Experience the Magic of Yoga on Campus

LIVE FOR LIFE, Duke’s employee wellness program, offers no-cost yoga classes

Whenever someone tells Crystal Parker that they either can’t do yoga or aren’t good at it, she offers a gentle correction.

“It sounds to me like you're not really sure about speaking the ‘language of yoga,’ yet,” she’ll tell them.

Parker, a yoga teacher for LIVE FOR LIFE, Duke’s employee wellness program, firmly lives by one mantra: “If you can breathe, you can do yoga.”

Parker teaches yoga and Pilates classes as part of the group fitness class rotation offered by LIVE FOR LIFE, a unit in Duke Human Resources. The no-cost classes are held weekly at 5:30 p.m. in the Bivins Building on East Campus. Strength training and circuit classes are among other classes offered.

Yoga is a welcome addition because the low-impact exercise has a variety of physical benefits, including helping with flexibility, balance, weight control, arthritis and chronic conditions such as low-back and neck pain. There are also mental health benefits of lowering anxiety and aiding in stress management.

“With the physical practice of yoga, our goal is to create a really balanced, even symmetrical body,” Parker said. “And in the same way, we create and cultivate a really balanced mind.”

Achieving all that is a noble goal, Parker continued. But the real benefit of a 30-minute yoga class at Duke is a chance to meet colleagues you might not run across in everyday life.

It’s an opportunity to become a part of a community that she has been building since she began teaching in May.

Four people balance on one leg with arms overhead during a yoga class
Yoga requires some balance, but modifications are available for all levels during LIVE FOR LIFE group fitness classes. Photo by Travis Stanley

“It genuinely lights me up to think about inviting anyone from the community here into this space, to not only build a really strong and kind relationship with their own body and their practice, but also their relationships with each other,” Parker said. “When someone brings a colleague or a friend to class, and they meet someone else from a different area, it just feels so magical, and fun and uplifting.”

Bala Sundaravelu is one of those community members who regularly attends Parker’s classes because “all day I am sitting at my desk,” the Provider Support Assistant in Pediatrics Nephrology said. Yoga helps him to stretch and move.

He was joined by Karen Dean, a Nurse Practitioner in Neuro Oncology  who is also among the regulars in Parker’s yoga classes. She began working at Duke in January and said LIVE FOR LIFE fitness offerings, including the Duke Run/Walk Club, have been a regular part of her schedule.

“It’s a good way to get into the Duke culture and get to know people, and at the same time, get in shape,” Dean said.

During a recent class, Parker asked Dean and the handful of others in front of her to balance on one foot, lift the floating knee up to waist level and then plant it behind them into a teetering lunge. Everyone executed the move perfectly, even if a bit wobbly.

“You’re breathing,” she told the group balancing in front of her. “That’s a measure of success.”

Everyone was breathing; they were all doing yoga.

Watch this short video from a recent yoga class:

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