Loves yoga and the great outdoors
BY JONATHAN KANE
Sage School senior Megan Downey loves to blend her passions for yoga and movement with her affinity for the great outdoors.
“My first time I attended a yoga class I was 15 and didn’t know how or what to expect,” Downey said. “That was a class for Vinyasa or flow yoga and I was amazed. It’s a fast-paced form of yoga where you move through a series of poses almost like dance. I thought it was beautiful.
“Through the movement, it really calmed my mind, almost like meditation, which I was never able to do. My teacher is Beth Stuart and she is really inspirational and her classes are phenomenal.
“I started one day a week in between gymnastics and it really helped heal my body,” Downey said. “Eventually, I just started doing yoga. It’s become an amazing part of my life in the way that it makes me feel mentally and the way that physically helps my strength and flexibility. I can connect to myself and the world around me.
“During my time on the mat, I am fully present; therefore, the more time I spend on my mat, the more present I am in my whole life. When you are present, you experience everything more fully.
“Unfortunately, I can’t just sit there and meditate,” she said. “Movement gets me into the mindset where I can achieve that.”
Downey said that yoga is something that everyone can do at their own level.
“I love it because it’s so personal and everyone can adapt it to what works for your own body,” she said. “I try to go to a couple of classes a week, but every day I do my own practice.”
Downey put her passion for yoga into play this year with her senior project, which at The Sage School they call an “independent trimester.
“I love the outdoors and adventuring as well, so I put them all together,” Downey said. “My goal was to explore how wilderness and yoga affect my sense of place.
“I wanted to define what a sense of self and a sense of place meant to me, not through words or on my mat, but in the wilderness. I did this through a weeklong solo backpacking trip in Utah and then I attended an intense yoga teacher-training course in Hawaii.
“The solo was amazing and I learned that I’m really comfortable alone surrounded by wilderness and I wasn’t scared or lonely,” Downey said. “It’s such an important thing to experience and know because we are all so disconnected by social media. If you can learn to be truly lonely, you won’t feel lonely or disconnected when surrounded by other people.
“It was such a cool experience for me because I was a small part of the bigger picture,” she said.
As a footnote, Downey was born at Galena Lodge when her parents were operating the lodge. She said she was the first person in 100 years to have their birth certificate list Galena as their birthplace.