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Yoga classroom in a DVD

When not creating new programs for the Carlisle Family YMCA’s wellness program, teaching classes or volunteering her services in the community, Carlisle yoga instructor Bonnie Berk also makes DVDs for her students and those interested in yoga.

With some help from her daughter, Emily Berk, Bonnie Berk just released her third video, “Bonnie Berk’s Yoga for Health,” which focuses on bringing yoga to anyone’s home in an easy-to-follow setup.

The DVD has a scene selection feature in which students can pick and choose which type of yoga they want to do that day.

“The biggest challenge is imagining the person at home, but something we did with this DVD split the other sections into sitting, kneeling and so forth and put how much time it will take to complete each session,” Berk said. “So, if someone wants to do yoga, but only for 10 minutes, they can look out how much time they’ll have for each of the sections.”

The new DVD is a departure for Berk, whose first two DVDs were part of her Motherwell Maternity Fitness Programs, which were designed for pregnant women.

It is still, however, suitable to almost any type of audience.

“I also wanted to make the DVD suitable for special populations, like those in my chair classes or cancer yoga program,” Berk said. “Anything you do in this video is not going to hurt yourself. It’s more about balancing, which is important, especially as we age. I had one former student who called me and said that her body’s training helped her stay upright when she slid on the ice.”

Berk will be giving out and selling her DVD at her yoga classes and programs. The DVD is geared to beginner and intermediate yoga students.

For more information, go to Berk’s Web site at www.bonnieberk.com

By Naomi Creason, Sentinel Reporter, August 22, 2008

Last updated: Friday, August 22, 2008 1:40 PM EDT

Breathe.

For many people, it’s a simple task you rarely think about. But when people are told to breath, Bonnie Berk has seen her new students struggle to take on the strangely complicated assignment.

After all, how many people feel completely comfortable when a doctor asks them to take deep breaths?

But breathing is a key element of Berk’s yoga classes in Carlisle.

“For me, the most important technique is breathing,” said Berk, who has been practicing yoga for over 30 years. “When there are crying babies, mothers get all upset and tense their muscles, especially if it’s in a public place. If you can take care of your breathing first, you’ll be able to handle it better. Breathing stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which will decrease blood pressure and help with stress.”

Berk recognized the significance of breathing while she was practicing as a nurse, noticing the similarities between what she learned in yoga and what she saw with mothers in labor.

That realization 25 years ago opened the door to specializing yoga for certain audiences — in this case, mothers.

“Much of the yoga breathing can be found in preparing for childbirth,” Berk explained. “I started my Motherwell program about 25 years ago. I’ve heard from students that the breathing techniques in yoga have helped them get through labor and delivery.”

While flying all over the country teaching pregnant mothers yoga and breathing techniques, Berk started to think of other ways yoga could benefit specific groups of people.

After joining the staff of the Carlisle Family YMCA as its first resident yoga instructor, Berk began a yoga program for cancer patients.

Therapeutic treatment

It was a few years ago when Glenda Axsom of Carlisle heard about the cancer wellness program. Having already been Berk’s student at the YMCA, Axsom thought it was a great chance for her friend and cancer patient to get involved in something she was enjoying. The program was, after all, being funded by the county for its residents.

The effects of the chemotherapy and the ensuing tiredness prevented her friend from sharing Axsom’s enthusiasm for yoga.

However, Axsom soon found herself joining the program on her own after she was diagnosed with cancer.

“I think it helped me most mentally and emotionally,” Axsom said. “There’s of course the physical element that you’re so concerned about at the beginning, but there’s a reason we’re called survivors. There is no cure for cancer. You can’t say that once it’s gone, it won’t come back. There’s an emotional element to that. What was also great was that everyone there had his or her own stories about their cancer. It was a support system as well.”

While just being present in a class with those going through the same battles benefitted her emotionally, the actual yoga exercise also helped Axsom physically.

“Sometimes I would be just so tired after my chemotherapy treatment, but I made myself go to yoga every day because I knew it would make me feel so much better,” Axsom said. “Bonnie didn’t just teach you yoga in those classes. She talked about nutrition and the disease itself. The yoga was more restorative and relaxing.”

