The Stressed-Out Learn to Relax Through Yoga

"Come into the breath. I want you to be very aware of where that breath is."

Elizabeth F. Bunker welcomes her students to class in the usual way.

Seated on the floor, her back very straight, her legs crossed, she is attentive. "Continue stretching and recharging. Find the rhythm of your breath." Deep sighs engulf the room.

Minutes later, Bunker encourages the class to make other kinds of sounds. The students readily moan and groan, seeming to release a plethora of pent-up tension.

"Frustration? Any frustration in here?" Bunker prods. And the groans and moans become louder.

Free Like a Wave

The term yoga comes from Sanskrit--it means, 'to yoke.' Raja yoga, which is what Bunker teaches every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the Malkin Athletic Center (MAC), is in literal and physical terms, a discipline of the body and the mind.

Ironically, the yoga classes are held in the MAC's wrestling room, where a sign blaring, "Harvard Wrestling--Earning the Right to Win Begins Here," expresses the dominant dogma of the MAC and of Harvard: Compete. And win.

During Bunker's yoga classes in this same room, however, pressure is not the name of the game. In fact, the approximately 25 people enrolled in the 12 noon class are there specifically to avoid the cut-throat competition of the University. They simply want to relax.

So as they sit crosslegged, eyes closed, arms rested on their knees, palms open, a soothing voice offers guidance: "The arms are open. Imagine the infinite space and time and light which are held there. The belly is soft and open and expansive. As you continue, notice what happens to the breath. And then just sit and allow the breath to flow. Let it feel blissful and free, like a wave."

Shouts and thumps of more strenuous activities at the MAC can be heard echoing outside of the wrestling room. In the class itself, you can hear a pin drop.

Bunker says her class at first found it "laughable" to share a room with such blatant reminders of competition and aggression. Now, however, students "see [the wrestling room] as a room of transformation," she says.

"A lot of people in the Western world are in that pre-stress syndrome of 'fight or flight' all the time, and they think that's what it means to be alive." But putting the body under so much stress is inefficient, says Bunker. "What you're looking for is to find a way of breathing that is very relaxing." Once an individual gets used to the breathing techniques of yoga, Bunker says, the stress starts to dissipate.

Breathing is the first and most important technique that Bunker introduces to her classes. In fact, the instructor says she does not allow new students to join the class after it has been in session for a week, because by that time she has already covered important breathing techniques. "Yoga's sort of like geometry," she explains. "Each thing builds on the next."

The sun salutations, a series of stretches or postures--including the 'downward facing dog' and the 'cobra'--also constitute the various aspects of the lessons.

"It's been said that you cannot remain depressed after doing sun salutes," claims Bunker. "They open areas of your inner self--your heart, your throat. It opens you up to many possibilities." The cobra, in particular, helps open up the spine, explains Bunker, where most people's tension builds up.

After a yoga class, the undergraduates, graduate students and University staff members enrolled in the yoga class say they are indeed more relaxed and ready to tackle Harvard's stressful atmosphere.

"We like it. It mellows us out," says Betty-Jo Matzinger, a graduate student at the Education School. Her friend, Naomi Dogan, also a graduate student at the Ed School, agrees. "It helps me with my breathing and working out the physical kinks I get from mental crunching," she says. "It is a great one-hour escape from the chaos of life."

For others, it was a less temporal yearning that brought them to yoga.

"I was kind of looking for a new outlet," explains Alexandra Cordero '92. "I was interested in doing something that was not just exercise, but something that combined the physical and the spiritual. What attracted me to it was I thought it would be a good way of getting in touch with my inner self."

"It's discipline. You learn a lot about your own physical limitations," says Cordero.

"I think that it strengthens your independence, and amazingly, with so many people in the class, it allows the person to have privacy in the midst of so many people," says Maya G. Evans, a staff member of the Latin American Scholarship Program.

Joe N. Betts '90, a graduate student in chemical oceanography at MIT, took yoga at Harvard for several terms as an undergraduate. For Betts, yoga has meant "learning to be comfortable in the place you spend all your time: your body."

