On Sunday afternoons the Butt C lounge transforms into a makeshift yoga studio, drawing University students into a calming atmosphere separated from the hubbub of college life.
Yoga at the University is currently offered through the office of WesWELL for a fee of $125 per 12-week session. This semester there are six sections offered, and about 150 students participate in the program. Students can pay through their student accounts, registering on-line through their portfolios, but cannot take the class for credit.
Despite the costs of WesWELL’s yoga class, it is one of the health center’s oldest and most popular programs. Lisa Currie, director of Health Education at WesWELL, says that she sees the same students registering for classes each year.
Currie explained that the program is also self-sustaining, as students often take classes, develop an interest in yoga, and then get certified as instructors and teach through WesWELL.
“I haven’t had to look for an instructor in years,” she said.
WesWELL Yoga Instructor Shayna Keller ’09 explained that having peers teach WesWELL yoga classes makes for a more comfortable learning environment.
“It feels like one of the most grassroots ways to approach learning on campus,” she said.
Keller also pointed out that getting certified to become a yoga teacher is expensive, costing anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000. She explained that WesWELL gives a far larger cut of the student fee to the teachers than any yoga studio.
“I do not qualify for financial aid, and this is a great way for me to make money on campus,” she said.
By fourth quarter next year, however, the Physical Education (P.E.) department hopes to offer yoga for credit and without the WesWELL fee. If offered through the P.E. department, students would attend class three times a week for six weeks, rather than once a week for twelve weeks, as they do now through WesWELL.
John Biddiscombe, chair of the Physical Education department, said that the department has been planning to offer a yoga class for years. He explained that he has been researching “a slick kind of yoga place” in West Hartford, whose brochure lists at least five different types of yoga. Biddiscombe wants to make sure the department is responding to student interest before he invests time and energy in training a professor.
“In order to give credit, the class has to be taught by a member of the Wesleyan faculty,” he said. “We can’t just throw someone in and say, ’Okay, teach yoga.’”
Biddiscombe explained that the P.E. department’s class will follow a similar model to other recently introduced classes, such as Tai Chi and technical rock climbing: one of the P.E. professors will assist a certified yoga instructor for two or three quarters before teaching the class by him or herself.
“We don’t want to offer it unless someone feels comfortable and confident teaching,” Biddiscombe said.
But although the P.E. yoga class would offer the advantage of being free of charge, Keller explained that yoga’s roots in Hindu philosophy may clash with the philosophy of the P.E. department.
“Yoga is about unifying your mind and your body, and having an awareness of the connection between mind, body, and whatever concept you have of the spirit, if at all,” she said.
Although Keller offers to speak with students interested in the more spiritual background to yoga, she explained that she never pushes this aspect on her students.
Amy Tate, an instructor who is not a Wesleyan student but whose husband is in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program, explained that meditation is integral to yoga, as well.
“Today I ended class with meditation,” she said. “I might not do that if it was a P.E. class.”
Tate refers to yoga as a “philosophical science.”
Biddiscombe admitted that the P.E. department is better prepared to deal with the exercise aspect of yoga than its philosophical roots, but did not suggest that this would make yoga an inappropriate fit for the department.
As for the future of yoga at Wesleyan, students disagree as to whether it should be taught through WesWELL or through the P.E. department.
Rachel Shopper ’10, a student of WesWELL yoga, noted that though she feels her class has been worth the fee, a P.E. class may offer certain other advantages.
“It would be fabulous as a P.E. class, and I think more people might take it,” she said.
Keller, in contrast, sees value in keeping yoga as a WesWELL-run initiative.
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