The yoga mat has traveled the world. Recently, it has been unrolled at an Irish reconciliation center, the woods of southern France and Anderson Hall study lounge.
Emily Lindenmuth, 20, started bending and breathing on the mat her first semester at AU, when she took a beginning yoga class. Now a junior in the School of International Service, she starts each day around 7 a.m. with two hours of yoga powered by the memory of teaching the art to ex-paramilitaries, prisoners and Protestant and Catholic school children in Ireland this summer.
In a dorm lounge, she demonstrated a sampler of yoga. Her willowy grace animated such moves as the sun salutation, child's pose and even a headstand with the fluidity and strength of the best yoga exercise tapes. There is a natural, earthy, genuine aura to Lindenmuth. Even in deep autumn, her hair is still sun-streaked and her face turns thoughtful easily, like any truly good listener's would.
"[Yoga] started off as more of a physical, athletic thing - like an exotic workout basically - and it's evolved a lot since then," Lindenmuth said.
A paper in a class on peace studies has motivated reflection on her form of daily exercise.
"Gandhi speaks of living nonviolence, and for me I speak of living yoga," Lindenmuth said. "It's not like a stagnant thing, it's doing it more."
The pivotal point from her athletic to spiritual practice of yoga happened this summer. Lindenmuth was an intern at the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation about 15 miles south of Dublin, Ireland, in the Wicklow Mountains, a place she described as "far enough to be glorious and secluded, but still buzzing for the pubs."
Dublin dwellers respect the work that is "going on up there" she said. The center is a therapeutic retreat that opens discussion and directly deals with wounds from the religious and political turmoil in Ireland over the last 50 years. In charge of educational programming, Lindenmuth worked through school children's emotional burdens and misconceptions.
"They know that there's the Catholics and Protestants fighting, Unionists and Nationalists, but beyond that ... they've gotten their facts from completely all over the place," Lindenmuth said. "They're just misinformed."
Her groups were a place to give these young people living the issues a chance to put their feelings out in an open forum.
"They don't get to talk about this," she said. "Though times have definitely settled down in Ireland, it's still very hush-hush. You can't just spill your thoughts to your parents about what you think about the conflict, or even more modern issues."
Racism, immigration and globalization are other points of intense friction.
However, Lindenmuth's role as a yoga instructor was unplanned. The tight-knit staff asked why Lindenmuth was absent from lunches. Soon the entire center was doing afternoon yoga sessions she led. Participation increased and classes were offered to visiting groups, including former fighters from both sides of the conflict.
One figure known only as "Jerry" to Lindenmuth showed up at the center when the staff welcomed a victim's group. Rumors were hot that he had restarted terrorist activities, but the center's leaders decided to let Jerry stay anyway. When his room was cleaned, weapons were discovered. The director told Jerry he had to leave in the morning, giving him only that night to remain at Glencree. He came to Lindenmuth's yoga class that evening.
She was apprehensive, but determined to give him a fair session. After all, she said he was a victim of Ireland's violence too.
"He was an avid smoker and the breathing exercises would have him practically hacking up a lung on the floor," she remembered. "I placed my hands gently against his back and abdomen. 'Breathe into my hands,' I told him."
The infamous Jerry sighed.
"The cornerstone of yoga is compassion and nonviolence," said Georgia Kremidas, director of D.C. Yoga. The director sat on the floor in flip-flops in front of a laptop and remembered how angry she was before taking up yoga.
"Being able to share yoga with other people really just heightened my interest," she said. "Taking the physical and giving it to other people, seeing how for them it was transformed into this more spiritual calming thing. I can't even describe it..."
She said everyone rises from the mat with something different.
"Seeing that put me to the point I wanted to explore it even more," Lindenmuth said. "And that's when I went to France."
With her internship at the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation complete, Lindenmuth hopped across the English Channel to the Sun Center, a yoga retreat in southern France.
During the school year, Lindenmuth got the tip about the place from her first yoga teacher at AU, went to the Web site, and applied to do work exchange. The couple that ran the center had two young daughters named Sky and Gaia, whom Lindenmuth watched each morning. The rest of the day was hers. It was a time of peace and transcendence, she said.
After a summer of plane tickets and hours in the sky, Lindenmuth returned to D.C. just in time for this semester. Academically focused on peace and conflict resolution, she still throws on stretchy clothes and takes over a study lounge each day for yoga.
"I tend to be an achieving kind of person," she said. "Whatever I do, I want to do it to the fullest, I want to do it right and I want to do it as much as possible. But that can burn me out a lot if I don't keep that in check."
The full-time student also volunteers biweekly, tutors six days a week and works at the Spiral Flight Yoga Center. She deals with the tensions and anxieties of the wide world on her 3-by-8 yoga mat.
"For me, yoga is, 'Shhh, stop. Shhh, silence."
