The mind-body balance
Karina-Doris Vihta, DPhil in Clinical Medicine student and lecturer in Mathematics, on using sport to connect with her thoughts and the physical space of the city.

“Oxford can be stressful — at least if you care about what you do, and people here really do. It’s important to have a way to externalise your feelings, a way of calming your mind. And that’s how I found yoga.
Yoga really calmed me down — it helped me let go of everything and gave me time to be kind to myself, to take a different energy into my daily work. You can put your mind on pause and let your subconscious do a lot of the work for you.
There are so many places around Oxford that I like to stop for a few minutes, take a few breaths and a fun picture. It’s a way of connecting with the place in a totally different way.
For me, taking pictures is always a balance between demonstrating more basic moves — that others can be inspired to try — and trying out more impressive, contortion-like moves.
Those are great fun and give you confidence. Sometimes I find that I’ll have a pose in mind but it seems impossible, then after giving it a few tries, eventually it works. It helps remind me that everything comes with practice, in my work as well as yoga.
I often do yoga around people and often they want to join in. I feel like it’s such a natural activity — if you look at babies, they’ll naturally just be doing splits or something like the downward dog, it’s just something that comes naturally to your body.
I think when people see me practice they’re very tempted to join in, if they’re free enough with themselves and not bothered about what others will think.
When I was little I did rhythmic gymnastics, so actually Oxford has helped me come back to myself. Looking at the people around me, that’s actually the case for a lot of Oxford students. When you come here, we’re all very different but quite often there’s this element of not quite fitting in where it was we came from.
Then we all find ourselves here, and you soon become more confident and comfortable with yourself. I think Oxford gives you the opportunity to flourish and be the best version of yourself.”
Get extracurricular with it
Oxford is a fantastic, world-class place to study but it’s also a brilliant community of passionate people like Karina doing what they love, academic and not. Subscribe on YouTube and follow us on Instagram for more from our awesome community of staff and students.

