Scott Kennedy is a freelance writer, photographer and adventurer. He regularly writes for Lonely Planet Guidebooks and blog’s about his adventures on: http://adventureskope.blogspot.com/.
For the past three years yoga has been an extremely important part of my life. As an athlete, I was first drawn to the physical side of yoga – through yoga I was able to take 30minutes off of my best marathon time and prepare for the Kepler Challenge mountain run. For the last 18months I’ve been practicing Bikram yoga and have successfully integrated it into my training program. In January I’m headed to Africa to participate in an event called the Tour d’Afrique – it’s a long distance cycle tour that starts in Cairo, Egypt and finishes in Cape Town, South Africa some 10,000km away. I’m riding as part of a relay team; my leg starts in Cairo and finishes in Khartoum, Sudan. I’ll ride for 2000km down the Nile and through the Nubian Desert.
For this expedition my training has consisted of many hours on the bike but also a regular dose of Bikram yoga. Bikram is the perfect preparation for this adventure for a variety of reasons. First off, it gets you strong. My legs are stronger then ever, and that’s thanks to Bikram. The second thing Bikram Yoga is great for is heat preparation – during my ride I’ll likely encounter temperatures in the 40c range. I’ll have to bike up to 130km a day in that heat – Bikram has taught me how to handle that heat and has helped prove to myself that I can actually exercise in it. The third aspect that Bikram has brought to my training is endurance. By endurance I’m referring to the root word – endure. Through Bikram I’ve learned that I can push myself to the very limit, and at that edge of supreme effort there is a moment of calm and clarity. A crystalline moment of thought that can only be achieved when you’ve pushed yourself to the limit. Yoga may have started as a physical element to my training regime, but now more then ever it has evolved into training for the mind. The mind is after all the strongest muscle in the body.
I am full of gratitude towards Peggy and the whole Studio Sangha crew – it’s really felt like a team effort to get ready for this adventure. It’s going to be an amazing experience, and thanks to my Yoga practice, it’s going to be an achievable dream. I look forward to sharing my journey with you both while I’m on the road and once I return home to Queenstown!
~Namaste
Scott
