Author: Alison Kjeldgaard
At the end of a long Tuesday, I hurried into Herrick Chapel to join twenty other students sitting cross-legged on the floor, preparing for an evening session of yoga. Unfortunately, I am one of the most inflexible people ever to have been born, and have always been awed by anyone who can bend in half without screaming in pain. Looking around me, I saw a girl sitting comfortably in the splits, and another student touching their toes. Considering both stretches to be classed at equal levels of intense difficulty, I gulped at the thought of continuing with a class full of Gumbies.
However, although the next hour and a half was definitely not easy, I felt my tense muscles slowly relax as my body and mind grew used to performing the same series of poses. Student instructor and co-founder of the club, Barry Ennis (senior), teaches Ashtanga, or Vinyasa Flow, yoga, which focuses mostly on warming and energizing the body with sun salutations. He says, “the sun salutation is great to warm up the body, allowing more potential to get deeper into stretches.” Most of the stretches focused on loosening the hips, since, as he says, “tight hips lead to numerous problems elsewhere.” By the end, my muscles were so warmed up and stretched out, that I could touch my toes. Of course, the last ten minutes are always the best, as everyone lies back and releases any last stress or tenseness in the muscles. I felt a weight lifted off of my shoulders, and I danced to work feeling happy, serene, and convinced that in time I will be able to do warrior three without falling on my face.
Now in his second year instructing yoga at Oxy, Ennis first began practicing yoga eight years ago at baseball camp, where every day began with an hour-long yoga session. “Even after just a few weeks, I began to notice greater flexibility, balance, and strength. It was also so refreshing to do that I just fell in love with it,” Ennis said. When asked what makes yoga different from other forms of exercise, Ennis answered, “It is very different from the traditional weightlifting or conditioning. Yoga involves a different kind of strength that requires you to hold yourself up in many different postures.” He went on to say, “While weightlifting involves lifting heavy weight to break down the muscle tissue, yoga is more a practice of exhausting the muscle by holding postures for long periods of time.” That’s for sure. During Tuesday’s session, we held numerous postures for minutes at a time. Towards the end of the workout, I started to either lose my balance, or feel my muscles start to shake from exhaustion. I tried to send Barry telepathic messages to tell us to relax but to no avail.
Like Ennis says, “A lot of people don’t realize how much the mind plays a role in yoga, and I try to communicate this to my students […] I tell people that are struggling in a posture to notice their mental discomfort. Often we feel that we automatically have to act on what our mind is telling us, but if we can simply notice that it is just our mind reporting discomfort, accept it, and move past it, we are able to open ourselves up to an infinite new potential. And this translates into life […] I tell my students not to push away feelings and emotions, but to become aware of them, and accept them. And that is the most difficult part of yoga.” Yoga is different from other sports because not only does it help to develop muscle strength, but strength of the mind as well. Becoming aware of your emotions instead of trying to ignore them is, as Ennis says, “the most difficult part of yoga.” Eventually, Ennis wants to work at a studio, and he hopes some of his devoted Oxy students will follow.
Laila Tootoonchi (junior) and Jacob Goldstein (junior) are the co-club leaders of Oxy’s Yoga Club this year. First coming to Oxy, Tootoonchi says, “I was really excited to find a yoga club that was free to students on campus.”
She began getting involved with yoga in high school, wanting to work on her strength and flexibility. Yoga grew to encompass more than that; she says, “while yoga has certainly made my body stronger, it has also changed my mentality in ways I had not imagined. Whenever I am stressed, yoga helps me unwind and become calm. It has also made me appreciate my body and what it is capable of doing. Yoga is very much a practice of respect and love for yourself.”
Other students agree. Liz Speidel (junior) began practicing yoga when she was fourteen. “I loved the intense stretching and focus I felt at the end of classes. I was hooked,” Speidel said. Now, she attends Sunday classes with yoga instructor Jennifer DeFilippo. “Yoga with Jennifer is awesome. It’s more energetic than other classes I’ve had, in that there isn’t as much of a focus on remaining calm and focused. Jennifer likes to talk, and she likes to make her students laugh. It’s a great workout, and Jennifer likes to push her students, so I feel like we do more difficult things more quickly than in other classes I’ve had.”
Teresa Eilers (freshman) attends Tuesday classes with Oxy student Barry Ennis (senior). Like Speidel wanting to improve muscle strength and flexibility, Eilers said, “My muscles get really tense when I get stressed, and so I need to stretch in order to feel healthy and relaxed.” Having attended other yoga classes in the past, she found that they tended to not focus on breathing, and pushed for “fancy” looking poses instead of simple ones, which can be just as efficient or better in stretching the body. Out of all of the poses, she’s not sure which is her favorite; but, she said, “I like doing cat-cow a lot. I also like all of the neck releases. And I really like sun salutations.”
Currently, Tootoonchi says, the club has 150 students enrolled, and an average of 50 students attend classes. Yoga Club hosts three classes a week, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday in Lower Herrick. Ennis teaches Ashtanga style yoga on Tuesdays and Thursdays meeting from 7:30 – 9:00 in the evening. Jennifer DeFilippo teaches Anusara style yoga (blending the physical workout component of Vinyasa yoga with spirituality and relaxation) from 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
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