Sharon Cardamone is a yoga instructor at Boston University. Along with many types of yoga including intro classes, Ashtanga and Mysore style, she teaches Pilates and meditation classes. She teaches at least one of these interesting and competitive classes every day at BU.
Yoga mats and blankets used for BU yoga classes.
As a track and cross-country runner in high school, Sharon found yoga early in life. Her practice consisted primarily of Vinyasa yoga, a version of Ashtanga yoga which lets the instructor have free choice of the movements within the flow. Whilst going to Vinyasa classes in New York City she discovered Ashtanga yoga, which consists of a set of fixed postures that occur in a certain order. After this, she began focusing her practice on Ashtanga yoga, which led to her teaching it!
Sharon Cardamone teaching a yoga class at BU
In New York City, she trained under Pattabhi Jois, who assisted in developing Ashtanga yoga in India and popularized it in America. Sharon describes Jois as having a “kingly presence,” as he was someone who held authority in a way that others automatically respected. This yoga was taught Mysore style, which meant it was individualized, and each student went at their own pace while remembering the postures on their own. This is how Sharon currently teaches her Mysore Ashtanga yoga classes.
An outdoor yoga class at Boston University.
Sharon practices yoga every day, whether this means meditation, Hatha yoga (which is holding one position for extended periods of time), or teaching a class. She describes how the effect of yoga is a sense of connection, whether this means with your higher self, your physical body, others or your emotions. “Yoga means union,” she explains, yoga should be a connecting practice. She made sure to clarify that although the outcome of yoga is to be connected, she instead does yoga to make her happy, explaining that yoga has had a strong positive impact on her life. Struggling with depression and anxiety during her early stages of life, she credits yoga as being the force to pull her out of those dark states. Yoga gave her a sense of inner peace and happiness that she had been lacking before. Sharon hopes that others who may struggle with mental health involve yoga and meditation into their lives as well, in hopes that it could affect others in the same way that yoga positively affected her life.
The discipline and resilience that comes with being a yogi is not only empowering but encouraging to those just beginning to incorporate yoga into their lives.
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