As September comes to a close, so does National Yoga Month. However, practitioners of yoga are hardly rolling up their well worn mats or putting away their athletic gear. Instead, those who do yoga are often hooked by the positive effects that yoga has on their health, which extends to more than just increased flexibility.
Before practicing yoga, Huijung Campbell, currently a certified Iyengar yoga teacher and instructor at the IMA, struggled with chronic back and neck pain which was aggravated by the birth of her second child.
“I remember having a spine X-ray from one chiropractor and my C1 and 2 was squished a little bit and my tailbone was to my left side,” Campbell said.
But four years later, after dedicated practice, Campbell reports that an X-ray of her spine taken at the UW Medical Center revealed significant improvement. She no longer struggles with any pain.
“Yoga made me feel like there’s a hope,” Campbell said. “I knew there was pain, but I didn’t realize it could be better. I just thought I was living with it. Yoga made me realize … [I] shouldn’t be this way, [I] can be better.”
Campbell believes her dedication to the Iyengar style of yoga, which focuses on correctly aligning the body, is what ultimately soothed her pain. She also credits yoga with improving her mental health and decreasing her moodiness.
“For me, it helped me to get to know myself a little better physically and mentally,” Campbell said. “ … because of that, it makes me interpret people better. In my family, I’m a happier mom, a happier wife.”
Campbell believes that yoga is a powerful tool for both mental and physical wellness because the postures practiced in yoga, called asana, are only one part of the yoga philosophy. The other seven limbs of yoga include ethics (yama), breath control (pranayama), and meditation (dhyna).
For those hesitant of the philosophy aspect, Campbell says it’s fine to incorporate what works for them, such as the physical asanas. However, she believes that the philosophy of yoga is beneficial to everyone.
“The first teaching is nonviolence,” Campbell said, “ … not only to others, but to yourself. Imagine how, if everyone practiced that every day, how the world would change.”
Campbell is not the only one who feels that yoga aids its practitioners in more than just the physical realm. Alysha Greig, the founder and director of the UW Mindfulness Project, believes that the most valuable part of yoga is not necessarily the physical aspect, but the intense inward focus it produces.
“We all know we have to go to the gym a few times a week to stay physically fit, and we don’t have that same understanding about other aspects of our health, so people tend to let stress build,” Greig said. “ … A consistent yoga or meditation practice that encourages you to slow down and really be with yourself is something that I think can really combat the mental health crisis in front of us.”
Yoga causes practitioners to notice not only how they breathe and move, but to notice how they think and emotionally react, Grieg explained, which is what allows them to become happier and healthier.
For Greig personally, yoga has helped her through both mental health problems and to balance the good and bad traits of her personality.
“Yoga helps me not become the perfectionist, over-obsessed controlling need to be perfect, on top of my game, jerk that I can be sometimes,” Greig said.
Julia Olsen, president of student leadership of the UW Mindfulness Project, believes that in addition to learning how to breathe properly and increased awareness of yourself, yoga also helps its practitioners handle challenging situations.
“You learn how to sit with being uncomfortable with things,” Olsen said. “The postures, you’re holding them for awhile … and you’re learning how to deal with the discomfort and breathe through it and get through it and then you bring that into your own life.”
While this is something everyone could benefit from, Olsen believes it’s particularly valuable for people currently in college.
“A lot of times for college students, I think one of our biggest issues is uncertainty, we have these big lofty ambitious goals and there’s a lot of fear around that,” Olsen said. “Yoga really helps you learn how to be aware of that fear, sit with it, and learn how to work through it.”
Campbell agrees that yoga and college students are a good pair. Not only will proper understanding of their physical body potentially reduce pain in the future, said Campbell, but it will help them succeed academically.
“Just find yourself that time and get connected with yourself,” Campbell said. “I bet that would help [you] be a better student.”
For those interested in pursuing yoga, both the IMA and the UW Mindfulness Project offer classes in a variety of yoga styles. The UW Mindfulness Project will be hosting 11 weekly yoga classes, as well as 12 guided meditations. Members can come to as many classes as they’d like for $5 a quarter. Registration for classes at the IMA is already open, and classes will begin the week of Oct. 12.
Reach writer Emma Bueren at wellness@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @EmBueren
