As midterm week continues, the Saint Mary’s Belles Against Violence Office (BAVO) planned a restorative and healing event for the students. A candlelight yoga session took place in Angela Athletic Center, open to all students who wished to participate and take a break from the stress of the week.
Junior Emily Scott — who took a medical leave of absence before returning to the College — has been with BAVO since 2015, serving as an ally and student advisory committee (SAC) member. Scott said the event was intended to be rejuvenating.
“During brainstorming we came up with some uplifting events because the topics are pretty heavy. I thought of candlelight, restorative, trauma-informed yoga to kind of go back to BAVO,” Scott said. “During my medical leave I did a lot of restorative trauma-informed yoga and that was probably one of the biggest parts of my healing, so I wanted to kind of bring something like that back to Saint Mary’s with me.”
Scott said yoga is a calming practice, one that BAVO wants to fully take advantage of in their list of events planned for the year.
“We thought of timing of the year and that probably the most stressful time would be midterms and finals. So each semester we have two yoga sessions,” she said.
The next BAVO candlelight yoga session is scheduled to take place in December around finals week.
This midterm session was led by Kimmy Troy, a 2000 Saint Mary’s alumna who frequently teaches yoga classes in the Angela Center. She led the hour-long candlelight yoga session, helping students to release the anxiety that builds around midterm week.
First-year graduate student Jessica Purvis, who has also been a BAVO ally and SAC member since 2015, said the event could help students heal from the stress and anxiety of the week.
“I feel like yoga is a secular thing so you can involve a lot more people and Kimmy did a great job of making it a healing and restorative type of event. You don’t have to have gone through a traumatic event to get something out of it,” she said. “We’re college students, we all have things that we need to heal from regardless of what it is. It’s a safe place, you don’t need to have experience, that was my first time doing yoga.”
With candles dotting the room, relaxing music playing over the speakers and hot tea provided after the session, the BAVO event had students leaving feeling relaxed, restored and ready to finish the week.
“It was a great break from all the stress of the week,” sophomore Jade Adomako said. “I had a great time just stopping everything for an hour and recollecting myself. You don’t realize how caught up you get in your stress until you take a step back.”
