Jeff Hawkes
No one meets 56-year-old Bob Eshbach and instantly says, "Now here's a guy who wouldn't be caught dead taking a yoga class."
On the other hand, you could understand if someone did.
The manager of the Frey Farm landfill in Manor Township, Eshbach is a sturdy, compactly built man with muscular arms and middle-age spread. He doesn't like to run and admits to a fondness for potato chips.
But outward appearances can be deceptive. Which helps to explain why, last Thursday afternoon, Eshbach was occupying a yoga mat and purposefully moving from pose to pose.
Bridge work
At one point during a 50-minute yoga class, in fact, Eshbach ventured what's called the wheel pose.
Starting with his back on the mat, his knees bent and his arms behind his head with palms pressing heavily into two foam blocks, Eshbach thrust his belly toward the ceiling. The result was an impressive arching of Eshbach's back.
Eshbach held the pose and held it. His arms started to shake. Beads of sweat formed on his upside-down face.
Now let's leave Eshbach holding that pose a bit longer — sorry, Bob — while we have a word about where the yoga class was taking place.
That word would be: pee-yoo!
Breathe deeply and you get a whiff of a faint but distinct stench of garbage.
That's because Eshbach and four other co-workers were taking the power vinyasa yoga class at the Waste Transfer Station operated by Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority.
They had rolled out yoga mats in a second-story room featuring a row of tall windows from which you can look down upon the 40,000-square-foot tipping floor where garbage trucks dump their stinky loads — 1,200 tons a day — and where the waste is loaded into truck trailers for transport to the trash-to-energy incinerator.
OK, let's get back to Eshbach. He collapsed his pose and took a deep breath ahead of instructor Lucy Garnett telling the class to relax from the pose.
"That was good today, Bob," Garnett said. "I think (your bridge) gets higher each time."
Healthy options
Eshbach started taking the yoga class last year for only one reason. It's because his employer, the waste management authority, started offering yoga as part of a comprehensive wellness program.
"A healthy employee is the most productive employee," explained Kathryn Sandoe, authority spokeswoman.
If you're one of the nearly 90 workers at the authority's three sites, you can attend an occasional lunchtime health class — lunch is on the company! — to learn about topics such as stress management or to watch a cooking demonstration.
You can earn a reduction in your health insurance deductible by exercising, participating in health checks or completing a smoking cessation class. You can exercise at any of the three sites on cardio equipment and weight machines. You can bring your family out to an employer-sponsored hike or whiffle ball game. You can take on-site yoga, P90X or boot camp classes.
You can even read health tips posted above each urinal. Really.
The wellness push has become such a part of the workplace's culture that new hire and yoga novice Lindsay McGuire, associate communications manager, said, "I'm getting more exercise than before. No doubt."
Eshbach concurred. He said he had slacked off going to the gym before he started the yoga class. Now yoga is a weekly habit.
It's gotten to the point, Eshbach said, that when he tells work buddies he's heading to yoga, "they're pretty easy on me."
