Mindful Monday

Photo By Tech. Sgt. Taylor White | Recce Town gathers every Monday for mindful yoga in the Valley Chapel.  

BEALE AIR FORCE BASE , CA, UNITED STATES

11.18.2019

Story by Staff Sgt. Taylor White 

9th Reconnaissance Wing

Beale Air Force Base, CA -- According to the American Osteopathic Association yoga is a practice that aids in the body’s innate ability to heal itself. With over one-hundred different types of yoga available to practice, the potential for individual growth is endless in the physical, mental and social realms.

The Recce Town Chaplain Corps has been utilizing yoga to integrate holistic care into the lives of Airmen and their families since 2015. TSgt. Maryssa Maffeo, NCOIC of Religious Affairs at Recce Town, justifies the practice of yoga as a resilience tool.

“A lot of what we experience, both in and out of uniform, causes stress and a certain level of trauma”, says Maffeo. “We call these our ‘invisible wounds’ that are probably unknown to us until we discover them in the states of mindfulness and self-awareness that yoga provides”.

The Chapel provides a safe space to explore these mindsets for all Beale Airmen and their families with the aim to address and potentially adjust them to find a path back to stability.

“We all fall in yoga. It’s important to not take those falls as failures, but for what they are – just falls. So we learn to get back up and try again,” says Maffeo, “this program offers everyone the same opportunity to begin that healing process. These practices can integrate into other facets of one’s life and bring a sense of balance”.

Using yoga as a practice of physical and literal balance, its continued application can create balance amongst the rest of an individual’s pillars and may be a way to exercise the spiritual pillar some Airmen could be neglecting.

While the Chaplain Corps does offer an abundance of religious services to Airmen and families across Recce Town, they facilitate copious amounts of programs that are not pious in nature, but remain internally focused. The yoga program is just one example.

“As the Chaplain Corps, our mission is to serve Airmen and families with the opportunity to exercise their First Amendment right to Free Exercise of Religion, as well as spiritual care” says Maffeo. “We do this by encouraging a pluralistic environment within the Chaplain Corps and our services… yoga gives us another avenue to reach out to our Airmen that are not necessarily faith-based”.

For more information on the yoga program conducted by the Chaplain Corps, check out their page at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/BealeAirForceBaseYoga/

• Date Taken: 11.18.2019
• Date Posted: 11.25.2019 14:13
• Story ID: 353327
• Location: BEALE AIR FORCE BASE , CA, US