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Show t The Newspaper Thursday, May 1, 1980 Page 7 Hatha Yoga: A Balance he Mind and Body oft Mention the word 'yoga' to the average American, and he is likely to strike up mental images of an Indian swami tying himself into painful knots to obtain spiritual , enlightenment. Like so many other things 'Eastern ' yoga is little understood by Westerners. But the recent American craze for fitness sports, particularily running, has brought on a wave of the sport that means 'union' and with popularity, has come understanding. Local resident Bonnie Van Schenck has been involved with yoga for nine years and has taught it in Park City for more than a year. Beginning May 6, she will begin teaching teach-ing four-week-long yoga classes, Tuesday and Thursday nights, at the Prospector Athletic Club. Van Schenck provided The Newspaper with some insights in-sights on her particular school of training, hatha yoga. "Hatha means balance, balance of the body and mind," said Van Schenck. "As the body becomes flexible flexi-ble through the yoga postures, pos-tures, the mind too becomes flexible. As such, yoga teaches its practitioners to be more in touch with their bodies." Putting yourself in touch with your body, says the yogi, helps the athlete realize his or her limitations and, more importantly optimum opti-mum potential. If, for example, ex-ample, a person can only do the most rudimentary yoga postures without undue stretching, then he or she knows that the body is too stiff to try certain athletic pursuits, say gymnastics, which are likely to result in pulled muscles. Similarily, through yoga, the same person could become flexible enought to learn gymnastics. But athletes are not the only ones that can benefit from yoga. "Yoga works for the stiff and out of shape person, as well as the well-tuned athlete," asserts Van Schenck. "When I started nine years ago in Connecticut, Connecti-cut, I was a stiff housewife that hadn't done anything for 10 years. I wasn't out to change myself, but I did. Doing yoga once a week awakened me to my body. I felt more relaxed, yet had more vitality. And I lost my taste for alcohol, I no longer needed it." Van Schenck doesn't stop there with her praise for yoga and what it can do for a person, mind and body. She says yoga prolongs one's life, that it gives strength balance, and endurance, and expands the mind. That's a long order of claims, some of them sounding pretty cosmic, cos-mic, but Van Schenck defends de-fends each. Yoga prolongs life, reasons Van Schenck, because it conditions the body. "And don't runners claim their sport prolongs life because it conditions?" she asks. It relaxes because it is gentle, she says, and because it teaches the practioner to feel his body, to sense the tightness of his muscles and try to relax those muscles. Once the yogi (male yoga practioner) oryogin (female practioner) gets used to recognizing when his or her muscles are tight, whether from everyday life tensions or exercise, the next step is doing yoga to relax the muscles and mind. As Van Schenck explains it, yoga relaxes not only because be-cause it stretches muscle and tendon, but also because it differs so from the usual Western association of exercise ex-ercise with pain: Proper breathing in yoga practice requires long, deep breaths, as opposed to the shallow respiration of hurry-up living; yoga is slow and controlled, not jerky and forced like many exercises; and yoga is noncompetitive, even with oneself, because doing yoga with a competitive competi-tive attitude would force the mind and body, with resultant result-ant tightening. If yoga is so gentle, how can it increase muscular strength and endurance? Van Schenck offers the example of thigh exercise skiers do whereby they "sit," without a chair, with their back against the wall. Holding yoga postures for increasingly long lengths of time leads to similar muscle conditioning. The idea is not to hold longer than someone else or until it hurts, but to hold as long as your body tells you. As for the mind, Van Schenck says it is involved intimately "because you . have to be right with your body at the moment." Someone who loses his concentration while doing a posture is very likely to lose his balance as well. Because it is so useful as a flexibility program, yoga has been enjoying increasing popularity with runners, a group frequently plagued by injuries resu'ting from the muscle shortening long term exercising causes. Runner's World Magazine seems to publish a yoga article nearly every other issue, and it has produced a number of books on the subject, including the lastest "Runner's World Yoga Book," by Jean Couch, who happens to be a friend of Van Schenck. In her book, Couch argues that yoga is not just for the flexible athlete: "The degree of flexibility achieved does not determine success in yoga. Success is measured by a person's inward attention atten-tion to the body and mind in the pose. Many times it is the less flexible students who do 'real' yoga' because the poses demand their attention. atten-tion. Flexible people sometimes some-times find yoga elusive because their suppleness allows them to look as if they're doing yoga when really their attention is wandering." Van Schenck added that successful yoga eventually leads to spiritual enlightenment, enlighten-ment, but not by tying oneself into knots. Those interested in trying a yoga class can contact the Prospector Athletic Club at 649-6670 or Bonnie Van Schenck at 649-9495. IS J ' ' 6 As the body becomes flexible through the yoga postures, the mind too becomes flexible. As such, yoga teaches its practitioners to be more in touch with their bodies J ' Bonnie Van Schenck demonstrates a variety of yoga poses. Clockwise from the top the poses are: Downward Facing Dog, a pose particularly beneficial to the jogger; Virabhadrasana, the 'warrior pose,' useful in strengthening and shaping the legs and thighs and releasing tension in the neck and shoulders; The Camel, a form of back bend; and the Triangle Pose, which sharpens shar-pens the sense of balance. 'w1 C,-? . fit - 4 k.'' v. I I S if H L 'if I . 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