I Was up to Something Unusual on My Last Plane Ride—and I Think You Should Try It

This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live. 

I’ll admit it: I don’t hate long plane rides. They allow me to engage in otherwise socially unacceptable behavior, like bingeing four movies in a row or taking a long nap at noon. (I do these things anyway, but with shame.) I love switching my phone into airplane mode—the ultimate version of “Sorry, I’m unavailable for the next eight hours”—and then flicking on Crazy, Stupid, Love for my millionth rewatch.

But anyone who says a plane is comfy is either lying or in business class. I almost feel insulted when I recline my chair 2.8 inches in order to just barely sleep at a non-90-degree angle. There’s the struggle to wrestle the carry-on bag under my seat for a little nook to stretch out my legs. And let’s face it: The armrests aren’t anyone’s armrests; they’re territory lines that neither party is allowed to cross.

When I heard about plane yoga, I was skeptical. Not just because I thought it was silly (though I did), but because it didn’t seem possible. Forget lengthening and bending into a blissful warrior three pose—being on a plane means contorting your body just to exist.

Yet those tight quarters are exactly the reason why yoga (well, an abbreviated version of yoga) could be useful on flights. Sitting for long periods of time can make you tight and even carries risks of blood clots, and stretching helps blood to flow. Delta thought it was a good-enough idea that it paired up with Peloton back in 2021 to offer stretching classes on board. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even recommends a few yoga-ish exercises for reducing the risk of blood clots during long flights.

So, the other week, on a 14-hour flight from Qatar to New York, I pulled up a preprepared list of stretches and poses from my internet research (I was in airplane mode, remember) and got ready to cat-cow it up at 35,000 feet. I started with Adrienne’s simple routine: Tuck my chin into my chest and count to 10, tilt my ear to my left shoulder for 10, then ear to right shoulder for another 10. The moves were pretty innocuous, but I was glad that everyone around me was asleep when I began my yoga attempt.

Of course, after being off for seven hours, the lights switched on as soon as I started my chin tuck. Luckily, my seatmate and I had already silently resolved not to acknowledge each other, so I forged on: neck rolls, shoulder stretch (arms behind the back), cow to cat position (arched back, then rounded spine), eagle arms (crossed arms in front of me, pointing to the sky), half-lotus variation (foot atop opposite thigh), and seated spinal twist. I finished with a variation of child’s pose: I pulled my legs up on the seat and wrapped my arms around my knees. It simply did not compare to collapsing into a ball on the ground. For my last move, I had written down “seated figure 4 (advanced),” but I forgot what that was and, frankly, didn’t think I was ready for that level.

But overall, I was pleasantly surprised at the range of motion I could accomplish in my seat. The arm stretches didn’t generate too much social embarrassment because you can’t blame a girl for stretching. I felt most awkward about the arching-back and raising-chin positions. They felt as if they could really generate a response of “OK, she’s a little weird; I really won’t talk to her” (which, to be honest, all the better for maintaining the peaceful atmosphere of being on a flight). But the arching-back stretch was also most soothing for my tailbone, which was tired of supporting me by 12 hours in.

I’m glad to have this trick in my toolbox, alongside my compression socks and travel pillow. By the end of my little routine, I felt less stiff and uncomfortable, and all the more ready to dive into Ticket to Paradise as I waited for my vegetable lasagna to arrive.