Arthritis Foundation Researcher: Steffany Haaz
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Steffany Haaz, MFA
Doctoral candidate, School of Public Health,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
Steffany Haaz practices what she investigates: A dancer and yoga teacher, her Arthritis Foundation-funded research looks at how holistic movement forms (including yoga, tai chi and dance) can serve as a complementary treatment for RA and other chronic conditions. “We can give people medicine, but it’s important to understand how to use the mind-body connection to make living with a disease like RA easier,” she says.
Q. What led you to be a committed environmentalist and vegan, as well as a practitioner of yoga?
A lot of it was intuitive. When I was only 6, I didn’t want to eat meat – I would spit it out into my napkin. It just never felt right to me. Years later, I discovered all the reasons why I want to make those decisions. Being an environmentalist ties into my food choices – organic, local, low on the food chain. I remember when I was nine, my parents were driving along he West Coast and I told them how sad I was that the forests were being clear-cut. My dad told me about Greenpeace and said that if I wanted to donate some of my allowance to the organization, he would match it. And I did that for the next 10 years. In undergraduate school, I gained more understanding about these issues and how complex they are. Before that, I thought about them in terms of black and white – this is what we should be doing, this is what we should not be doing. Now I understand why it’s not so easy.
It all ties into my research – my goal always has been to do as much good and as little harm in my life, in all the ways I can imagine. That’s part of what led me into public health – I feel I can work with individuals and make a difference in their health, but also work for broader societal change. When I am living in a healthy and happy way, my interactions are better, and hopefully that rubs off on the people around me. You have to take care of yourself in order to take care of the world.
Q. How did you get involved with dance? And how does it relate to yoga?
I started dancing when I was 2. It was a hobby – I intended to major in neuroscience in college and become a scientist. Somehow the dance department sucked me in, and I ended up with a dual degree. My parents were frightened – “What do you mean you’re majoring in dance?!” Then I felt I needed to be more mature to work with people in a healing process, and a good way to mature was through art, so I went back to get a master’s in fine arts in choreography. And then my parents were really worried! Now, though, they see it coming together.
It’s not uncommon to go to a dance class and spend a portion of it in yoga poses. So I was introduced to the poses, the asanas, at a very young age. For me, it’s about seeking balance. I love the ways yoga creates metaphors – literal balance and balance in my life. I always felt that dance was a spiritual endeavor, about the connection between mind and body, because there was a feeling I got when I was dancing that was almost transcendent. My undergraduate thesis was about the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of dance. So in my MFA, I was looking into how the mind-body split -- which manifests itself today in our very sedentary society where we value the work of the mind and leave the body to be a container. In fact they are one thing -- two parts of a whole. And I am interested in how that relates to health – how you address the whole of the person as opposed to pieces and parts.
Q. Why did you choose science over art, finally?
Even when I was steeped in the world of dance, there were parts of my mind – the scientific, inquisitive part of me – that couldn’t be addressed through art.. I love the open-ended questions in art, but I also love the nitty-gritty details of science. I need both. Bringing the arts into science feels like a better fit for me than trying to bring science into the world of the arts.
