Shelby Walker ’10 plays crystal bowls to create a sound bath for students, staff, alumni and community members. Photos by Robbyn Hopewell
Shelby Walker ’10 got misty as she smiled at her father—Eckerd College Professor Emeritus of Mathematics Walter Walker ’74—in the main gallery of The Helmar and Enole Nielsen Center for Visual Arts.
He had snuck in minutes before she started Heritage & Harmony: A Yoga & Sound Bath Experience that drew 44 students, staff, alumni and community members for a deeply restorative and inspiring wellness experience on Nov. 6.
“I think after maybe 38 years of working at Eckerd he retired,” she explains. “He’s just given so much to this community, and this was my way of just kind of continuing his legacy and honoring it as well.”
Shelby Walker, who lives in Atlanta, is the founder of KHōNA Yoga, a wellness community centered on creating spaces where Black and brown people might find confidence to participate in yoga and other types of healing exercises. She had discovered her passion for yoga as a creative writing student at Eckerd.
“It started in St. Pete. My first yoga class was at the Dalí Museum and I was totally inspired,” she explains. “But I noticed I was one of the few Black people in the room, and even in the diversity of Atlanta, in those spaces I was still one of the few.”
Through her journey into certification and becoming a yoga practitioner, Shelby Walker also was looking for ways to give back to the Eckerd community—which had shaped her from childhood through college graduation. When Eckerd’s Wellness Services invited her to return, she jumped at the opportunity.
“I knew that fitness was something I was always interested in and inspired by as a way to build up my personal life, find my confidence, find my voice but also give back to my community,” she says. “So I wanted to bring that to Eckerd.”
The large open gallery was filled to capacity with yoga mats, casually attired people and a sense of need for release. Walker dedicated the experience to her father, who stood watching from the back of the room with her husband, Gilles Walters. She began with having the group go through movements to get them in touch with their breath, expand their flexibility and elongate their muscles. Once they had completed the cycle, she instructed the prone group to listen as she played the crystal bowls that resonated in the cavernous acoustics of an art gallery full of unsmiling portraits. Shoulders opened and spines relaxed as she gently guided the group through a release of tension built up from the destruction and displacement caused by two consecutive hurricanes and a divisive national election.
The main gallery in the Nielsen Center for Visual Arts provided the setting for a restorative experience.
“This just seems like fate,” she later jokes about the timing of the session. “I’m just happy that it worked out the way that it did. But it wasn’t intentional, as it maybe should have been, but It worked out for the better.”
Throughout the class, she reminded her students to think of legacy—what has been left behind for them and also what they intend to offer to future generations. Shelby Walker has seen firsthand what dedicating your life to serving others can do.
In her father’s honor, the Dr. Walter Walker ’74 Annual Scholarship was established by a group of Black alumni at Reunion 2016 to commemorate his retirement as associate professor of mathematics.
Left to right: Shelby Walker ’10, Gilles Walters, Walter Walker ’74
The scholarship provides financial support to Black students in good standing. Since 2016, the Walker Annual Scholarship has been awarded to 16 students.
Donors may contribute to the scholarship by visiting the Eckerd College giving page, selecting “Other” under designation, and entering “Dr. Walter Walker ’74 Annual Scholarship.”
At the end of the yoga and sound bath event, the grateful community filed out of the gallery past the works of art and out into the night carrying two bags of calming tea provided by Wellness Services, a commemorative bracelet and a new set of tools to manage the uncertainty that lies ahead.
