With a tough road of finals ahead, why not take some time to tune up your body before stress gets the better of you?

“Yoga is like tuning up your body,” said Larry Caughlan, a leading Yoga lecturer in the Bay Area for the past 30 years. By stretching, Caughlan says that people can achieve balance in their body, as well as harmony in their mind. He calls this harmony ”inner peace.” Through these classes, he hopes SF State students will learn how to stay healthy both physically and mentally.

Referring to himself as a "surf bum" in his book "Yoga, The Spirit of Union," he said that he was a serious surfer and mountain climber in his 20s. “I started using Yoga to keep in shape during the off season,” he said, “and tried to master the balance.”

By acquiring physical balance from Yoga, Caughlan learned that Yoga could bring him “harmony” in the mind as well.

In the late sixties Caughlan started practicing Yoga. This was a time when American society was in great conflict because of the Vietnam War, and Yoga became popular among the hippie generation.

Being a student at SF State, a university known as a “radical campus,” Caughlan couldn’t be indifferent to the social stream. He participated in non-violent protests and in the Civil Rights Movement. “A lot of my friends took drugs to escape from the chaos,” he said. "I used Yoga to keep my sanity.”

Caughlan focuses on Hatha Yoga. This translates to the "sun and moon union" in Sanskrit. The sun and moon symbolize the heating and cooling of the body. Since Yoga means union, Caughlan believes that it’s important to experience both sides in order to get a total balance of the body.

“The problem with Americans is that we don’t spend any time on slowing down,” said Caughlan. “We always speed up and go faster and faster, running around and struggling in a competitive society.” He also believes that in such a stressful society, Yoga can bring peace in their minds.

SF State students begin arriving for Caughlan's popular Yoga course half an hour early. The course, which typically begins at 8 am, is held in Burk Hall. Surrounded under the cover of darkness and the tranquil sounds of calming music, students, one by one, lie down on the floor to meditate. Caughlan keeps all the lights off, allowing only the light from the hallway into the room.

The Yoga class has been very popular since its inception in 1972. Caughlan was the first to teach a course in Yoga at SF State.

Caughlan taught free Yoga classes for two years while he was still an SF State student. In 1972, he became a certified teacher and started teaching at SF State in the women’s Physical Education Department, now known as the Kinesiology Department.

Caughlan has taught in at least 15 different places, including SF State, San Jose State, and Santa Clara University. Every semester, nearly 500 students take his Yoga class. Since 1970, he has instructed nearly 30,000 students both recreationally and professionally.

He allows as many students as the room can handle, so his classes are always packed. He described it as, "it's like parking lot--they have to drag their body and park it."

For more information on Yoga visit yogasite.com.