June 24, 2011

Recreation Center offers free yoga session

by Christi Mathis

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- The Student Recreation Center at Southern Illinois University Carbondale is offering a free yoga session to those affiliated with SIUC.

Students, faculty and staff are welcome to attend the one-hour class from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 28, in the Recreation Center’s dance studio. What follows, 5:30-6:30 p.m., is a yoga teacher training information session with Daren Friesen and Mercedes Gomez where you can learn about a yoga instructor certification class coming to campus for the first time later this year.

Friesen is the founder of the Moksha Yoga Center in Chicago, opening in 1999 and now one of the largest yoga studios in the Midwest, while Gomez is a co-instructor with the program and a geography and environmental resources major at SIUC. Gomez, whose experience includes teaching veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, notes that yoga offers many health benefits for people of all ages.

Friesen and Gomez will teach the yoga class and then provide information about the upcoming teaching training program to all interested class participants. They’ll discuss the schedule, different classes the training comprises, and the certification available upon program completion. The Yoga Alliance authorizes the program for a 200-hour certification.

Plans call for the Recreation Center to host the training program beginning in October and continuing through May 2012. Anyone with an interest in teaching yoga or those who just want to enhance their practice of the art will find the training beneficial.

For more information about the program and teaching training, visit http://mokshayoga.com/events/ttsiuc11/description.html. If you have questions about the yoga session or training at SIUC, contact Sally Wright at 618/453-2511.