This is my book The Synergy Game. I am serialising it here a chapter a week. Each chapter will be available for everyone to read because, after all, that’s why I’ve written it, to help others, to share what has helped me to rebuild my life. I will be adding extra insights, sharing my poetry and adding audio to a section below for paying members.
Chapter 4 - Yoga - My Path to Strength: Finding My Power, Peace, and Purpose on the Mat
“Yoga does not just change the way we see things, it transforms the person who sees.”
B.K.S Iyengar
I've done yoga on and off for many years. I went to a class for a few weeks in Florida. I spent 6 months going to a hot yoga class in Thailand three times a week.
It wasn't until I came back to France that I became obsessed with it. My friend is a yoga teacher and has her own beautiful yoga studio. She also does retreats but I am lucky enough to live just two minute’s drive from her, so can go anytime.
When she found out that I was back to stay, not just for my usual five or six months and that the reason for that was that I'd left my husband, one thing she suggested to me was that I come to her classes twice a week. Actually, she didn't suggest it, she told me I absolutely needed it!
And she was right. She explained that the reason she got into yoga over twenty years ago was that she was at a very difficult period in her life, a very traumatic period.
She told me that yoga saved her, mind and body and that she thought it would do the same for me. She said it would be a time when I wouldn't have to think of anything else but the yoga. A mind break.
So I started going on a Monday and a Friday morning. Her class was an hour and a half and it was a nice social time as other friends went and I made new friends too. There were six of us regularly at those classes during that long winter.
Those women became my strength and my rock. They hugged me and loved me and encouraged me. I made a promise to myself that no matter what the weather I would be there at nine am on those mornings, week in, week out.
That may not sound like much but for me it was my first winter in Europe in about seven years. The thought of going out when there was frost on my windscreen horrified me, but there was something inside me that knew Sam was right. I really needed this. Not just the company and support of the other women, but I needed the yoga itself.
The other yoga classes I went to were purely for the exercise benefit. This class however was different. It was taught by someone who really understood the body and anatomy and more importantly the mind body connection.
At first, I was wobbly and stiff, and it took me a while to learn the poses. I was taught the importance of breathing correctly. For someone who has had asthma all her life, I've never taken breathing for granted. Now, however, I was learning the power of the breath, how breathing correctly gives you strength to go deeper into the pose and hold it for longer.
I went to the class twice a week all through that very long winter, never missing any, apart from one week when I had a cold. I gradually went from thinking that it was good for me physically to realising that it was benefiting me mentally too. As I learned the poses and I didn't have to concentrate on that so much I was able to focus more. I was able to block other things out and focus on feeling the stretch where I should be feeling it, on breathing when I should and how I should, and I started to be able to only think about what I was doing, nothing else. I became totally absorbed in what I was doing and my mind rested.
For an hour and a half, I entered a different world, a world of movement and breathing, pushing my body and learning to appreciate what it could do. For those first few months it was an escape from the pain and sadness of my days.
By the start of summer when Sam stopped her weekly classes to run her retreats, I felt that I knew enough to be able to practice on my own. She had been very careful to teach us how to do the poses in a safe way so we wouldn't injure ourselves and I felt confident that I could do it myself.
Initially, I planned on keeping to just the two days a week but one day just in casual conversation Sam said something to me that would change everything. She said, "You won't believe how strong your body becomes when you do yoga every day".
You know that feeling you get when something, an inner voice, just says to you, DO IT! I knew this was what I needed to do.
I have to explain something here. I've never ever been very enthusiastic about exercise. I've had asthma all my life and as a child, I was quite ill and not able to join in with sports at school. Exercise was never encouraged at home. Reading, study and crafts were, but not sport! So I grew up doing the bare minimum required at school and never having any sports as hobbies.
I lived in the country, in Wales so I did a lot of walking and hiking when my asthma permitted. Even when my chest issues improved as an adult, I really only did things sporadically, not seeing the need for it. I never had a weight problem and considered myself fit enough.
However, I always had the knowledge at the back of my mind that exercise was important and that I needed to add it to my routine somehow. So I would start yoga classes or a gym membership only to give up after a few months. Nothing ever lasted. Until Sam's classes!
I don't really know what it was or how I became addicted. Maybe it was just the right time in my life. The fact that I now had the freedom to only consider myself. Maybe it was my subconscious screaming at me that I really needed it. Maybe it was Sam's enthusiasm and excellent teaching.
