Featured General

Featured+General

Although Ms. Erin Bruns is our school’s photography teacher, it isn’t the only thing she can teach. Recently, she became a certified yoga instructor. Yoga has been her passion since she started practicing it in 2001 and now has the chance to share it with others.

Although most people see yoga as exercise, it involves the mind as well. “As I’ve been taking this training I realized that there’s way more than just the physical flow practice that we know,” Ms. Bruns said.

In fact, her favorite part of yoga is the mental part. “[I like] the meditation portion of it because you can cure a lot of things that ail you in life with just sitting down and being still.” Ms. Bruns said. She also had insight as to why meditation can improve one’s health: “I think in America it’s always ‘go go go’ when actually it’s the opposite; we have busy lives so counteracting that with slowing down is the medicine we need and not a lot of people think about that.”

This lesson that she learned in yoga has helped her in difficult situations before. “Even in times where I’m very busy and I have multiple students talking to me at once or I get angry … with a student who’s misbehaving,” she said, “Just stopping and taking a moment to breathe, even though it seems like an eternity, sometimes calms me down so I can better deal with the situation.”

Her teaching in the school also helps her as an instructor outside it. “My working with students and teaching the different learners has helped me learn …how to adapt my approach to my learning or to my teaching based on my teaching methods in my classroom,” she said.

For students who are interested in learning yoga from her, Ms. Bruns is giving them the opportunity. She will be teaching yoga classes at school every other Tuesday in the Little Theatre. It could be an opportunity for stressed and anxious students to relax. As Ms. Bruns said, “[Yoga is] really just a study of self-care for your body.”