Yoga has become a popular fitness activity for many people. Health clubs and schools alike offer classes; some students take it for fun and others take it as part of a curriculum. Many athletes do yoga as part of their exercise routine. Yoga paraphernalia is available in stores.
“It’s kind of a craze right now, but people don’t realize it’s been around for 5,000 years,” Bryan Robbins, a professor of wellness, said. “So it’s not a new thing, it’s just a very popular thing and I think a lot of it has to do with the mental part of it.”
A typical yoga class has the teacher at the front of the class before rows of mats. Calming music is in the background, and people are barefoot and comfortably dressed. Some wear yoga clothes, others wear T-shirts and sweatpants. The teacher tells participants exactly what to do, what positions to move into, ways to make a position easier or more difficult or less painful.
Robbins ends his classes with everyone sitting cross-legged with their hands in the prayer position. He bows to the class and says, “Namaste,” which means “the divine in me salutes the divine in you.”
The class bows to him and says, “Namaste.”
One reason Robbins believes that yoga is becoming so popular is because people live in stressful times.
“I think a lot of people are really stressed out and they like the relaxation phase of it and also the concentration,” he said.
Standing on one leg, he explained, “forces you to concentrate rather than let your mind think about your laundry list and other things like that.
“We tend to think in the future or in the past and we forget about the present moment.”
Power yoga is becoming more popular, according to Robbins, because it’s taking the place of other fitness regimes like weight training and running.
“If you do it and you do it hard and you do it for an adequate amount of time,” he said, “you’ve gotten most of your strength training done, so it’s everything in one hopper.”
Robbins would know; he has been doing yoga for 30 years.
“With the power yoga, in particular, it keeps my strength and my flexibility up and also the deep breathing is very, very calming and relaxing,” he said.
While also participating in martial arts, he said yoga helps him with the kicking and the relaxation.
“I’ve always been an athlete so I was always intrigued with anything that would increase your athletic capacity.”
Yoga has many variations, and Robbins described three types.
Hatha yoga is a physical yoga and focuses on deep breathing and stretching.
Power yoga is becoming popular in health clubs because it’s more vigorous than hatha, requires more of the cardiovascular system and uses more strength poses.
Iyengar yoga involves using chairs, blocks and straps to get people in perfect alignment. Hatha and power yoga are offered through group exercise classes at SMU.
Hot yoga is another type that is becoming popular. Drawbacks are that it features the same postures in the same order every time, and some of the studios are heated to 105 degrees with 60 degrees humidity, causing participants to lose a considerable amount of body water and feel tired when finished.
Robbins prefers to mix up the positions and for the studio to be between 85 to 90 degrees so that the body heats and can go beyond it’s normal capacity.
Some other positions used in yoga are – downward-facing dog, child’s pose, thunderbolt, warrior one and two, tree pose and bridge pose. In child’s pose, participants are sitting back on their hips with arms extended in front of them. In downward-facing dog, the body is in the inverted “V” position.
Sarah Hamilton, a senior art history major, takes yoga to fulfill her wellness requirements.
“I didn’t think it would be too strenuous and I always wondered if I would enjoy doing it,” she said of her decision to take the course.
Hamilton, who had never done yoga before the class, feels that it tones but doesn’t provide much of a cardio workout to lose fat.
“Doing it two times a week doesn’t amount to much,” she said.
She went on to explain that, for her, yoga doesn’t help reduce stress either.
“Maybe if you were to do it more often it would.”
Robbins said that yoga is beneficial for athletes because they don’t spend enough time stretching, which is necessary when exerting the body to the fullest extent.
Ariana Farris, a member of the equestrian team, takes yoga because her coach requires it, but she started doing yoga a few summers ago with her mom and sister by renting videos from the library and doing it in the living room.
“Yoga stretches me out so that I can be more flexible for riding,” she said. “Yoga helps me build muscle without looking too muscular … You stretch out muscles and it keeps you from getting sore later.”
Farris said that she would do yoga anyway even if her coach didn’t require it.
She owns yoga paraphernalia including a mat, strap, balance blocks, DVDs and clothing, which many stores carry. Target, for example, has a section of yoga mats and other accessories as well as clothing labeled as yoga clothes.
While it is not taught on an individual basis at SMU, some of the yoga poses are not appropriate for everybody in a group class. In a one-on-one situation, for example, the teacher would try to find the exercises that took a person’s limits into account.
“You need to tell people if it hurts don’t do it,” Robbins explained.
He also cautions students to pay attention to breathing.
“If you can’t breathe deeply,” he said, “you’re going too far and you need to rest.”
Junior football player Don Ieremia-Stansbury has been doing yoga for three months. He does the hatha yoga group exercise in Dedman.
“I have always wanted to participate in an activity that focuses on bringing the mind, body and spirit together,” he said. “It keeps me in balance by working on the spiritual aspect of my life.” And, he said, “It gives you solitude in your day.”
Stansbury even expects to do yoga after he’s done with athletics.
Robbins believes that yoga will stop being a big trend in five to 10 years, but will never go away.
“I think it’s still growing,” he said, “but it’s like anything else. If some new fad comes out, a lot of the people doing this will find something else they think is better [and] will go to that.”
According to the American Yoga Association, no one knows exactly when the exercise began, but it predates written history. Stone carvings depicting figures in yoga positions have been found in archeological sites in the Indus Valley dating back 5,000 years or more.
According to the association’s Web site, yoga probably arrived in the United States in the late 1800s, but did not become widely known until the 1960s as part of the youth culture’s growing interest in anything Eastern.
Now, many physicians recommend it for managing stress and improving health and well-being.
Classes always end with the relaxation phase with people lying quietly on their mats, not thinking about anything but the present moment and concentrating on their breathing. There is peace in the room.
For more information on yoga courses at SMU, contact Bryan Robbins in the wellness department at (214) 768-1809.
