Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Back to yog-ah

Back in the day, I was quite the yoga enthusiast. I took my first class as an undergrad at Baylor.(We had a textbook--I kid you not--called something like "Christian Yoga." We never used it, so I'm guessing my teacher felt she needed to put up a good cover for anyone who might be looking over her shoulder.) Then, during my first grad school experience, I went to a lovely yoga studio in downtown Bloomington before finding a more permanent guru of sorts in Laura Stone. Laura was (still is) primarily a T'ai Chi Chu'an master, but she was doing a good bit of yoga in her studio right across from the IU campus. She's now in the Netherlands, and her studio in Bloomington has since become, I think, an architect's office.

In Milwaukee, for my second bout of grad school mania, I had a hard time locating good yoga. So since I had already taken to teaching a bit under Laura's guidance, I started offering informal classes for my fellow grad students. It was fun, but I missed being a student of yoga. After I left Milwaukee, though, I just stopped yoga outside of my home altogether.

Tonight, thanks to the prodding of my wonderful new colleague, R, I've returned to yoga. And what I want to know is: what took me so long? I mean, all those years of hunching over a keyboard have really done nothing for me but give me a big pain in the neck. And there's nothing, really nothing, but yoga that takes that away.

So, yes, yes: yog-ah. I recommend it to all you people out there staring at your monitors. It's the antidote you need, I promise.

3 comments:

Amy said...

Donna,
I found this so refreshing to read this evening. It's as if little hints keep popping into my life to try yoga. I've been to one class held at a National Writing Project retreat and enjoyed it. I may have to check into this. I noticed student health offers classes. Any recommendations?

Thanks, from my screen-weary neck.
Amy

Anonymous said...

amy,
After Donna wrote this post, I remembered that Jennifer (from 8010) takes yoga through the student health center. I sent J an email to ask about the program and she had good things to say about it. I'm thinking about going. I took a couple months of classes back in Texas and really enjoyed it. class meets Mondays and Wednesdays from 4:30-6:00 in McKee Gymnasim 204.

Anonymous said...

I meant to add that we obviously couldn't go to the one on Monday, but I think I might be able to make Wed.