“I just want to help people love themselves more – I don’t think there’s enough love,” Phoebe Matthews, CSON ’14, explained over oatmeal topped with her homemade trail mix in Lower dining hall. Despite her brightly-colored tie-dye pants, she seemed to emanate a sense of calm, and the rolled up yoga mat sticking out of her bag was barely needed to indicate her campus employment. “It’s such a gift for me every time I teach a class,” she said with genuine passion.
This enthusiasm is something that she is successfully spreading to others. At her Sunrise Yoga class, the mats were bordering each other so closely that the floor looked carpeted, and arms brushed as over thirty participants attempted warrior pose. Oh, and did we mention that it was pouring rain outside and 7:15 a.m.?
While teaching, Phoebe emphasized the importance of appreciating our bodies because she loves being able to “help people let go of those thoughts for just an hour – especially as girls, we’re so tough on ourselves.” In fact, that was what brought Phoebe to yoga. She was introduced to the practice as a senior in high school at the recommendation of her therapist, as she was struggling with depression and an eating disorder. “As soon as I went to that class, something changed for me, and things completely turned around,” Phoebe explained. After seeing the drastic and positive way that yoga impacted her life, she made it her goal to bring this to others.
Phoebe practices slacklining, another form of exercise she likes to use.
This past summer, after her freshman year at BC, she participated in a month-long retreat at Kripalu, a yoga center in the Berkshires. There she received her 200-hour training, an important milestone in the field. In class from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., she not only practiced yoga techniques, but also took classes on the relevant philosophy and anatomy. She could only describe the experience as “amazing” and hopes to return eventually for her 500-hour certification.
The dedication demonstrated with such an intensive retreat made her an easy hire for Lauren Scheinfeldt, Assistant Director of Fitness and Wellness at the Plex. Scheinfeldt remarked on Phoebe’s enthusiasm, noting, “That’s the reason I hired her. She came right into my office and was so excited about going on the retreat,” and added that with such qualified instructors, the Plex really “hit the yoga jackpot.”
Phoebe sees her positions as nursing student and yoga instructor as extensions of a singular goal and is a strong believer in the mind-body connection. Ultimately, she would like to work to encourage yoga as a form of preventive medicine. “It will be challenging to get people on board; people are skeptical,” she admitted, but she’s more than up for the challenge.
Phoebe’s commitment to yoga philosophy and joint mental and physical wellness is evident in everything she does. After high school, she took a gap year, working at a Buddhist meditation center in Colorado and then hiking the Appalachian Trail. She said that it “doesn’t feel right in a day if I haven’t used my body somehow,” whether it’s through yoga, hiking, running, or more obscure forms of exercise, like slacklining. “You can’t deny the mind-body connection,” Phoebe said, and when she gets to help other members of the BC community experience this, she said “I feel so lucky to be able to do that.”