Recreation

Yoga: More Than You Imagine

It’s not only for gurus and models: Yoga can benefit everyone, veteran teachers say.

Tom Giffey, photos by Andrea Paulseth |

YOGA CENTER OF EAU CLAIRE
Yoga Center of Eau Claire

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when yoga wasn’t as close as the supermarket check-out, when it wasn’t viewed as the province of well-toned magazine models. Having made the leap from millennia-old Indian spiritual discipline to the New Age and hippie movements in the United States a few decades ago, yoga still took a while to reach the Upper Midwest. Sandra Helpsmeet remembers developing an interest in yoga years ago while living in a small Minnesota town. In those pre-Internet days, she hunted for books, finally stumbling across Richard Hittleman’s Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan and becoming a solo yoga practitioner. “Even though I didn’t know what I was doing,” she recalls, “I liked how it felt.”

Some years later, Helpsmeet found herself in Eau Claire where there was no yoga instruction to speak of except for the occasional itinerant teacher. She and a friend began to travel to St. Paul once a week for classes, and eventually the requests began to come from friends as yoga gained a foothold in the mainstream: Could you teach us yoga?

“Just because we’re taking classes doesn’t mean we can teach anything,” Helpsmeet remembers replying. However, soon enough she and her then-business partner began holding a few classes a week in a room on the second floor of a building on Water Street. Fifteen years later, the venture – the Yoga Center of Eau Claire – has finally outgrown that limited space and recently relocated to roomier quarters at 2425 Golf Road, Suite 2F. During the same time, yoga has continued to explode in popularity and additional yoga teachers have set up shop in the Chippewa Valley. (See a complete listing of yoga studios beginning on page 36.)

The new space features two studios – one big enough for 20 students, the other for about 10 – as well as a private room for one-on-one instruction. The Yoga Center has about 12 teachers and, at any given time, about 20 different classes happening weekly.

Donna Wagner Backus, who now co-owns the center, came to yoga in 2005 because of health problems and began to take private lessons. The practice spoke to her, she explains, and eventually Helpsmeet asked her to teach as well. “I said I almost flunked freshman PE, and she said, ‘This isn’t a PE class,’ ” Backus recalls.

Therein lies one of the major misconceptions about yoga in the United States: Western eyes often look at yoga postures and see only exercise and stretching – moreover, the kind of exercise and stretching done only by the young, buff, and abnormally flexible. But the discipline is much more than that, both physically and mentally. Case in point: One of the major reasons Backus and Helpsmeet are happy with their relocation is that their second-floor studio is now accessible by elevator: Even students unable to walk up a flight of stairs because of age, disability, or injury can reap the benefits of yoga.

Understandably enough for a discipline that developed thousands of years ago, there are numerous schools and styles of yoga. In hatha yoga – the style of yoga practiced at the Yoga Center and elsewhere in the Chippewa Valley – the emphasis is on the physical side of yoga, such as postures and breathing, but meditation is part of the mix as well. Classes at the Yoga Center fall into several broad categories: alignment (learning the basics of postures and breathing); alignment flow (a more continuous flow between postures with less instruction); and adaptive yoga for students with limited mobility.

So if yoga isn’t just a way – or even primarily a way – to break a sweat and raise your heart rate to an aerobic level, why do it? Helpsmeet and Backus offer a host of reasons: It builds mental and physical awareness. It calms the nervous system. It works out the kinks in fascia (the connective tissue between muscles and organs). It builds self-confidence. It helps you sleep better. In truth, the reasons for practicing yoga are almost as varied as the number of practitioners.

Likewise, there are many styles and schools of yoga, but they share a common thread. As Helpsmeet explains: “They have as their objective what we would call the object of meditation: to be more mindful, to be more present.”

GLOSSARY

yoga: the unitive discipline by which inner freedom is sought; a spiritual practice in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism

hatha yoga: a branch of yoga emphasizing the physical aspects of the transformative path, notably postures and cleansing techniques, but also breath control

asana: a physical posture in yoga (i.e., Downward Dog, Tree, Warrior, and hundreds more)

pranyama: breath control in yoga, consisting of conscious inhalation, retention, and exhalation

mantra: a sacred sound or phrase, such as “om” that has a transformative effect on the mind of the individual reciting it

dhyana: meditation; deep contemplation and concentration of the mind

Source: Adapted from “Glossary of Yoga Terms” by Georg Feuerstein