Neko Three Sixty twists her body, exhaling and inhaling. Her steady voice fills the dimly lit room as she instructs a yoga class. To stress the importance of spirituality and meditation, the Consciousness Club at Cornell University hosted a yoga session on March 23 at Willard Straight Hall.

The club, which emphasizes breathing techniques and meditation tactics, welcomes all members whether they are new to yoga or practice yoga on a regular basis.

Kelsey Kruse, senior electric and chemical engineering student at Cornell, attended the session for the first time, yet has been practicing yoga for years.

“I guess it’s how it allows me to explore my body, sort of like connect with where I am, mentally and spiritually,” Kruse said about yoga. “I also love that it’s restorative.”

She said the session allowed her to feel more at peace with her body.

Three Sixty said yoga is not only a spiritual practice but also a meditative practice.

“From my perspective, yoga is about the union so a lot of yoga practicing will shut off your mind,” she said.

Her role as a yoga instructor is to teach others the importance of breathing rhythms in order to highlight our existence with the Earth.

“There becomes this spaciousness and just the connection to the breath that allows for an opportunity for things to happen that you just don’t realize,” Three Sixty said. “And I really do think the breath is really what tethers us to the Earth.”

Meenakshi Sundaram Manivannan, president of the Consciousness Club, said the purpose of the organization to serve the community with breathing and meditation techniques.

“It’s actually a forum for people to connect and practice together,” he said. “One thing that makes this club unique is that there is no other club on campus that addresses the universal nature of spirituality.”

Three Sixty said she feels that spirituality is like a paradox for people trying to internalize their feelings and trying to let go of some of their emotions.

“And that’s why I also bring it back to the breath because the breath reminds us of our inherent balance and the juxtaposition of when you are inhaling you are receiving and when you exhale you are letting go,” she said.

Manivannan said spirituality is connected with an individual’s own fundamental nature, which is associated with happiness from some event or something that is happening in the future.

“Happiness is a state of being,” he said. “And that is being spiritual.”

He said although yoga practices postures, it also represents union.

“Union means connection between everything and its interconnectedness,” he said. “That’s what yoga is all about and I feel that is our special nature.”

Manivannan said it is important for an individual to practice spirituality on a regular basis because it helps one understand the equanimity between things you desire.

“Because it’s what adds juice to your life,” he said. “It is what gives you a lot of self-centeredness.”

Although yoga is an internalized process, Three Sixty said, it is important to recognize that yoga is also about letting go.

“You can’t just keep breathing out,” she said. “It just won’t work. You can’t just keep focusing and focusing and focusing, and you can’t just keep letting it all loose.”

She said spirituality and religion is not about differentiating between what is right and what is wrong.

“It’s coming from a place of wanting to facilitate a place of deeper knowing,” she said.” But it can get lost if we read too much into the semantics of what it is.”

She said because spirituality is a path, it looks different for each individual.

“If you’re not chasing the past or running toward the future, and you’re breathing and you’re present,” Three Sixty said. “Then you are just in this moment and for whatever reason, there’s a thing of bliss right here.”