Bend and feel those Good Vibes

(Photo by Tyson Luneau/Beacon staff) Good Vibes President Devin Kibbe (left) talks with alum Elyssa Baker before Monday’s yoga class.

“Everybody loves yoga; they just don’t know it yet,” Devin Kibbe said while she scrambled to get the keys to the MCLA Campus Center Dance Complex from the security desk.

Kibbe is the president of Good Vibes at the College and leads yoga classes that meet every Monday and Wednesday night at 9:30 in the dance complex. According to the club’s e-portfolio, Good Vibes promotes holistic wellness on campus. The yoga classes are free and open to all MCLA students.

“It is one of the best clubs,” modern language professor Graziana Ramsden said. Ramsden regularly attends the Monday night yoga session. “It is run very professionally.”
 
“There are so many benefits of yoga,” said Kibbe, who has been the president of Good Vibes since 2010 and has been with the club since she was a freshman. “It really improves your core strength, as well as your flexibility, but there is a whole other side where you build emotional and spiritual strength.”

“It gives you a chance to get away, get away from class, get away from schoolwork, and make yourself feel better,” senior Bryan O’Keefe said. Like Ramsden, he rarely misses a Monday night yoga session. During the winter break he attended yoga classes at Frog Lotus Yoga on 189 Beaver Street, North Adams. “You come here for an hour, an hour and 15 minutes, you can put stress away: This is a stress reliever.”

“I think that probably the largest benefit would be the physical and the emotional,” Kibbe said. She began doing yoga while in high school and is still dedicated to it six years later. An English major with a concentration in education, Kibbe is in her senior year at MCLA but plans on pursuing yoga after she graduates. “It really brings you back to your own body, your own center, away from this technological world that is so overwhelming.”

More than 20 people attended a recent Monday night yoga session at the Dance Complex. Kibbe led the students through a series of exercises that increased in difficulty and stretched various parts of the body. During each stretch and position she instructed everyone to pay close attention to their breathing. The session ended with meditation. Kibbe read a passage from, the Tao Te Ching, something she always does.

“It’s kind of a good hour or so where you get to focus on what keeps you alive,” Kibbe said.

“You get to feel your body; you get to know your body better,” said O’Keefe, a mathematics and physics major at the College. “It’s just a great experience for everybody from beginners to advanced students.”
 
“Yoga saved my life: I knew about stretching but I didn’t have a regime,” Ramsden said.

The MCLA professor leads an active life and enjoys hiking.

“I think more people should just do it and try it and really get back to themselves,” said Kibbe.

The Good Vibes Club holds yoga classes for beginners on Monday nights. The Wednesday night sessions are for more advanced students. Information about the classes can be found on the club’s e-portfolio. http://mcla.digication.com/Good_Vibes

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