Creative people often talk about stretching themselves artistically, but Thursday the Brunnier is giving them a chance to do it – literally.

The Brunnier will be hosting a free yoga workshop to accompany the museum’s current exhibit of ultra-realistic human sculptures by Marc Sijan.

The workshop, titled “Where Mind and Body Meet: Elements of Yoga,” will be at 7 p.m. “in the museum, with the sculptures right there,” said Rachel Hampton, information and collections manager for University Museums.

Kris Mach, graduate student in civil and construction engineering, will lead the workshop. She has been a certified fitness instructor for about seven years and has been teaching classes in fitness yoga at the Ames Community Center since August.

Mach said she plans to discuss the history and health benefits of yoga, followed by “some sort of audience-participation demonstration.”

Mach plans to tailor the workshop to the interests of the audience.

“There are a couple different formats I could do,” she explained.

The yoga workshop is a part of the Brunnier’s recent effort to “come up with new, innovative programming” geared toward students, Hampton said.

Hampton, who practices yoga herself, said the Brunnier staff got the idea for a yoga workshop from one of the sculptures in the show, titled “Kneeling.”

“In terms of her pose, the meditation. does correlate with yoga,” she said.

“The connection is that the sculptures were done by Marc Sijan to capture the essence of movement,” Hampton said. “For us, the yoga is about movement.”

For Mach, “yoga is a series of movements – of poses – that has its roots in an ancient religion,” she said. “It started out as that and the Western World has borrowed it.”

“People think it’s a very spiritual thing,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be. Yoga is very individualized.”

The idea that yoga has to be spiritual is one of the myths that Mach said she wants to debunk The other myth is yoga is “geared toward a specific population,” she said. “It’s not – it’s geared toward everyone.”

Yoga has been gaining in popularity lately due to the “wellness industry’s” focus on “overall well-being,” Mach said.

“Yoga’s a great addition to that movement,” she said.

That excitement is just what the Brunnier staff is hoping to tap into.

Matthew DeLay, curator for University Museums, said he envisions “an audience who wants to get on the floor and learn, stretch . right here in the museum.”

“When you’re focused – not tense or distracted – you do your best work,” he said. “Very interesting and viable art comes out of stress and tension, too, but I think there is a connection.

“Let’s just think about balance and expression and being comfortable and focused and think about creating something,” he said. “There’s something parallel to the experiences of making art.”