PICTURES: Will inflight yoga become the newest yogi trend?

Jamie Newland, founder and managing director of Yocalm, was happy yet shocked to discover there were no stress relief videos on his Virgin Atlantic flight from Los Angeles last year.

Having been asked by Virgin Active Health Clubs to create a stress relief class, Newland found the perfect opportunity to present the concept of Yocalm inflight yoga.

“My family’s been doing yoga their whole lives,” says Newland, “and my mom had her own company, so we worked together on that. We then created a team of experts to make sure we were better than what was already out there.”

The market for yoga onboard is certainly not limited to yoga enthusiasts who can enjoy their hobby at 35,000 feet, but it’s beneficial to the many passengers who suffer from flight anxiety. “This is a way people can escape from the flight,” says Newland.

Such in-your-seat-activity could also help fend off deep vein thrombosis. “It’s not the same poses you’ll find in a yoga class,” says Newland. “The breathing is the main thing, working the muscles, but on a smaller range of movement.”

Familiar with the style that his mother, Anne-Marie, had developed over the years called “Sun Power”, Newland gave Anne-Marie the freedom to work out a system within the restrictions of an airplane seat.

However, during the recent APEX EXPO, Yocalm was kind enough to demonstrate for us just what regular yoga (for die-hards) would look like in an aircraft seat. Would you try this in-flight?

Today Yocalm looks forward to partnering with the inflight entertainment industry to bring yoga videos to passengers.

“I am seeing the business world and the yoga world,” says Newland, “so I am trying to bring them both together to use basic techniques that will benefit everyone.”