Healing Crisis as Teacher: Share with Us

I began doing yoga about six years ago to deal with a sudden development of anorexia. Anorexia isn't just about trying to be a stupidly skinny as possible. It's a horrible disease that effects every aspect of someone's being. My mind was constantly racing with negativity, my heart hurt, and I had absolutely no energy. I was miserable.

Then my friend convinced me to come to her yoga class. Right away I was able to simply relax! As an exercise bulimic, my whole world was at the gym. But going into a yoga class was a completely different kind of high. I was able to, for just an hour, let go of EVERYTHING bad in my life and just enjoy my body...something that isn't even heard of with anorexia.

I kept practicing yoga and kept struggling with my eating disorder, and eventually my mind became positive again! My heart hurt less often and I had more energy. I actually felt good in my body!

Two years ago I became a certified yoga instructor and now pay tribute to yoga as a tool that helped save my life. I still struggle everyday with body image and food, but when it gets hard, all I have to do is lay out my mat and fall into that deep relaxation I so adamantly preach about. Without yoga I don't know where I'd be. It truly made me a better person.

I practised off and on for many years through a rough life. when I ended up in a violent relationship and subsequently pregnant, I came to rely on my yoga practice to help me bond with this new life inside and to cope with the daily outward struggle of a violent husband. During the late stages of pregnancy and over the year following my daughters birth, my practice was more centred on meditation. This whloe practice gave me the inner knowledge and courage to change my environment and the lives of both myself and my daughter. We are now free from that abusive environment, relaxed and happy, and my now three year old daughter loves to join me on the mat to do her 'exercises'. What started for me 25 years ago as curiosity, ended up saving two lives.

Hi All! I have an update on my condition. I will not require the surgery the doctors anticipated. Gee, was it the yoga that I have practiced all through my recovery from the fractured vertebrae that prevented surgery??? I have seen the best surgeons in the country at the Rothman Institute at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia and they tell me my spine is stable!