Whatever it was I suddenly realised I wanted to know what it felt like to have a strong body and to be fit. I wanted to see how far I could go with this, how much my body could do at fifty-four. I'd already bought a yoga mat, so I added a fancy yoga towel too. You know one of those ones that are the same shape and size as the mat? I felt like a real yogi!
At the back of my house, there is a long room with windows all along. At one time it was a balcony, but a previous owner had boxed it all in and made it into a beautifully bright room. I realised that it was the perfect place to practice. It looks out onto my garden and is not overlooked at all.
I decided to see if I could do it every day during the week, five days, Monday to Friday. I found that as much as I loved the classes I loved even more doing it on my own. I could totally focus without distractions, I could get immersed in the yoga flow.
And that was great until the start of winter when it got too cold. That part of the house takes time to warm up and as I had been taught it's dangerous to exercise when you are cold, I made my very own yoga room from a spare bedroom upstairs. It was a room I'd used for meditation and some Reiki and Crystal healing that I did for a while. It was the perfect space. Easy to heat and easy to keep the energy high. It's where I practice today. Surrounded by my beautiful crystals it has become my sacred space.
Coming from a childhood of sexual abuse I had never had a great relationship with my body. I either didn't want to see it or I wasn't happy about something when I saw it. I often felt that I was overweight somewhere even though I can see now I never was. I would look critically at my thighs which were too large or my stomach which wasn't flat enough, saggy breasts, wrinkles.
The older I grew this only became worse, especially when my husband stopped 'seeing' me. I thought that there must be something wrong with my body. Telling myself that must be why he doesn't want me anymore.
The thing with yoga is that you have to look at yourself a lot while you are doing it to do it correctly. Ideally, there needs to be a mirror so you can check your alignment. This isn't for vanity but to make sure you are holding the pose correctly, if not you can easily injure yourself.
So for the first time in my life, I was seeing myself differently. I was seeing what my body could do, how far I could push it, and most importantly how it was changing.
I'd never looked at myself so much before. I started to like what I saw, I was falling in love with myself. I still noticed things that were not perfect, but now that stomach that wasn't perfectly flat, I saw as a stomach that had carried my two beautiful daughters.
Those thighs that were not as firm and perfect as I'd like were thighs that they had sat on when I was reading stories to them. Those saggy breasts fed them. Those wrinkles are a story of my life. They are from when I was worried when they were sick, from laughing and smiling at the wonder of them.
My body is the story of my life and there is nothing I am ashamed of anymore. It took me looking at myself in the mirror for an hour and a half daily for me to see that, for me to realise that I'm enough as I am. I'm perfect as me.
I'm perfect in my imperfection.
I started to see that actually I wasn't an old middle-aged washed-up woman. I was actually not bad looking, in pretty good shape and it wasn't that I was lacking in some way that my marriage had broken down. It wasn't me. I finally acknowledged that it wasn't my fault. Whatever issues my husband had that made him act the way he did, treat me the way he did, they were not for me to worry about now, it was his problem, not mine.
It's quite amazing to me how my life has changed since I started yoga. Sam was right. I am amazed at how strong I am. Physically of course, but also mentally and emotionally too. Because it requires such focus, it seems to allow thoughts and ideas to come up, to just pop into your head from nowhere.
I've had times where I have just, out of nowhere, burst out crying or sunk to the floor howling and releasing a deep sadness. It's as if once my focus is elsewhere, I've been able to release what needs to be let go of.
For me, this could only have happened in a solitary practice. I couldn’t have ever let myself go in a class with other people, even though most of them were my friends.
I'm at the point now where I couldn't imagine my life without my yoga practice. I know it keeps me fit physically and tones and strengthens my body, which I like. The addictive thing though, is the absolute focus and dedication I feel once I go into my yoga room and shut the door. I meditate on my cushion for about twenty minutes then I put on my favourite chilled music playlist, sit on my mat and enter another world.
I use it as a healing tool, but it has such far reaching benefits that it will be part of my life until I take my last breath.
And speaking of music, that's a tool I had all along, but never realised how I could use it as one. Once I did, the power of it amazed me.
Previous Chapter - My Journey to Stillness: How Meditation Became My Sanctuary and Guide
Next Chapter - The Healing Power of Music: Transforming Trauma and Embracing Self-Love Through Sound
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