Every Tuesday, from 3-4 p.m., the Brown Room is transformed into a room of meditation when approximately 50 students imitate the yoga positions of moderators English teacher Eric Sutton and science teacher Rebecca Siegel.
Yoga Club, which, according to Sutton, started as a “silly homage” to his students, has proven to be a great support system and activity, according to senior Rachael Green. “Doing it [yoga] with friends after school gives me more motivation. The more people that come out, the more fun it will be,” said Green.
For Sutton, Yoga Club began as a way to show students the “personal practice and growth” of yoga. He has been consistently practicing yoga for over five years now, but first became acquainted with the art during high school.
“I began practicing yoga in high school, but I didn’t understand it, and that’s the problem with many classes today. Instructors jump right into a series of postures without explaining the foundations of yoga first,” said Sutton.
After encouragement from a friend, Sutton started practicing yoga again. “I read some texts and studied some of the postures, movements, and schools of yoga. This time, when I went to practice, I knew what I wanted to accomplish. That’s what I hope to impart to the students, yoga as a science, not as a form of exercise,” said Sutton.
For Siegel, Yoga Club is a way to understand “how [the] mind and body work together.” Siegel first began practicing yoga as cross-training for dance, but became more interested during a 3-week stay in Africa during her sophomore year of college. A director of the trip was “really into it,” so the group would practice yoga daily.
When Siegel returned to the U.S., she began taking yoga classes and has been taking them ever since.
Sutton’s and Siegel’s roles are known to Yoga Club members as director and corrector. According to Green, “Mr. Sutton has the yoga teacher dialogue down and guides us through it verbally, while Ms. Siegel corrects our poses and makes sure we have each pose down perfect.”
Because of the difference in their backgrounds, they have discovered that the names they associate with each move are different, so Sutton and Siegel meet and review which postures to do at each meeting, what order to do them in, and which name to call each posture by.
According to Sutton, Siegel’s dance background also attributes to an “uncanny ability” she has to talk a student through a specific posture. “I certainly wouldn’t mind switching roles with her for a class or two. I’m sure both the students and I would learn a lot from her teachings,” said Sutton.
Even though they come from two different schools of yoga, Sutton and Siegel believe in the individualized form of yoga, and its mentality of “do what you can do,” said Siegel.
“I believe that with the workload both in and out of school, students really owe it to themselves to take a little time to sit quietly and focus on the present moment, not worrying about all the distractions. What we do here as a school is extremely important, but students lose themselves in our demands. Few people, not just students, know how to relax, put their egos aside, and face themselves, their shortcomings and their suffering. Yoga can be incredibly healing, but it takes a certain understanding to really reap the benefits,” said Sutton.
For Green, joining has wiped away previous misconceptions. “When people think of yoga, they always think of quiet women sitting cross-legged with their hands in pray position whispering ‘Namaste.’ However, while it does relieve stress, it is a lot more interactive than that, and is quite a workout, and it really strengthens the muscles. Think bathing suit season, girls,” said Green.
However, Siegel would like to see more boys join the club. “I really want to get more athletes in it,” said Siegel, who watches Loyola’s varsity wrestling team take a class each week at her yoga studio in Cockeysville.
So far, only one boy, senior Bobby O’Brien, has joined. O’Brien, who joined for “the health benefits and to learn more about it,” explained that he is comfortable and enjoys the club. “Being the only guy, I got a few weird looks before we started. But there was no actual problem,” said O’Brien.
Green added, “The boys are really missing out. I think it would be great to see some of the jocks like [senior] Stephen St. Clair and [senior] Brendon Dashiell in the Brown Room next yoga practice. Only real men do yoga.”
Alex Bahr can be reached for comment at [email protected].