How Has Yoga Changed My Life
Four years ago I was asked by my good friend MaryLee Carroll to go to a yoga class on Sunday morning because the proceeds from the class were being given to Camp Jonathan. I was NOT a big fan of yoga. I was, and still am, however, a big supporter of Camp Jonathan and so I went to yoga at the OM Center, a new place that had just opened by a girl who is the same age as my daughter. I had been to yoga before at another studio and really did not like it. At all. I wasn’t in great shape and was very self conscious that I would do a pose wrong and be “corrected” in front of others, or worse, fall over in a pose!
So there I am that Sunday morning doing yoga, and guess what?? Not once was I corrected for my poses, nor did I feel self conscious in front of the other members of the class. Honestly,though, I was glad when the class was over and off I went to enjoy the rest of my Sunday, thinking I was off the hook to go back to yoga ever again. That was until there was another class to benefit Camp Jonathan the following Sunday. So off I went to that class thinking, “This is absolutely the last yoga class I will ever do!!” And then it happened. I actually found myself enjoying the class!!! How could this be??? I was breathing for the first time in a long time and moving at the same time. I felt that connection that anyone who has really experienced the joys of yoga can appreciate.
The next Sunday, I went back even though I didn’t “have” to. And I loved it even more. For the first time in many months, I could breathe. I could sit quietly with myself and just BE. I could even FEEL again, something I hadn’t allowed myself to do in a long time. You see, I work in a pretty high stress job. That stress was nothing, though, compared to the fear I was feeling because my youngest son was deployed to Afghanistan. It felt like I had held my breath for months and built a huge wall around my heart to protect me from the “what if’s” that were my constant companion.
From those first few yoga classes, I knew I had come home. I was able to breathe and connect with a part of myself that had been walled off for so long I forgot it even existed. Yoga changed that. I started looking forward to yoga 3 or 4 times a week! It was my time on my mat to let go of the outside world with all its demands, stressors and fears. If I didn’t do a pose perfectly or fell over (I still do that sometimes) I learned how to laugh at myself and give myself a pat on the back that I had even made the attempt to do something I had not done before. I learned self compassion, something that was not even in my vocabulary.
Little by little, yoga became integrated into my life in a very big way. My kids, grown and out of the house, learned to check in to see if I was home or “at yoga.” When life’s difficulties came my way, yoga was what helped get me through. I found that when I was in the middle of the hardest situations, this was the time I needed to be at yoga the most, and if I didn’t allow myself that time, it was so much harder to cope. When I gave myself the gift of time on my mat in a yoga class, I found peace and clarity, if only for a brief time.
The amazing people of Om have become my second family. It is in that space that I feel grounded and at peace, knowing that, when I go out into the world after class, I will be able to handle whatever comes my way. I am safe.
That is what yoga has done for me.
Diane Lafferty, LCSW, OSW-C