, pound the boards and get that offensive rebound for the second-chance points. I want them playing with a competitive edge, with urgency and excitement. Mellow doesn't belong in the same sentence as basketball. Poised yes, mellow no.

So a quickie web search on yoga was in order. Though one study* cited an increase in aggression in prisoners in Norway, most indicated that the groups that practiced yoga were "less aggressive, less excitable, and evaluated their life satisfaction higher". Excuse me....I don't want this team to be "satisfied" unless they win like they did on Feb. 8. And oh, please, to the contrary we want you to be excitable, because then you feed off of each other, and the fans get excited and then maybe they won't feel so badly when they take out a second mortgage to buy season tickets in the new 200 million dollar arena that we're trading in our beloved Mac Court for.

So will somebody help me out here? According to an article in the Toronto Star, a teacher at the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre said that "if there is a goal in yoga, it is to make the mind peaceful". So here's my question: can we be highly competitive and peaceful at the same time? I don't know the answer. But I do know this: the Oregon Duck basketball team was the team we knew they can be on Saturday. So WHATEVER they did, they need to bottle it up...and if that means they took a break from yoga, then let's make it a permanent break...at least through March.

UUUUMMMMMM....and Go Ducks!!

Sources: The Oregon Daily Emerald; The Toronto Star; the star.co; *BBC News; The Eugene Register Guard
References:Telles, S., Desiraju, T., (1993). Autonomic changes in Brahmakumaris Raja Yoga meditation. International Journal of Psvchophysiology, 15(2):147-52.