How I Found My Way Back To Yoga

Having studied Reiki energy and shamanic healing in my 20s and having dipped in and out of yoga for years, I decided to revisit these ancient ways again a few years ago.

Up until now, I had looked upon yoga as another form of exercising and for me exercise had to be high-octane cardiovascular pursuits such as running, body pump weight or HIIT classes at the gym that I had pursued until the birth of my daughter. I just didn’t see value in the seemingly ‘sedate’ practice of yoga.

Growing up in the 80s, I had been programmed that ‘keep fit’ was all about being body perfect, punishing and pushing yourself to achieve unattainable goals that keep you in a state of harsh self-criticism and competition, never quite feeling that your body is good enough, personal goals never quite being reached and experiencing that wave of guilt when you don’t feel like hitting the gym or when you simply want to ‘be’.

This viewpoint slowly started to slip away with a culmination of events, the main catalyst for change being the birth of my daughter and the trauma that surrounded it, one part being the fact she suffered a brain injury and now lives with cerebral palsy.

Going back to the gym to run on a treadmill going nowhere seemed a little bizarre and unimportant due to the fact there was a little girl at home whose life would be like nothing I had imagined for her. This was the turning point in my life that I needed, I just didn’t know it yet!

I had to find ways to help support my frazzled nervous system and fast.

I was spiralling into the abyss with no guide book on how to navigate the world with a child that needed my support in absolutely every aspect of her life, a constant round of hospital appointments, assessments and a focus on what she wouldn’t achieve kept me in a state of negativity, living in the past and scared of the future.

I couldn’t see a way out or a way through.

It was time to take a deep breath and embark on a kinder way….