“I love getting up in the dark and getting all bundled up and walking to yoga in the morning. It’s very quiet and peaceful—the darkness is very introspective. I practice three days a week in a second-floor studio on Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor [Phoenix Center]. We practice Mysore-style Ashtanga yoga. There’s a set sequence we all memorize and do on our own at our own pace. Our teacher comes around and adjusts us individually.
“I get there about seven a.m. We practice pretty much in silence. In winter it’s dark outside, and cold. Inside the studio the lights and space heaters are on. Halfway through, it starts to get light, and by the time I’m done at 8:30 it’s fully bright, and people outside are up and going to work and getting coffee. After I finish, I go home and get ready for class.
“I started practicing yoga when I was 16. Later I spent four months in India. I went to an ashram, to a yoga university, to a little yoga studio on the beach, to a ten-day silent meditation retreat, and I traveled all over the country. It changed my life.”
—By Allison O’Donnell, second-year M.H.S.A. student, health management and policy
If you do yoga, you know that it's seductive. That delicious feeling of stretching from the inside out; that soothing sensation like warm honey flowing through energized limbs; and the "big payoff" at the end of a practice: floating away into the infinite. You can't access this in pictures, and yoga isn't a spectator sport. The real experience is only available to you if you actually do yoga.
Nice article.. Yoga lowers blood sugar and cholesterol, while increasing good cholesterol. In diabetes, yoga helps control blood sugar by lowering cortisol and adrenal hormone levels, weight loss and improve insulin sensitivity. I love Yoga :)
I have always dreamed of visiting India, but for reasons other than yoga. For someone just getting started, what would be your approach? http://www.mfsblog.com
Another Student Stress Buster!
In a literal kickoff to the first day of classes, a dozen SPH students took to the soccer field for a scrimmage with students from the UM Med School. Bri Meek, an SPH first-year student in Human Nutrition, who is kicking the ball in the photo above, organized the match.
Meek says sports are a perfect way to alleviate stress. "In terms of physiology and anatomy, we know the hormone rush is healthy. But also getting out and meeting new people is really rejuvenating."
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If you do yoga, you know that it's seductive. That delicious feeling of stretching from the inside out; that soothing sensation like warm honey flowing through energized limbs; and the "big payoff" at the end of a practice: floating away into the infinite. You can't access this in pictures, and yoga isn't a spectator sport. The real experience is only available to you if you actually do yoga.