Overview
There is always room for change, but you have to be willing.
I have practiced yoga for about two years now, and have my own experience with mental health challenges. Through my previous practice, I have found yoga to be a helpful form of coping. Because of this, I decided to look further into the connection between mind and body. More specifically, how yoga affects mental health. This led me to a plan: practice yoga, journal my feelings, spread the word, and take photos that embody the benefits of yoga. Read below to follow me on my process through this project.
English
To get some hands-on experience, I decided to incorporate a yoga practice into my school day and then journal about how I was impacted. Each day, I completed a customized practice and journaled in the following format:
Before: how I was feeling before the yoga, where my mood was on a scale of 100
Practice: what kind of practice I had, including length and intensity.
After: how I was feeling after the practice, where my mood was on a scale of 100
Reflection: a journal based on several reasoning questions I had prepared about my project
This set up allowed me to not only track how I was feeling, but to explore my own thoughts and reasoning about how yoga intertwines with mental health. Overall, I found that my mood was generally higher after yoga.
Before: how I was feeling before the yoga, where my mood was on a scale of 100
Practice: what kind of practice I had, including length and intensity.
After: how I was feeling after the practice, where my mood was on a scale of 100
Reflection: a journal based on several reasoning questions I had prepared about my project
This set up allowed me to not only track how I was feeling, but to explore my own thoughts and reasoning about how yoga intertwines with mental health. Overall, I found that my mood was generally higher after yoga.
Social Studies
For social studies, I aimed to convey the accessibility of yoga to incoming college students. Through various club involvement, I have experience writing professional news articles and features. However, with this project I challenged myself to write in a new style-- that of an entertainment magazine. In the article, I discuss the importance of a yoga routine and how it can relieve the anxieties of college. I chose five relatively easy poses and described how to do each of them in a college setting. Paired with pictures of myself doing the poses, I created an article that was both informational and fun to read. The link to the article on my blog is below to the right, while an excerpt of my article is below to the left.
Congratulations! You’ve been accepted into college.
Let’s go over your college checklist: Shower curtain? Check! Bedsheets? Check! A color-coded planner? Check! Yoga Mat? Definitely! Yes, a yoga mat. While it may seem slightly less common than other items you’ve packed for the next year on campus, I invite you to hear me out. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association in America, 41.6% of college students report anxiety being a present concern in their lives. Between the rush of tests, social activities, and general stressors, it’s hard to catch a break. But this is where yoga comes in. Yoga has been proven to battle many mental health issues, along with an assortment of physical problems. By altering your brain chemistry, yoga allows you to live more peacefully. |
|
Art
Through photography, I wanted to capture how yoga is beneficial amongst the business of everyday life. I ended up taking over 200 photos, but narrowed them down to my nine favorites, which are pictured below. I recruited one of my friends to pose for me as we travelled to different locations throughout York and Gettysburg. In each photo, I attempted to almost hide the yoga pose; the focus was the background and surrounding objects. I wanted to do this to exemplify the idea that yoga has its uses in unconventional settings. I aimed to capture an essence of mindfulness and grounding amidst distraction.