By Ericka M. Smith
Daily Staff Reporter
During these unseasonably warm fall days, Ann Arbor is alive with joggers, roller bladders and bikers trying to catch the last hours of sunny workout weather.
These fitness fanatics speed by, equipped with headphones and performance gear to tune out the world.
But these exercise buffs are not the only ones stretching and sweating in this college town. Hundreds of Ann Arbor residents and students take a different approach to exercise, enrolling in alternative programs such as yoga and tai chi.
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| PAUL TALANIAN/Daily Ann Arbor resident Jeff Westbrooks perfects his tai chi moves at the Asian Martial Arts Studio on S. Fourth Avenue. He's been studying the ancient Chinese exercise for four years. |
Many people associate yoga with its religious origins in India. But a growing trend of yoga practitioners are men and women of all ages, races and religious backgrounds.
Ann Arbor instructor Frederic Ferri offers personal yoga training sessions in his Yoga Pro studio on Fountain Street.
Ferri said he has taught yoga to people from all walks of life, including hockey players from the Detroit Red Wings. The Yoga Pro instructor said it is important that people are not afraid to come to yoga classes and "try something different."
"People all too often associate yoga with religion or meditation," Ferri said. "Actually, you will find people of all beliefs practice yoga and that it is very physical."
Yoga is an ancient form of exercise that involves meditation, relaxation and breathing. The combination of these three elements results in the ability to form poses with the body that tone and strengthen muscles.
Around town, yoga classes are not unusual. Many are offered throughout the community in the work place, private studios and even at the Central Campus Recreation Building.
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| JOHN KRAFT/Daily MBA second-year student Janeene Sears does "asanas" in the studio of Yoga the Iyengar Way at 310 Gralake Rd. |
Donna Pointer, a certified yoga instructor, teaches at the Ann Arbor Senior Center and in her west side studio, Yoga the Iynegar Way.
"Yoga is a system of coordination of your body your mind. It emphasizes precision and alignment in the whole," Pointer said.
Pointer said the exercise is not new to the world but there are many different ways yoga is taught.
"Yoga is a very ancient form of self-discipline and self-development," Pointer said. "Most of the yoga in the Ann Arbor area is based on the Iyengar method."
B.K.S. Iyengar, a native of Funa, India, has spent much of his 80 years practicing and setting guidelines for yoga instruction. Many who teach his method have usually gone to India to study with him.
The ideas and principals surrounding yoga require individuals to learn breathing techniques in conjunction with exercise, relaxation, diet and thinking.
"It is involving your whole being - your mind and your body," Pointer said. "It is a focused control kind of work. It's not jumping around. It's not running around."
The benefits of practicing yoga include the regaining of flexibility in joints and muscles people lose during the aging process due to lack of full mobility.
Many people turn to yoga as an alternative to the western aerobic classes because of health concern, injury, handicaps or even boredom with their usual workout routines.
Laura Arendsen, an Ann Arbor resident, said she felt "really good and really relaxed" after taking yoga classes at the Zen Buddhist Temple on Packard Street.
"I learned a long time ago that when doing things like aerobics and running (that) the value of stretching (is important)," Arendsen said. "Stretching lengthens the muscles so that you don't look bulky."
This low-impact exercise concentrates on making one conscious of breathing and posture by forming asanas - structured yoga poses.
The health benefits of yoga can extend to many people who suffer from scoliosis, lower back problems by stretching those muscle groups, Ferris said. He also emphasized the importance of heart patients to turn to yoga.
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| PAUL TALANIAN/Daily Instructor Chris Solano shows a group of tai chi students the correct way to do the exercise forms at the Asian Martial Arts Studio. He's been teaching tai chi for nine years. |
Practicing yoga does not require the use of equipment but Ferri, an Ann Arbor native, designs and markets his own yoga equipment to help people "do the poses properly."
The equipment helps many yoga practitioners form the "correct poses" when either beginning or doing the exercises alone.
The majority of instructors urge their students to use floor mats or carpeted areas to avoid injury from hard floors.
At the University, yoga instruction is taught in the theater program as well as at the CCRB.
Theatre Prof. Jerry Scheriber said he instructs his students on the principles of yoga and tai chi in an effort to teach them control of their bodies.
Scheriber said the practicing of yoga in his classes not only increase his students physical appearance, but "it has a lot of health benefits," he said.
"It's for neuro-muscular repatterning. We want our performers to move without tension," Schreiber said. "The idea is that when they go into the performance they won't clutch or tense up."
Yoga classes are available at the CCRB this semester and will be taught at the North Campus Recreation Building in the winter. This semester, more than 80 students are enrolled in the yoga classes.
Lynlee Sky, a CCRB yoga instructor, said she started practicing yoga six years ago. Sky said it has brought a new philosophy to her life.
"It really opened up a whole new structure for me. It made me more aware of my body," Sky said. "I may not live longer but the quality of my life will be better."
Yoga is unlike any form of exercise in the western world, where mainly aerobic exercises like jogging are practiced, she said.
Sky said the western world should adopt the "exercise mentalities" easterners have "perfected" over centuries.
"I think that western culture is a very active culture (in exercise) without intelligence," Sky said. "There is no intelligence and concentration (involved in Western exercising)."
Alternative exercise programs are as diverse as the average workout room, which is equipped with machines ranging from free weights to stairmasters.
Tai chi, a Chinese martial art exercise, is nearly as popular as yoga.
The two share many principles, such as a concentration on breathing and forming poses. However, tai chi involves learning martial art movements in slow motion.
At Asian Martial Art Studio on South Fourth Street, a variety of alternative exercise programs are offered, including aikido, jujitsu and tai chi.
Karl Scott, the studio's executive director, said tai chi is a popular course that concentrates on "bettering circulation" in the body.
"Tai chi is a Chinese internal form of martial art," Scott said. "It is a very soft flowing type of movement that is done very slowly in practice."
Its slow movements and low-impact exercises make it one of the best forms of exercises available to those ailing from pulled muscles and joint injuries, Scott said.
"It's basically zero impact on joints and bones. It employs every muscle in your body in a well rounded balance way," Scott said.
Arendsen, who has taken tai chi in addition to yoga classes, described tai chi as a form of "moving meditation."
"It's basically a series of movements trying to harmonize with your breath," she said. "It's a tool to bring the mind and body together."
Tai chi is only one of several alternative exercise programs offered at B.C. Yu Martial Arts in the Colonnade Shopping Center on Eisenhower Avenue.
The owner, a Korean grand master with an eighth degree black belt, whom the store is named after, said tai chi targets many muscle groups.
"Every part of your body is worked, especially around your waist, thighs, legs and buttocks," Yu said. "It is mostly used to stretch and twist around that area."
Yu said the majority of the people in his classes tend to be "middle-aged women" who want to tone and strengthen muscles. But Yu said he strongly urges men to join because they too can benefit from tai chi workouts.
Tai chi is not yoga. It involves learning basic principals of Chinese martial arts. Many of tai chi's slow movements and poses are taken from self-defense mechanisms, Scott said.
Although many studios offer tai chi classes, some people exercise by themselves.
Rackham student Steve Libbey said he has been practicing tai chi for more than three years.
Libbey said the exercises give him "an excuse to make sometime for (myself)" 20 to 30 minutes a day.
"It's easy and precise if you really get into it," Libbey said. "It's not hard in the sense of strenuous. It's tasking in that you take the time in focusing on what you're doing."
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