Around NMU

Yoga Event Features Swami Omkarananda

Northern Michigan University's Yoga Club will present a public event titled “Yoga and Meditation in Busy Life,” featuring Swami Omkarananda from India. The event will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 11, at Unity Yoga Co-op at 147 W. Washington St. in Marquette. Swami Omkarananda grew up around the great lady saint of India, Ma Anandamayi. He studied and lived with six world-renowned Hindu and Buddhist masters, and has been traveling throughout the world as a peace and wellness messenger.
Swami Omkarananda

Improv Training Can Ease Social Anxiety

Some people are apprehensive about participating in improv comedy because of its unscripted format that requires quick thinking to play off unpredictable ideas presented by others on stage or in the audience. But Northern Michigan University assistant professor Peter Felsman is the lead author of a published study providing the first evidence that improv training can significantly reduce a common trait of social anxiety and depression: discomfort with uncertainty.
Felsman (left) doing improv with a house team called Brenda at Pointless Brewery & Theatre in Ann Arbor, which is now closed.

Cumberlidge Attends Workshop in Berlin

NMU BIology Professor Neil Cumberlidge recently attended a week-long freshwater crab workshop at the Museum für Naturkunde (Natural History Museum) in Berlin, Germany. He joined international colleagues working on new collections of freshwater crabs resulting from the group's biological surveys of three central and West African biodiversity hotspots in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sierra Leone.
Workshop participants at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany. From left: Pierre A. Mvogo Ndongo (Douala, Cameroon in Central Africa); Kristina von Rintelen, Curator of Crustaceans, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin; Thomas von Rintelen (Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity, Museum für Naturkunde); Paul Clark (The Natural History Museum in London, UK); and Neil Cumberlidge (NMU).