Megan Corsi
CSOCS 3452
Professor Laura
Douglass
October 19th,
2012
Open Doors Yoga Studio:
Free Your Body, Free Your Mind
For my qualitative project I chose to
visit a yoga studio located in Hanover, Massachusetts called Open Doors Yoga Studio. This studio is
very widely spread throughout the Boston and South Shore area of Massachusetts
and there are as many as 14 locations where Open
Doors Yoga Studio is offered. It serves and is open to all people from all
different locations, although residents of the South Shore mostly occupy it.
Any individual is able to sign up and attend their wide range/level of classes
they offer, from beginner’s classes to the more experienced classes. Although I
currently live in Cambridge, I chose to attend the Open Doors Yoga Studio located in Hanover because it was close to
home and I wanted to share this experience with my mother, since she had always
wanted to do yoga and had gotten excited about the culture and all the
practices and theories I had told her about from this course. When I was at the
yoga studio waiting for the yoga class to begin I was making conversation with
the instructor and it was only then that she had told me the Open Doors Yoga Studio in Cambridge had
closed, so originally choosing to go to the yoga studio located in Hanover
worked out perfectly.
Attending this yoga class was very
insightful for me. I was able to visualize and be part of a yoga class for the
first time, and with the help of this course I was able to prepare for it and
know the basic foundations of different yoga poses and sequences. The yoga
studio was located inside of a small mall located off the side of a populated
street that runs through the town on Hanover. The studio was located on the
bottom floor of the mall, which was a very quiet area that only had a few
stores surrounding it. The yoga studio itself was very quiet as well and with
the dim lighting and soft music playing, it presented to be a very calm and
peaceful environment. Upon entering the studio I was greeted by the instructor
of the studio, Amy Lunderville, who was sitting at the front desk. Amy had been
practicing yoga for more than 10 years and is very experienced in the field. In
2009, Amy graduated from Open Doors 200 hour Power Yoga Teacher Training program.
Amy’s classes spend a lot of focus on breath and the awareness of it as wells
as on “alignment in order to balance inner stillness with physical activity”
(Open Doors Yoga Studio, “Our Teachers H-M,” 2012). Besides being a yoga
instructor, she also is an Art Director and enjoys photography and design. When I came into the studio, Amy was
very friendly and talkative. She was very interested in my project and the yoga
course I am attending, which I told her all about. I got to ask her a couple
questions and she got to ask me questions about myself as well. We talked about
everything from what we will be doing in class, to the weather, to even our own
dogs. Immediately this put me at ease and I felt comfortable. It allowed me to
connect to my instructor on a personal level and got me excited about learning
more from her teaching and being part of her class overall.
The lesson that I attended was a
beginner’s class, which was a 1 hour and 15 minute class on a Sunday morning at
11am. Prior to this course, I hadn’t known anything about yoga nor have I
attended a yoga class. I wanted to choose a beginner’s class because I am still
getting into the swing of the different positions in yoga and a lot of the
easier poses are still challenging for me so I wanted to practice on those
routines more and master them before I could feel like I could advance.
When entering the room where the yoga
class was taught, it felt very hot. The instructor informed me that she kept
the room at 82 degrees, however after a couple of minutes of being in the heat
it didn’t seem to have any effect or made me notice it anymore. There were only
6 people in the class, including my mother and I. The other people in the class
consisted of another mother and daughter and two other people who were there by
themselves. All the people who attended the class were women ranging between
the ages of young adults to older middle-aged women. The room was very open and
bare with beautiful artwork on the walls. It was very dim lighted with just one
tiny lamp in the corner lighting the well-sized room. The room was also playing
quiet slow paced Indian music with a lot of pronounced beats and different
sounding instruments, which felt very soothing. Before beginning the lesson,
Amy started off introducing herself and giving a brief overview of what we will
be doing in the class. She spoke about how yoga means to unite, meaning to
unite the body, mind, and spirit. As we started our lesson, the first thing we
did was to relax our bodies by laying flat on our backs with our eyes closed
for a couple of minutes. We then began to go to into the fetal position,
hugging our legs, moving left to right, up or down, and whatever other movement
we felt was comfortable to our own individual bodies. The other positions and
poses we did were the Corpse pose, Child’s pose, Downward Dog, Modified Side
Angle pose, the Swan Dive, the Cow pose, and the Cat pose. The instructor
guided the class through every pose explaining every step while visually
representing it in front of the class. Throughout the class she referred to
“self” as “home” and encouraged individuals to come back to “home” if they needed
a minute and needed to return to Child’s pose in order to step back from any
position that hurt or felt too challenging. The instructor also allowed the
class to try some of the sequences of poses on their own while she still
remained a visual model incase individuals were stuck and needed help or
further guidance. We ended our class in exactly the same position that we had
first started with, which was lying on our back. This time we were taking part
in a deep relaxation where the lights were completely off and the room was
completely silent, with the exception of the music still playing in the
background. The deep relaxation took part for a period of a long time and had
ended when the instructor calmly and slowly raised the lights and told us to
come back to reality. Amy finished by thanking us for being part of this class
and part of her day.
