With a stressful school year, midterms and papers upon us, sometimes students need a break to survive the onslaught of work. Freshman Catherine Coffey recently started a yoga group, open to anyone, to provide an opportunity to escape the stress of the semester.
“I thought it would be fun for them to join me in my yoga whenever they could,” Coffey said. “It’d be so great if we could give ourselves the opportunity to be by ourselves whenever we could and to be in the present. Obviously all this stress can do a lot of damage to our bodies, and yoga can help reverse that.”
Coffey started doing yoga when she was 14. The theater company in which she acted practiced yoga every day before rehearsal. Because of the consistent combination of acting and yoga, it became a part of her normal routine.
“I noticed that a lot of the people who surrounded me and a lot of people with whom I’m friends were very stressed,” Coffey said. “At Hillsdale, everything is about the future. Everyone’s mind is thinking ahead.”
Freshman Sarah Albers is one of the the unofficial group’s 12 members. According to Coffey, those 12 are subscribed to the email list, but not everyone comes because they all have a pretty busy schedule.
“I started practicing yoga because, as a naturally anxious person, I build up a lot of muscle tension and get easily overwhelmed with the day-to-day stressors of college life,” Albers admitted. “Yoga was an easy, natural way for me to refocus throughout the week and get back in touch with myself both physically and emotionally.”
Both Coffey and Albers reported the benefits of yoga to de-stress. Coffey also mentioned improved flexibility and muscle strength as two of the major benefits to practicing yoga.
Other workouts can be very straining on your body, she claimed. With yoga, some of the attendees of Coffey’s class who have struggled with back pain have reported less frequent pain.
Coffey emphasized that while some yoga classes have spirituality interwoven with the mental and physical exercises, her yoga class is not affiliated with any religion.
“I know that a lot of people think that yoga is way too religiously affiliated,” she stated. “But yoga, taken in and of itself, is not a part of a religion. So if you really take it for what it is, it’s not really as much of a religious practice anymore as it is an aid for you personally. It can help any spirituality really — any form of spirituality that includes meditation. And what spirituality doesn’t?”
Professor of Religion and Philosophy Jim Stephens teaches an Intro to Eastern Religions course and explained the practice of yoga as related to Eastern religions.
“The word yoga is a Sanskrit word that literally means “yoke,” like an oxen yoke. It’s something one takes on. Yoga was one of the six schools of Hinduism. Each school had very detailed theologies. Yoga is a series of physical exercises.”
Historically, Stephens explained, yoga was a religious discipline, but the practice of it does not necessarily imply a connection to religion.
“There’s a conception that you’re adopting a particular theology or religion,” Stephens said. “But it’s simply preliminary to meditation. It’s perfectly detachable from any religion. To practice yoga is not to commit to a specific theology. The purpose is to channel one’s focus from the world around one into a center. It’s an introductory form of meditation. Yoga by itself doesn’t have a religious connection.”
For anyone interested, Coffey’s yoga group meets on Thursdays and Saturdays at 11:00 a.m. in The Sage Center for the Art’s dance studio. Students are not required to bring their own yoga mats, as there is sufficient equipment in the studio.
“Each yoga pose is an exercise in complete, intense, restful focus,” Albers said. “No matter how much the stance may burn, and some do, they focus on harmonizing your mind and body. It’s a wonderful experience to realize how little control you actually have over your physical self, and then subsequently rebuild your muscle control and balance.”
