By the time Nikki Lockwood gets home, the stress has usually been building for hours.
It starts with deadlines. Then assignments. Then the low-grade pressure that settles in during finals week and follows her through the day. By the time evening comes, she is looking for a way to shut the noise off.
That is when she goes to hot yoga.
“It’s definitely a distraction from finals,” said Lockwood, a student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. “You go into a room where you can’t really focus on anything else because you’re focusing on the workout.”
She usually goes at night, after stress has had time to build.
“I kind of just want to release the stress from everything going on that period of finals,” she said. “It definitely helps relieve the stress.”
For Lockwood, yoga is less about flexibility than focus.
“I think it’s a better workout in general,” she said. “You’re sweating everything out. You feel so much more accomplished afterwards.”
Lockwood’s experience is part of a broader shift among younger adults who are increasingly choosing to disconnect in order to reset.
JOMO, short for the joy of missing out, has emerged as an act of rebellion against FOMO — the fear of missing out, a Gen Z term often tied to social media and the pressure to stay constantly connected. More young adults are pushing back against digital overload in favor of slower, more intentional ways to recover. For some college students, yoga has become part of that shift.
Yoga has grown significantly in popularity across the United States over the last decade, evolving from a niche wellness practice into a mainstream way to exercise, recover and manage stress. A 2024 report from the National Center for Health Statistics found adults ages 18 to 44 were the most likely age group in the country to practice yoga, with 21.3% reporting they had practiced yoga in the past year. Among those who practiced yoga, 80% said they used it to restore overall health, and 62% of adults ages 18 to 44 said meditation was part of their practice.
That growth has brought more students into different forms of yoga. Traditional styles such as Hatha and Vinyasa often emphasize breath, flexibility and slower movement. Restorative yoga focuses on recovery and stillness. Hot yoga, by contrast, adds heat and intensity, often in rooms heated to more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, making the practice feel more physically demanding and mentally immersive.
At UH Mānoa, that national trend is showing up in the classroom.
Shoshana Cohen, Ph.D., instructor in the Department of Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Science, said yoga at UH is offered as a one-credit physical activity course open to students across campus, not just kinesiology majors. Classes are held in the second-floor studio in the Athletic Complex, where students can enroll in beginning or intermediate yoga through the university’s regular course registration system.
Cohen said yoga courses at UH were paused during and after the pandemic, then brought back about two years ago. Since then, student demand has steadily increased.
“We’ve added more sections over that time, and the classes are always full,” Cohen said.
The university is adding another yoga section next fall, she said, and this semester marked the first time the intermediate yoga course filled completely.
“This is the most sections of yoga that we’ve had, and all are full,” Cohen said.
She said the students’ background at the classes has also changed.
“The makeup of the classes is more mixed, whereas previously most of them were in kinesiology,” Cohen said.
That shift suggests yoga is attracting students beyond those already focused on movement science or athletics.
Arianna May, a freshman studying political science and journalism, said yoga has become one of the few reliable ways to interrupt the stress cycle that builds during the semester.
“I believe stress builds up in my body,” May said. “When I’m stressed, my muscles are tense. I’m stiff. Finding a way to move my body and release all that stress is really helpful.”
May said most of her yoga happens alone in her dorm room, not in a studio.
At night, before showering, she rolls out a mat on the floor, lights a candle, puts on a YouTube video and begins with meditation on her bed before moving into yoga.
“You just have to show up and be present,” she said. “That’s why I like yoga so much. It gets my body and mind moving in ways they usually can’t while I’m at school or work.”
She said that simplicity is part of the appeal, especially for students who may find yoga intimidating.
“I think a lot of people get intimidated to do yoga,” she said. “But it’s not something you have to prepare for like a marathon.”
She has also practiced heated yoga at a studio in Kakaʻako, where she said the room felt immediately immersive.
“You feel the heat on your skin and moisture in the air,” she said. “It smells like incense and a little musky from the sweat.”
For students like Lockwood and May, yoga appears to function less as a workout and more as a coping tool — one that combines movement, focus and a structured pause from academic pressure.
The American Heart Association reported in 2019 that yoga may help lower blood pressure and improve cardiovascular health, particularly when paired with breathing exercises and stress management.
Research on heated yoga is newer, but early studies suggest it may offer additional mental health benefits. A 2023 randomized controlled trial published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that adults with moderate-to-severe depression who completed an eight-week heated yoga program had significantly lower depression scores than a waitlist control group.
Longtime instructor Alexis Inso has watched that shift unfold in Hawaiʻi for decades.
“People thought we were crazy at first,” said Inso, who has been part of Hawaiʻi’s hot yoga community since the 1990s. “There was no hot yoga around at all.”
Now, she said, what brings people in is less novelty than need.
“If it doesn’t work, you’re not going to sit in a hot room for 60 or 90 minutes,” Inso said.
After decades teaching in Hawaiʻi, she said she has watched students and longtime practitioners return for the same reason: the practice teaches them how to stay calm in discomfort.
“You learn how to relax in an uncomfortable situation,” she said. “All of a sudden, your mind stops racing for an hour or so.”
