After completing graduate school, Renee Berlucchi — then Spangler — found herself in a deep depression. She had just received news that her boyfriend since high school had died in a car accident.

“In my world, I thought we were getting married,” she said. “My life as I knew it had ended.”

Berlucchi said in the months following his death, she didn’t eat or sleep. As someone who doesn’t like to show emotions, she repressed all the anger and sadness she felt. But outside of her internalized grief, she said she felt a profound pull toward yoga.

“My body, it just drove me to yoga,” she said. “As I started practicing more and more, I started realizing, ‘Wow, I have a lot of sh*t going on in my head because of this traumatic event,’ and it made me deal with it.”

A lifelong athlete, Berlucchi was first introduced to yoga while running track and cross-country in high school. Her teammate’s mother taught Bikram yoga and would allow Berlucchi to attend classes at her studio for free. The intense mileage left Berlucchi’s legs in near-constant need of stretching, and she said she initially sought yoga for the physical benefits. It wasn’t until years later, following her boyfriend’s death, that she understood its emotional and spiritual effects, as well.

Berlucchi — a graduate of Saint Joseph’s University with a bachelor’s degree in elementary and special education and a master’s in education with a reading specialist degree — relocated to Syracuse in fall 2017. She now works as a classroom coordinator at the E. John Gavras Center in Auburn, a yoga instructor at Syracuse Yoga and a substitute at Mindful Yoga. While living in Pennsylvania, she often attended yoga classes with friends, who encouraged her to utilize her passion for teaching and love of yoga to become a certified instructor.

Despite serving different populations, Berlucchi said her experiences as a teacher and as an instructor often mirror one another. Working with students with special needs, Berlucchi has learned how to best cater her classroom plans for each individual so that their learning experience is readily accessible. She said it’s this same mindset she uses when she teaches her three yoga classes at Syracuse Yoga.

Syracuse Yoga, located on Thompson Road, opened in June 2017. The studio offers a variety of classes, including vinyasa and restorative practices. Laura Oliverio | Staff Photographer

“Sometimes, there’s this energy that you can feel throughout a class and I can tell that sometimes I can push the students more,” she said. “And then other days, I can feel people are wanting to relax more. You kind of have to do that with the kids too at school.”

Prior to moving to Syracuse, Berlucchi was a yoga instructor for Easterseals, a nonprofit health care organization that provides yoga classes for children with physical disabilities and limited mobility. Throughout the program’s six-week sessions, Berlucchi said not only did the experience challenge her to modify her practice to best fit students’ abilities, but that it also expanded her definition of who can become a yogi.

“That was a challenge to me, to learn and to research all of it and to know that I’m instructing it safely and accurately for the kids to be able to access it in a way that they can,” she said. “But we would always see improvement by the kids by the end of the six-week session. Always.”

As yoga has risen in popularity in recent years, the practice has become more diversified, encompassing people from varying backgrounds, body shapes and physical abilities. It’s a development, Berlucchi said, that has been beautiful to witness.

“I think that people have realized that there’s so many different body types and there’s so many different reasons why people actually come to yoga,” she said. “Studios and people who become yoga instructors realize that our ability to meet everybody’s needs is there.”

Yoga originated in ancient India between 1,000 and 5,000 B.C., advocated in Hinduism’s Upanishads sacred texts as a path toward personal and spiritual growth. Today, more than 36 million Americans practice yoga, per a 2016 study conducted by Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance. According to data released by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, 58 percent of practitioners cite practicing yoga “to maintain health and well-being.”

Rebecca Alexander, a physical therapist and an instructor at Syracuse Yoga, said that while any form of exercise increases blood flow and releases endorphins into the body, the structural makeup of yoga practices can further elicit these feel-good hormones.

“Yoga really adds this other layer that really is this mind-body connection,” she said. Alexander added that there are eight elements of yoga that, when combined, can instill calmness and mental clarity into practitioners.

The way many people envision yoga, she said, is through asana, the postures and poses. But two elements in particular — pranayama, or breathing techniques, and dhyana, meditation — are what elevate the physicality of the practice, transcending it into a spiritual medium.

Anna Henderson | Digital Design Editor

Katherine Sargent, a mental health counselor and yoga instructor, added that she envisions yoga as being “a catalyst for change and for healing.” Teaching trauma-conscious yoga through Connected Warriors at the Syracuse VA Medical Center, she said that for those struggling with depression, anxiety and life stresses, yoga reunifies the body and the mind.

“There’s a lot of different avenues and ways that yoga heals many different populations,” Sargent said. “But really, it’s all about using the breath and mindfulness to connect the mind, body and spirit.”

As Berlucchi has further deepened her own practice and teaching skills, she has witnessed the knowledge she’s gained as a yoga instructor bleed into her role as a teacher. It’s the beauty of the connection she develops with her students — children and yoga practitioners alike — and the growth of their progress that continually fuel her practice.

She and a fellow teacher led a yoga session for their preschool students last week, sitting with their legs crossed on the floor, hands folded in prayer over their heart’s center. One of her students with special needs and underdeveloped verbal skills turned to her, a wide grin spreading across his face.

“Namaste, Renee.”

Published on January 30, 2019 at 9:43 pm

Contact Kelsey: katho101@syr.edu | @writtenbykelsey