2008 Woodie Awards
Meditations on the Mat with Smith Yoga Instructors
Elizabeth Tuttle
Issue date: 10/2/08 Section: Sports
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Despite, or perhaps due to, the high academic standards to which Smith holds itself, the Get Fit Smith program has rocketed to popularity since its inception. Awesome Abs, taught by Joan Griswold, fills one of the Ainsworth gym's largest studio spaces, causing a line to snake past the ellipticals, treadmills and weight machines each Monday and Wednesday. Other classes, like pilates and cardio kickboxing, consistently receive high turnout and student satisfaction. Ostensibly, the program serves as a way for non-athletes to augment their personal fitness routines. To each of the four yoga instructors in the program, the courses not only serve as a side dish to academic study, but also promote an intensely richer experience at Smith.
Lynne Patterson, a long-time yoga teacher at the college, sees the opportunity to take yoga courses as a way to "support everything that every student is already doing." According to Patterson, who has been practicing yoga for 20 years and teaches Thursday's Hatha yoga class, "The yoga teaches you what's the best of you, and how to bring that forth. I think that when you're at Smith…you're looking to find that piece of yourself and bring it out in the fullest expression if [you] can."
Four different instructors teach the hour-long yoga courses, which start at 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday. Perhaps the largest shock comes in the intense variation of the yoga instructors themselves. On Monday, students who attend Amy Reed's Anusara class will be warmly referred to as "friends" and will begin their practice with a story each week.
Reed is a recent Smith graduate herself, who turned fully to yoga after majoring in geology. "Yoga literally saved my life at Smith," she says, recalling her own journey through for-credit yoga courses in the exercise and sports studies department and eventually as a trained instructor downtown.
Rachel Besserman, in her Tuesday Ashtanga Flow class, offers handpicked flowers to her students and touches each student with a tuning fork, set to the vibration of "ohm." Besserman has been practicing yoga for her entire life; she even remembers being a child when she, without instruction, "would do this funny thing with [her] belly, an organ massage for the intestines." She reflects a true awe for the powers of yoga, calling it "the ultimate revolution."
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