Students, staff and community members participated in guided yoga and meditation practices at the first College Yoga Day at USC in Associates Park on Saturday. The event also featured live music, local vendors and lectures covering mindfulness techniques and mental health.
USC students and staff said they were happy to have a way to decompress and dedicate time to their physical and emotional well being, especially in the midst of the semester.
“Yoga is a good activity to release pressure and relax from the high loads of my course,” said USC student Ran Ding.
Yoga and mindfulness are important to maintaining a balanced lifestyle, and can serve as a coping mechanism for the heightened levels of stress young adults experience. According to a study released by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, yoga can help college students not only relax muscles and build endurance but also reduce sleepiness and perceived stress and increase attention span.
Faculty members also sought the benefits from a day dedicated to yoga and meditation, and the event was widely shared among them, according to Janice Littlejohn, a resource employee at USC Dornsife.
“It's a very important thing not just for the students, but for those who work for the students or work on behalf of the students: to stay well, to stay healthy, to check in with themselves, to check in with their mind, their body,” Littlejohn said.
The idea for a College Yoga Day came from Dr. Eden Goldman, a professor at Loyola Marymount University. After a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Goldman’s alma mater, killed 17 students in Parkland, Florida, he wanted to make a difference beyond thoughts and prayers. Goldman launched Meditating Mascots, a line of plush college mascots in a meditative pose to “personify peace.”
“We decided to merge the two traditions of school spirit and yoga and mindfulness together through the mascots to give the yoga, mindfulness and wellness communities on campus an identity to say, ‘I'm a USC Trojan; I do yoga; I meditate,’” Goldman said.
College Yoga Day, his other response to the tragedy which is moving to the University of Miami and UCLA in the coming weeks, is a way for students passionate about mindfulness practices to find their community, according to Goldman. He chose USC to launch the event.
“You guys have such a storied tradition of the USC Trojan, and everybody around the country knows USC because it’s just such a respected academic institution,” Goldman said. “Colleges have a sense of tradition, and yoga and mindfulness have a sense of tradition.”
USC Physical Education, Student Affairs and the Religious Center have been working with Goldman to bring the event to campus for over a year. With this relationship, Goldman is hoping to bring back College Yoga Day annually.
Next year, College Yoga Day is expected to land at 15 more universities.