Open Doors was created and started by a
man named Richard Lanza in 1992. It was first created as a Metaphysical/Healing
Center and Store and then in 2003, Richard opened up the first yoga studio.
Richard Lanza states, “My goal is and always has been to provide the space
and opportunity for individuals to transform their lives through self
empowerment, self healing, exploration of personal beliefs, and creating
greater health and joy for self and others. My intent is that Open Doors will
support you in achieving your personal goals and desires” (Open Doors, “Welcome
to Open Doors,” 2012). Richard
Lanza has been involved in yoga and holistic health for over 40 years with an
expertise in a number of different areas. Those of which include, training in Yoga, Eastern Philosophy, Hypnosis,
Acupuncture, Massage, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Energy Healing, and Essene
Therapy and Therapeutic Touch. As well as Richard Lanza being the founder and
president of Open Doors, he has also
created the Open Doors Yoga Teacher Training Program, which he instructs as
well. The program involves meeting all core Yoga Alliance skills including,
“designing your own class for all levels of students, analysis of each posture
with a focus on alignment and modifications, hands on adjustment techniques,
physical and energetic anatomy and physiology, and yoga philosophy and ethics”
(Open Doors Yoga Studio, “Teacher Training,” 2012). This program allows
individuals interested in pursuing a career in yoga to get the correct training
in order for them to be educated in the field of yoga and become effective teachers.
Richard Lanza created Open Doors Yoga Studio with the same focus and style that
his passion lies in, which is Vinyasa yoga. According to the article by
Benjamin Richard Smith, titled “Body, Mind and Spirit? Towards an Analysis of
the Practice of Yoga,” it states, “Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga is a method of yoga taught by
Sri K. Pattabhi Jois of the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, India. Jois’s yoga method is said to stem from
an ancient system outlined by Vamana Rishi in the Yoga Korunta” (Smith, 2007, p.26). Since Jois’ development of
Vinyasa yoga in the 1970s, it has become a very prominent form of yoga
throughout North America, Europe, and Australia. Vinyasa yoga specializes in breathing techniques and the movement of breath
through inhaling and exhaling. The term “Vinyasa” itself means “breath-synchronized
movement.” The article states, “This focus brings a deepening of attention into the
pose, the muscles and the breath” (Smith, 2007, p.26). Sometimes Vinyasa yoga is also referred to as Vinyasa Flow because the
movement that comes along with this style of yoga is very flow-like and light.
Using this style of yoga, Richard’s purpose is “to provide the space to allow
individuals the opportunity to transform their lives” as well as “to support
his students to empower themselves, lighten up and enjoy life, deepen their
spiritual practice, explore their potential, and discover their unique truth”
(Open Doors, “Richard Lanza,” 2012). In reflecting upon my visit to the yoga
studio and researching the Open Doors’
creator, Richard Lanza, along with researching my instructor Amy Lunderville, I
was able to see the correlation between the two individuals and their styles
and practices of yoga. Vinyasa yoga and the aspect of breath awareness is a huge
part of Open Doors’ philosophy and is
also my instructor’s main focus when teaching yoga.
After
attending the yoga class at Open Doors
Yoga Studio, I was very pleased with the experience. Not only did it allow
me to visualize a yoga class and experience what it is all about, but it also
made me feel like I wanted to take another yoga class in the future. My
instructor was very considerate about this midterm project I had been telling
her about and gave me her email so that if I had any questions, she was there
to help me or answer them. I could definitely see myself going back to her class
and supporting her teaching because I thought she was great and very qualified.
Even though I am just a beginner right now, if I keep up the practice of yoga
and attend more classes, not only at Open
Doors Yoga Studio, but other places as well, I can grow, become more
educated about the different practices and styles of yoga, and finally be more
in touch with my inner self, uniting my body, mind, and spirit.
References
Open
Doors. (2012). Welcome to Open Doors.
Retrieved from
Open
Doors Store and Learning Center. (2012). Richard
Lanza. Retrieved from
Open
Doors Yoga Studios. (2012). Open Doors
Yoga Teacher Training. Retrieved from
Open
Doors Yoga Studios. (2012). Our Teachers
H-M. Retrieved from
Smith,
B. R. (2007). Body, Mind and Spirit? Towards an Analysis of the Practice of
Yoga.
Body and Society. Vol. 13 (2): 25-46.
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