Goodbye to 'Frumpy Old Ways'

Bunker, who has taught yoga for seven or eight years, says she began when a chiropractor recommended yoga as a way to alleviate her pain from a back injury. "I just started doing it as a physical enterprise," she says. But the yoga eventually made her feel better not just physically, Bunker recalls, but emotionally as well.

"What I kept finding, as I went along, was that I was increasing my endurance and just feeling better. I could sleep less. I didn't read anything, I just experienced it," says Bunker. "When I didn't do yoga I just fell back into my frumpy old way."

The philosophy of yoga was also enticing to Bunker. During the 1970s, she says, "I was going through a lot of the same searches that we were going through in the '60s. When I started feeling really good I looked at the philosophy." Western religions tend to involve a lot of guilt, says Bunker. She prefers the Eastern religions, which she says are largely based upon caring and understanding.

"It's a wonderful feeling...I don't know if language can deal with it," Bunker says of yoga. "We really are of one mind. It brings you back to feeling compassion for humanity."

"You suddenly become aware you're responsible for all your emotions. You're not a puppet anymore in the universe," she adds.

Her students say they value highly Bunker's experience in Hindu philosophy--but mostly, they say, it is the instructor's "calming personality" and ability to inspire that makes her teaching style so effective and endearing.

"She is non-judgmental; she makes you feel accepted at any level you happen to be at," says Betts. "She's a great example of a seemingly happy human being at its full potential."

"She's fabulous. She's like a goddess basically," says Cordero. "She's got a very, very peaceful way about her. She's got a lot of positive energy. You feel it from her, and I think that's why people like her so much."

Tyana R. Caplan '91, who took the class both last year and first semester of this term, says there were a few times when Bunker went away and the class had a substitute teacher. "It just wasn't the same," she says.

Sitting Around And 'Oming'

While class members are enthusiastic about yoga now, many admitted they were not always so approving.

"Everyone has this idea of it as this crunchy thing. I had all the preconceived notions of people sitting around and 'om-ing,'" says Caplan.

"Before I started yoga, I assumed it was sort of inefficacious and just sort of dumb," says Betts, "a sort of gentle, boring thing you could do that wouldn't make any difference."

Bunker is well aware of people's perceptions, but she says that often their attitudes are formed without knowing much about yoga. "People don't realize how challenging it is physically ... this is not a natural thing for the body to do. At first it feels pretty awkward."

People's inhibitions further limit them and may scare them away from yoga, others say.

"I think a lot of people are very afraid of getting in touch with parts of themselves," says Cordero, "especially a lot of people at Harvard, people who are very competitive."

Bunker says that the stress at Harvard makes yoga all the more important. "I get a lot of stressed-out people who come in," she says. "I think Harvard is right up there in terms of stressful places. It's nice to watch people take control of that and not let it take them in."

In mixing the wacky and fun with the more serious and spiritual, Bunker helps Harvardians 'take control.'

During a recent class, for example, Bunker had the students do the 'crow walk.' "Make some sounds that remind you of a crow," she suggested to her class. And the students got down on the balls of their feet, squawking and creeping around the red wrestling mats like scavenging birds.

Later, in a more serious mode, the class performed a chant. Bunker began, singing in a soft voice: "Om Nama Shivaya." The chant, which "tunes you into yourself," according to Bunker, grew louder as the entire class joined her in the haunting chromatic scale. Their voices rose and fell, chanting the words over and over again.

Wrestlers Do It Too

After the hour is up, Bunker says she can see the difference in people's facial expressions. "What I see is that their faces are more relaxed, their eyes aren't so staring."

"People are really very other-worldly when they come out of there," says Matzinger.

In fact, yoga seems to have benefits for everybody. As it turns out, Assistant Wrestling Coach Paul Widerman also does yoga--and he teaches the techniques to his team.

It is doubtful, however, that Widerman ends his wrestling practices in the same spirit that Bunker ends her classes: Head bent down, she speaks solemnly to her class, "I honor you with all respect. I honor you with my heart."