On Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:15-5 p.m., students gather in the third-floor classroom of the Residence Hall/Recreation Center. They bring their personal yoga mats and blocks or use the brightly colored ones provided by NCC. When considering busy college schedules, students may not block off time to participate in recreational activities. Yet twice a week for almost every week of the semester, many students do just that. In addition, many make an effort not to miss a single session. Through these sessions, yoga is used to further personal and physical growth. It turns out, yoga is worth the time.
“It is just so nice cause every week I have a time designated just for myself,” said Stella Bank, ’26. “No phone, no homework and specifically just to help me feel better. And it’s just really nice every week having yoga to come to.”
The yoga instructor for these sessions, Jane Liddy, ‘17, was delighted to share her yoga history and her knowledge about its benefits. Liddy had also been introduced to yoga in college during her sophomore year at NCC. After experiencing yoga through a studio in the area, she began practicing herself. This led to Liddy wanting to become a yoga instructor.
“I remember how much yoga helped me manage my own stress and lifestyle in college, and I wanted to be able to give that back to the community and this was the perfect way to do it,” said Liddy.
Liddy has now practiced yoga for almost ten years. Her training to become a yoga instructor required 200 hours. Those hours encompassed not just yoga itself, but anatomy labs of yoga, an exam, a paper and hours of additional studying. This training provided insight into growth through yoga.
When explaining yoga’s benefits, Liddy herself mentions that the physical nature of the practice is the initial draw for many. Its impact on flexibility, perhaps first and foremost. Other physical benefits can be less noticeable. For instance, yoga is great at building strength and muscle tone. Even then, strength, flexibility and general physical fitness are not the only advantages of yoga.
Sometimes the mental benefits of yoga are hard to separate from the physical ones. For instance, Liddy’s classes have a great deal of focus on breathing. Because of this attentiveness to breathing as they progress through the poses, the yoga she teaches could be considered a moving meditation. These moving meditations help clear the mind, reduce stress and improve self-awareness, which can be considered mental benefits. Liddy’s list of yoga’s physical benefits include help with cholesterol, sleep and blood flow. Yoga can even help alleviate pain in certain areas. This is relevant even for chronic ailments.
Harvard Medical School and Healthline also express scientific faith in yoga’s benefits, which includes a better body image and lower blood pressure for those diagnosed with hypertension. This echoes many of both the physical and mental benefits listed by Liddy.
These explanations of growth are agreed with by Bank, who said “I have found myself being more relaxed. Physically, I can now do downward dog and not hurt. And so, I’ve been becoming more flexible, and it’s really cool seeing my improvement.”
When thinking of growth, though, Liddy has one element that holds special value to her. Her aim is that her students leave the yoga class and bring their authentic selves out into the world. It is a common idea in her classes that students should take their yoga practice off their mats and into the world with them.
Through “showing up and breathing and quieting your mind, so that your soul can really speak, and you can hear what it has to say,” said Liddy.
Bank agrees with this, as she draws comparisons between other forms of working out and yoga. Other forms of working out can sometimes include the mentality of pushing yourself hard. In contrast, yoga teaches participants to push themselves if they want to, while at the same time listening to their bodies. Bank feels as if this method has been more helpful to her growth.
Some of these benefits can be hard to notice from the outside, but that doesn’t mean Liddy hasn’t noticed growth in her students. Liddy confessed that seeing the friendships forming among people who might not have otherwise met has been wonderful for her. Watching her students hold firmly in a pose they were once unsteady in and seeing them challenge themselves to push a bit farther in a pose are also some of the obvious growths she has noticed. When students share that the class was just what they needed for their week, she sees growth.
When picturing what she thinks of yoga, growth and her students in front of her, Liddy had only one thing to say, a smile.
“I don’t know why, but I just do. I think it helps us tap into that inner joy that’s within each of us,” Liddy said with a grin.
