People have asked me how it is that I have been able to recover so quickly from a very hard, physically traumatic fall I took on May 6th.
People that know what I went through back in 2016, the damage that my body sustained and the prognosis I’d been given that sounded like total doom and gloom. Stenosis, massive arthritis, degenerative spine, labral tears, eminent hip replacement, it did not look good for me back then.
Yet my body healed from the majority of all of it without surgery, or much western medicine at all. It was yoga, meditation, essential oil use, and straight up positive mental attitude, along with some acupuncture and a bit of time in a warm therapy pool, and about 4 years of focused effort.
So OF COURSE as I went airborne through my kitchen crying “NOOOOOO!”, trying to somehow break the fall, life flashing before my eyes, I feared I was likely in for that hip replacement this time for sure. I was about to undo all of the good work I’d done on myself. All of the healing, years of progress, gone in an instant.
But that’s not what happened.
Yes, that fall put me into total acute, physical trauma. My entire back seized up with hot burning pain that resonated down the legs and up into my arms. No standing up straight. Unable to walk a step. The only position even remotely tolerable for days was to simply lay my torso across the dining room table and try to breathe. I slept hanging across my dining room table most of the first night.
Those first couple of days were unbearable. Yet, I rolled off that table in the morning and got myself situated to teach my 6 am yoga class—using only my words. With ice, heat, essential oils, lots of restorative poses and an acupuncture treatment I started finding relief. I started asking my body if we could try a little yoga. I kept TEACHING my yoga classes, using my voice. I went to my doctor and got checked out for head trauma, and back and hip x-rays. She handed me a stack of “exercises” to do at home. As I paged through them I said, “you know, you may consider these physical therapy exercises, but they are actually yoga poses, basically, and the kind of yoga that I typically teach.” Her response? “Okay, do what you do. Carefully.”
Little by little, I worked with my body to try tiny movements via my yoga knowledge.
Friends loaned me a fancy walker with breaks and a seat so I could get around the house. I had help with shopping and mowing and all the heavy lifting stuff that my body just wasn’t ready for. I slept in a recliner in restorative poses. I napped any time I could between day job and night job, 30 minutes here, 20 minutes there, resting, meditating, coaxing my body to calm, and asking it to release the trauma. Two weeks later, one more acupuncture treatment, a series of tests and x-rays and it appears that not only was nothing broken chipped, fractured, or crushed, but my spine looks better than it did in 2016. I didn’t even have signs of osteo-perosis!
It has only been a month since my flight across the kitchen, and yet I am up and moving and doing things to at least 75%. I am confident I will be 100% before the Fourth of July.
How is it I’ve been able to recover so quickly?
Yoga
Meditation
Essential Oils
Eating well
Sleep/Rest
Positive Mental Attitude
I am proof positive that Yoga is for EVERY body. Especially if you have pain, trauma, limited range of motion, less flexibility than you’d like, if you’re recovering from surgical procedures, injury, or live in a larger body and realize you need to move it.
This summer I offer 6 different yoga classes. Three classes are narrowly focused on guiding the body in very gentle but effective ways to introduce it to movement. The first step in opening up your energy pathways and bringing more flexibility to your life.
Gentle Yoga –Sunday nights 7:30 via Zoom—breath work to help you to allow your body to relax, super basic poses to introduce your body of the day to the idea of movement, and conscious relaxation to allow your body to integrate the new energy you’ve sent it. Perfect for the ultimate beginner, the inflexible, folks with arthritis, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, or larger bodied beings that thought “they” could never do yoga. Well, yes you can. With me. Sunday nights. In your own space.
Happy Joints-Tuesday nights 6:00 – 7:00 in person at Parker Lake—an hour of serious part by part joint movement as the body allows, to begin to increase strength and flexibility, rehydrate and loosen up the joints. The perfect hour for anyone suffering with aches and pains and stiffness, dis-ease like low back pain, tendonitis, frozen shoulder, “bad knees” or for those that are trying to bounce back from a trauma or injury. It is so important to develop a relationship with your body, and dedicate effort not just to areas of the body that are reacting to chronic pain triggers, but to the whole body, as it all works together.
Seated Yoga—Wednesdays 4:30 – 5:30 on Zoom. Forget the floor, pull up a chair. This is a “raised” Yin class, for those that find it harder and harder to get down on the floor, and harder yet, getting back up. As we age, if we don’t use it–we loose it, and this hour will have you using your body in gentle, yet challenging poses while seated on a chair. Now is the time to get your body moving towards a healthier you. Perfect for beginners, older bodies, larger bodies, or anybody who has limited range of motion, and struggles with the ability to comfortably get to the floor.
All 3 of these classes share elements that have been instrumental in my injury recovery. There are no expectations, no judgements—participants are always free to do as much or as little as they choose.
If you or someone you know would benefit from some movement, why not give this a try? Surprise yourself. Take care of yourself. Come Yoga with me. New classes start in July.
Namaste.
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