Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Connecting breath, body and community through TLC’s online wellness events

Photos and story by Sarah Rose Evans

With faculty and staff sequestered in their homes, it can be hard for employees to feel connected to the larger community at Portland Community College. The Teaching Learning Centers (TLC) are helping alleviate this isolation by bringing faculty and staff together.

The TLCs promote excellence in teaching, professional growth, and student services. The centers launched “Wellness Wednesday” and “Mindful Monday” to create an opportunity for a gathering that allows faculty and staff to build community and take care of each other.

“I feel strongly that we can be more effective in the classroom when we as individuals are supported,” said Lisa Regan-Vienop, Rock Creek TLC coordinator.

For “Wellness Wednesday,” Regan-Vienop hosts a yoga class taught by Carol Gonzalez, a yoga instructor, who has taught at PCC for over 12 years.

“We met while performing in the PCC production of ‘Vagina Monologues,’ and it is so nice to be able to renew our partnership through helping create energy and community,” Gonzalez said.

The yoga classes are drop in, and are now offered in back-to-back 30-minute sessions.The first 30-minute session will have a particular focus (for example, the upper or lower body), and the second session will have a different focus. Participants can join for any amount of time. “Mindful Mondays” are meditation sessions also broken into bite sized, mini-sessions for those who want a shorter practice.

“The yoga class gives people some tools and exercises that they can then use during the workday,” Gonzalez explained. “They can use these skills to take a break every hour or two and open the heart, back, shoulders, or neck. A little movement can get the juices going, and these poses are easy to integrate in your day-to-day quarantine world.”

“During COVID-19, even just seeing people’s names on a screen is really powerful, knowing we’re doing it all together,” Regan-Vienop shared.

For a schedule of these events, check out each campus’s Teaching Learning Center’s event calendar.