Reading through medical journals and research, Berk discovered that yoga has had positive effects on diseases, including strengthening the immune system in cancer patients.

“There are many benefits of yoga for those with chronic diseases, like diabetes, cancer, heart disease and multiple sclerosis,” Berk said. “Research has shown that in some people, yoga can even reverse heart disease.”

Berk explained that through controlled breathing, all of the oxygen that had been diverted to the muscles due to stress was pushed back in its original course to the internal organs, including the heart.

Despite the findings, even Berk was wary about calling yoga a miracle cure or labeling it “alternative medicine.”

“I’m a nurse, too, so I have a great deal of respect for the medical system,” Berk said. “Yoga can help enhance the body’s health, but it can’t just get rid of cancer. It can help you in the process along with the chemotherapy and everything you need to defeat it. There should be a balance with medicine and what we can do for ourselves. It’s not an ‘or,’ it’s an ‘and.’”

New form of exercise

Some of the potential health benefits from yoga can benefit anyone. The exercise was something the Carlisle Family YMCA wanted to turn to at the start of 2000.

“We had no yoga at the YMCA before Bonnie, and at the time we were watching for a friendlier, kinder, gentler fitness class,” said Tracey Patience, program coordinator at the YMCA. “When Bonnie came in, it was just a no-brainer. We had only one class when it started, but it’s flourished since then. I’d say within five years, the classes were really busy, and we were recruiting and training instructors. We have quite a few classes now for yoga.”

Patience attributed the first years of success to Berk, whom she later gave the position of “wellness coordinator” to three years ago.

“Bonnie is a very creative and innovative person,” Patience said. “She keeps her pulse on what’s going on in the wellness world, and you can always count on her to have the cutting edge information.”

Though Berk has continued to research the field of yoga for 30 years, she also understands what it looks like to those who have never attended a class.

“Yoga is not a religion,” Berk said about one of yoga’s myths. “It can be used as a tool to deepen spiritual beliefs, and there are Christian yoga and Buddhist yoga, and many, many other religions use yoga, but it’s not necessarily religious.”

Berk’s classes, as well as other national yoga classes, also focus on the exercise’s therapeutic benefits, not just the loosening of the physical body.

“I was very surprised [when I first started],” said Axsom, now a substitute yoga instructor. “I just thought it was a series of poses, like many of the aerobics classes I’ve had. I had an injury to my neck and back, and every doctor I went to suggested I try yoga. I was surprised about how calm I felt — it wasn’t just about my body feeling good. I felt energized and calm at the same time.”

Axsom also suffers from arthritis, making the number of poses somewhat limited. However, Berk makes sure that all of her students do only what feels good to their body without straining it to stretch a certain way.

Berk has been in a few car accidents and understands the body’s limitations, she herself being unable to do perform headstand poses. But according to her, everyone can find a favorable pose with modifications — something she emphasized yoga students should watch for.

“The Yoga Alliance sets standards for yoga classes, and you want a teacher with an RYT after their name,” Berk said. “You don’t want a teacher whose program hurts you. I know people who hurt after yoga because they’re put in poses that they don’t feel right in. When I first took classes, I had to go to the chiropractor afterward, and I realized something was wrong.

A good teacher talks to you, interacts with you. If the instructor doesn’t ask you what’s wrong, there’s a problem. Yoga is not about yoga, it’s about the people doing yoga.”

In the end, her students really are what concerns Berk the most. Between designing programs that help special populations to making DVDs that will give her students something to do away from class, Berk hopes that eventually everyone will benefit from yoga.

“It’s a wonderful time to be practicing in this field with so many discoveries being made about yoga and how the mind affects the body,” Berk said. “In the future, I hope yoga would make less of a drain on the medical system and the happier we’ll be in our lives. Medical care is so expensive, and we can spend less money by just recognizing the symptoms early. When you start becoming more and more aware of your body, then you start to recognize when something’s wrong. Yoga just gives the body tools so it knows what it wants.”