Digital Sprocket

Astronauts and Cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station spend two hours a day exercising to keep bone and muscle loss to a minimum. Bones become brittle and muscles waste away in microgravity without constant work. Current exercise regimes include a bicycle ergometer (stationary bicycle), a treadmill for running, and the Resistive Exercise Device that simulates weight lifting with elastic bands. That’s not a whole lot of options. How could we increase the variety with increasing the equipment?

I would like to suggest we add yoga to the list of exercise regimes. When you think of yoga, you probably think of guys turning themselves into pretzels, but the art is really good at building a core of strength as well as flexibility.

Most yoga positions rely on gravity, but not all do. For example there is a version of uttanasana, forward bend, where you lock your fingers around your big toes before straightening your legs. No gravity needed there to stretch the back, and put stress on the leg joints and muscles. Other positions could be similarly modified to make them more effective in micro, or lunar gravity. A trained yoga instructor with a strong foundation in physiology should also be able to develop sequences to help alleviate back pain, which is a common orbital complaint.

I did a little research, looking for any references to yoga in space, or NASA studies, but there’s almost no information out there. In 1984 Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma of India spent a little over a week on Russia’s Salyut 7. One of his experiments was using yoga to combat motion sickness. If anyone knows the results of his experiments, I’d love to hear about it.