Like every college student, I get stressed. Because I’m an English major, the majority of my work is reading several books at a time, oftentimes reading hundreds of pages a night just to keep up. I don’t get as much exercise as I’d like, and I know working out releases endorphins in the brain that can reduce stress and make you feel better. I find myself wishing I could swap a two-hour-long lecture with a trip to the gym and some alone time to listen to my favorite songs, but I rarely get the chance. Since my mom recently moved, she was cleaning out her closet and found a yoga mat she hasn’t used in a while. On a whim, I took it home because she was going to get rid of it and I’d never had a yoga mat of my own. I’m the girl in the yoga classes who always just uses the yoga mats the gym provides, but this time, I have a mat of my own.

I underestimated the amount of good that a yoga mat would do for me. I don’t always have time to walk all the way to the gym (which is on the other side of campus from where I live) and go to a yoga class or work out, but having my own yoga mat allows me to be able to do yoga in my own home anytime I want. Yoga does for me the same amount of stress-reducing that a hardcore weight session does, possibly even more. I put on some relaxing music like Enya or something and take ten minutes to stretch and move. Sometimes I do yoga in the morning and sometimes it does me more good at night when I’m stressed out from a long day. Either way, whenever I choose to do it, after the session I feel 100% more relaxed than I did before.

Yoga has been proven to reduce stress and bring you closer to a more relaxed lifestyle, and while I didn’t always believe that and kind of looked at yoga as a hippy workout, since I’ve started doing yoga every day, I feel better, I laugh more, and I don’t stress out as much about deadlines and exams. You don’t have to do yoga for hours to gain the benefits; like I said, I only have time for ten minutes a day, but it’s enough. If you can take a little time out of your day to do yoga either at your home or at the gym (there are many different kinds of yoga classes all throughout the day at both the Cary Street Gym and the MCV gym), you’ll start feeling the benefits right away.

And yoga isn't just for skinny women looking to maintain their weight either, not that there's anything wrong with that. A big movement is starting with plus size people (men and women both) who love yoga and are proving to the world that you can be flexible and confident and overweight. You can be good at yoga and be plus sized at the same time; the two are not synonymous. A news story about a popular plus-sized yoga instructor was circulating the internet a few months ago and gave hope everywhere to women who loved yoga but felt that they were too fat to join the yoga classes at their gyms. If you love yoga, it doesn't matter if you're big or small, woman or man, young or old, tall or short...yoga is for everyone, and that's how it's supposed to be.