Sun Salutations

        This semester I wanted to amp up our sisterhood events even more and mix things up, so I applied to be a part of our Program Council as sisterhood chairman. As a graduating senior I wanted to give back one more semester to my Gamma Phi chapter before I entered the alum world. When I turned in my program council application I was nervous, I really wanted this position and I wanted to help bring our sisterhood even closer. When I got the call I couldn't wait to start planning new and exciting events with my co-chair, Kat. What I didn't realize about the position was the amount of planning and scheduling that would be needed. I'm not the most organized person; I’m more of a “it'll all work out”, laid back kind of person. However within these few weeks I already feel like I've improved myself so much and am so thankful for this one last opportunity in our chapter before graduation.

So here we are, three weeks into the semester and two planned sisterhood events later; it's been stressful at times, but this event fell together so perfectly. With a couple weeks of school and stress under our belts, I thought it would be nice for my sisters to have some down time as we got to the end of the week. I wanted this sisterhood event to be about taking some time to reflect on each other and ourselves. So Kat and I planned a yoga session at the house followed by an exercise to help us see how highly we think of each other.

      As we began our sun salutations, nervous giggles arose. Our yoga instructor, Megan Presley, advised that we let down any mental walls we’d built up and to relax. To me this is what practicing yoga is all about; to remain open when you feel like closing, which is also something especially important when it comes to a strong sisterhood. For the next forty-five minutes, my sisters and I held two different warrior poses, chair pose, cobra and too many planks to count. There were a few difficult and awkward poses that Megan led us through, like the triangle and pigeon, and when our muscles started to quiver, we looked to each other for strength, seeing that our sisters were in the same boat, shaking legs and all. As the end came near we were all pretty relieved to lie on our backs and stretch out our worked muscles. 

     After wrapping up yoga, we all gathered in a circle and each sister got a wooden white letters for her name. We passed them around the circle and for each letter, we wrote a little message to its owner saying what we appreciated and enjoyed about them. The empty space on our bare letters soon filled up with sweet and encouraging words. As the event came to a close we all walked away with our letter and our sisters heart-warming comments that can now be hung on our walls as a reminder of how much we mean to each other here at Gamma Phi.

To me, sisterhood means walking into the Zeta house and being able to be your complete self. It means feeling comfortable enough to strike up a conversation with any one of our sisters and that is what makes our chapter so special. Kat and I look forward to planning many more successful sisterhood events like this to keep our sisters relaxed during a busy semester!

Jenny Herrera – Sisterhood Chair