Danica Patrick is serious about her yoga practice. She’s one of the best athletes at it and continues to challenge herself with her favorite pose: the handstand.
Despite her mastery of yoga, Patrick said there’s one pose she’ll always be working on.
“I’m forever in pursuit of kapotasana, which is basically like camel pose where you grab your heels in a backbend,” she recently told For The Win.
“It’s like a super, super tight backbend, and you have to have good shoulder flexibility and be able to open your chest up, because you grab your heels basically with your head on the ground in a backbend while your knees are on the ground, which is just a super deep backbend. So I’ll probably be in pursuit of that for most of my life.”
Now officially finished with her NASCAR career – her last race was February’s Daytona 500 while her last event overall before retiring is IndyCar’s Indy 500 in May – Patrick said she’s based in Scottsdale, Arizona instead of the Charlotte area.
She said because she has more control over her schedule without a race each weekend, she’s been able to get to more yoga classes instead of practicing alone.
But there’s a slight downside to that for her followers on social media.
“I don’t practice by myself as much, which is a bummer because actually, when I used to post more pictures on Instagram and social media of my yoga poses, I probably did less yoga then,” Patrick said.
“But I was doing it by myself, so I had time. I’d get to a certain point and be like, ‘Oh OK, that’s a cool pose,’ and I’d just get a picture of it or take a video and do a snapshot. But I probably do three times more yoga – four times more yoga now that I did then. But since I’m in class, I’m just not that girl that’s gonna be like, ‘Take a picture.’”
A similar result of her new schedule, Patrick said she’s been able to work out more too – also at a gym more frequently now instead of alone.
She said she has branched out to try something new to her with sound healing. It’s an ancient form of meditation and can be an alternate treatment for anxiety, chronic pain, sleep disorders, and PTSD, Quartz reported in 2016.
“I’ve also started doing sound healing — or sound baths, they go by different names — where people play gongs and didgeridoos and chimes and crystal bowls,” Patrick explained based on her experiences.
“And you lay there and get real comfortable with blankets or pillows and whatever. And we’re made of water pretty much so the effects of music and vibration on that are powerful.”
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