Yoga instructor Matt Sanford may not be your average teacher, because he not only established Mind-Body Solutions, a nonprofit yoga studio, but he also teaches and serves as a motivational speaker. What sets him apart from other yoga instructors is that he’s paralyzed from the chest down.
Sanford will address the VCU community and others at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 9 in the University Student Commons Theater. He plans to discuss the importance of people keeping their minds and bodies healthy.
“(The series) allows us to bring people to VCU campus that otherwise wouldn’t have come,” said R. McKenna Brown, director of the School of World Studies that co-sponsors the series with the University Honors Program. “The students get a chance to hear directly and speak directly to people who are coming kinda out of the headlines.”
Brown said the series allows VCU to offer the community different cultural issues such as religion, philosophy and race. The programs, he said introduce many students to a distinct group of lecturers they otherwise might never have the chance to hear speak.
To date, speakers have included former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, who headed the weapons search in Iraq; Sarah Chayes, a former National Public Radio reporter who spent time in Afghanistan; and Katherine Frank, a cultural anthropologist and former exotic dancer who spoke about love, sex and monogamy in American marriages.
Meaghan Flattery, a fifth-year senior sociology major, attended the January lecture where Michael Newton and Rhiannon Giddens utilized music and lecture to discuss Africans and Scottish Highlanders in the old American South.
“I have Celtic heritage myself,” Flattery said. “It’s a little known topic that I was interested in learning a little more about.”
Flattery said she didn’t know much about the entire series but heard about the Newton-Giddens lecture from a friend. Although the series’ promotion hadn’t caught her attention, she said she would be interested in attending other lectures.
Timothy Hulsey, director of the University Honors Program, said he is pleased with the success of the program.
“I’ve been consistently impressed with the numbers of students that have turned out to these events,” he said. “I think the VCU students are better than they think.”
The series, which debuted with Blix in April 2004, ends April 8 with Oscar Arias S