About the author: Esther Littlefield is a student-athlete at Northeastern University. She is a Co-op student at Artemis Yoga for the July-December 2026 term.
Not Another Way to Train, but Another Way to Pay Attention.
- Iyengar has taught me awareness and precision.
- Flow has taught me movement and release.
- Meditation has taught me presence.
Those things might seem separate, but they all return to the same idea: paying attention.
Rowing has taught me how to push my body. Yoga has taught me how to listen to it.
As a Division I rower, I spend a lot of time thinking about my body. I think about how much power I can produce, whether my legs are driving together, whether my posture is holding through the finish, and whether I can take one more stroke when my body is telling me to stop. Rowing is repetitive by nature; we take thousands of strokes and ask our bodies to perform essentially the same movement over and over again, while simultaneously trying to make that movement more precise than the last.
In many ways, rowing has taught me how to push my body to its limits. Yoga has taught me something different: how to listen when I get there.
When I first started practicing yoga, I mostly thought of it as something that could help my body recover. I honestly only expected stretching and something along the lines of laying flat on the ground to “embrace my inner zen”, yet it was so much more. What I did not expect was how much yoga would completely change the way I pay attention to both my mind and my body.
Over time, I have practiced different styles of yoga, and I have realized that each one gives me something different as an athlete. Iyengar has taught me to slow down and pay attention to alignment. Flow has helped me reconnect movement with breath and release some of the physical tension that comes with training. Meditation has taught me something even more difficult: how to remain present when my mind wants to be somewhere else.
Yoga has gradually become less about adding another workout to my schedule and more about learning how to listen to the body that I ask so much from every day.
I have found that the same is true of the body.
This is one reason I have found Iyengar yoga particularly interesting as a rower. Iyengar asks me to slow down and really notice what I am doing rather than simply moving through a sequence. There is an emphasis on alignment, positioning, and understanding where my body is in space. Sometimes that means holding a pose longer than I expect or using a prop to experience a position in a different way.That attention to detail feels surprisingly familiar to rowing.
In the boat, I can become so focused on producing power that I forget about everything happening underneath that effort. Am I sitting evenly? Am I collapsing somewhere through my back? Are my shoulders doing more work than they need to? Am I actually moving from my hips, or am I compensating somewhere else?
Iyengar has made me more curious about those questions and to be more intentional in my practice. After all, anything worth doing is worth doing right!
I remember one particular Warrior II where I became aware of just how much unnecessary tension I was carrying. My shoulders were all the way up to my ears, my arms and legs felt rigid, and I realized I was practically holding my breath. From the outside, I probably looked like I was holding a strong, stable pose, yet internally I was fighting it.
That moment stayed with me because it made me question my understanding of strength. I had always associated strength with tension; with bracing, holding, and pushing through. But in that pose, the more I tried to force my body into stability, the less comfortable and sustainable the position became. When I consciously lowered my shoulders, softened my grip, and allowed my breath to deepen, the pose changed.
Nothing about the shape itself had dramatically changed; only my relationship to it.
That has changed how I think about strength in rowing. I believe that ‘strength’ is often associated with doing more; more pressure, more intensity, more power. Yoga has reminded me that strength needs to begin with control.
That awareness is useful when I get back into the boat. I am not necessarily thinking, I learned this from Iyengar, so now my rowing stroke is better.It is subtler than that. I am simply more aware of where I hold tension and where I might be able to create more space or stability. Over time, these lessons begin to move beyond conscious thought; my body starts to remember what my mind has learned.I have found that the most valuable part of an Iyengar practice is noticing something I normally ignore.
Flow yoga feels completely different.
After a hard rowing practice, my body can feel heavy and almost stuck. My legs are bricks, my hips are tight, and my back and shoulders have spent hours repeating the same movement. There are days when the last thing I want to do is move again, let alone leave my bed. And yet, the body craves to movement to rejuvenate itself.
What I have acquired from Flow is the connection between movement and breath. Instead of holding one position and analyzing it, I move continuously from one shape to another. There is something about that rhythm that allows me to stop thinking so much about individual muscles or individual movements and simply move.
I have also realized how often I need to be reminded to breathe.
As an athlete, I am used to thinking about breathing as something functional: breathe so I can keep going. In yoga, breathing is not transactional, but rather simultaneous; it becomes part of the movement itself. I have had moments where I thought a pose felt uncomfortable or restricted, only to realize that I was holding my breath. When I consciously slow my breathing and allow it to move through the pose, the entire experience can change.
The position has not necessarily become easier. I have simply stopped fighting it. That idea resonates with me as a rower.
Rowing can involve a lot of fighting; fighting fatigue, discomfort, the urge to slow down. During a difficult session, my instinct is often to brace against the discomfort rather than move through it. Flow gives me another way to experience this movement as it reminds me that feeding my body breath should not feel like a battle.
For me, this is especially valuable because rowing is such a repetitive sport as we spend hours moving back and forth along the same backwards path, trying to make the same stroke more efficient each time. Flow gives me a chance to move my body in different directions, explore ranges of motion I do not necessarily use in the boat, and pay attention to places that might otherwise get overlooked.
There is also a mental component to that movement.
When I am rowing, especially during a difficult practice, I can get caught up in thinking about how tired I am or how much longer we have to go. Flow gives me an opportunity to practice staying with the movement that is happening right now.
One breath. One transition. One movement at a time.
That sounds simple, but any rower will understand how difficult it can be to stay in the present.
The physical benefits of yoga were probably what first attracted me as an athlete, but meditation has made me think about the mental side of training differently.
Rowing is an incredibly mental sport. 86% of your body’s muscles work together at the same time, and yet the most important one proves to be the brain. There are moments when the physical discomfort becomes so intense that your mind starts looking for an exit before your body actually needs one. There are also races where the nerves begin long before the boat ever leaves the dock.
For me, some of the anxiety surrounding erg testing racing comes from knowing exactly what is coming: pain.
At the highest level of collegiate rowing, I know that racing is going to hurt in incomprehensible ways to most. I know what the first few hundred meters feel like when adrenaline is high, what happens when the race settles into its middle section, and how difficult it can become when the boat reaches the final stretch. Sometimes, I have spent so much time anticipating that pain that my body reacts before the race has even begun. I have sat waiting to race with my hands shaking uncontrollably, feeling nauseous and even throwing up because my mind was already living through the discomfort that had not happened yet.
That experience has taught me that the mind can create its own version of the race before the body ever takes the first stroke.
Meditation has given me a different way to respond to that anticipation. It has taught me that I do not necessarily need to eliminate anxious thoughts. I can notice them without allowing them to become the entire experience. There is an important distinction between I am thinking that this is going to hurt and this is going to be unbearable. Meditation has helped me recognize that difference.
That is one of the biggest connections I see between meditation and rowing: both require me to stay present even when the present moment is uncomfortable.
Meditation does not make hard work easier, make my legs less tired, or make a race any less painful, but instead changes my relationship with that discomfort. I can notice it. I can breathe through it. I can acknowledge the thought that tells me to stop without automatically obeying it.
The goal is not to make discomfort disappear. It is to learn that discomfort does not have to control every decision I make.
If I can be strong in mind, then I can be strong in body.
Esther Littlefield is a student-athlete at Northeastern University. She and her teammates are rowing the Head of the Charles Regatta again this year sporting “pink” for Breast Cancer Awareness month.
