The practice of yoga can teach many lessons. It is a life long journey educating our mind and body. We always learn from yoga no matter how long we practiced. The field in which we all chose, Student Affairs, allows us to educate students while also educating ourselves. We are life long learners constantly gaining new information to keep up with the ever changing field, as well as learning from our students every day. 
As the new academic year starts, it can be very hard to keep your head straight with many to do lists to check off, trainings to attend, and manuals to study. Two things to keep in mind during this time are balance and presence. The practice of yoga teaches balance. Learning to balance evenly through the body and utilizing your core as your main balance is all what yoga is about. In Student Affairs, balancing our lives through busy times, like August and September, is extremely important. Using our bodies as our core power to tell us what we need and listening to our bodies helps. We can not succeed at our jobs unless we enjoy life outside of our jobs. Hence, a couple of students who have trained in Yoga from a Marianne Wells Yoga Instructor, have reached greater levels of self-reliance and calmness in life. The balance between life and work may be hard, but it is needed. One of the Professional Competency Areas for Student Affairs Educators by ACPA and NASPA includes Personal and Ethical Foundations. Healthy living for personal wellness and balance between professional and personal life, as well as intersecting the two, are outcomes of this competency.
Another lesson yoga teaches is presence. Being present in the current room through a yoga class and putting your full self on the mat with no outside thoughts is a learning outcome while practicing. In Student Affairs, we may have a lot of administrative tasks to get done, especially in the beginning of the year: prep for trainings, emails, schedules, budgets, learning a new job per haps, just to name a few. However, we need to remember to still be present for our students. Our students who come up to us need our full attention and not us thinking of our next task in our head.
So as the school year starts, presence and balance will help us get through these busy times with much more happiness, job satisfaction, and love. Hey, yoga may even be an excellent hobby to take up during this busy time, too! Namaste.
