Yoga saved my life

My mother’s life ended in an intensive care unit, 6 & 1/2 years later, attached to life support for the last 6 months of her life, while a medical ethics committee debated whether she be allowed to refuse medical treatment. She was eventually awarded that choice and with some caveats and boundaries, she finally left her broken body.

At sunrise as she finally let go, I had my arms and legs wrapped around her, after climbing onto the hospital bed, as she took her final breaths. It was a beautiful, mysterious and heartbreaking experience for me.

I experienced a mixture of emotions, processing the immense loss of my beloved mother, but also seeing the greatly needed release for her from her suffering and for me, from witnessing it all.

My father was not an emotionally available parent, was unfaithful to my mother in her final years and could be very cruel. The secrets I carried on behalf of adults and the dysfunction in our family dynamics grew and grew, so that by the time my mother died, I went into full escape mode. Running away and escapism, became my modus operandi and my survival strategy.

My extended family were in a pattern of complimenting my bravery and strength in the face of it all, so I felt very alone, with the truth of my feelings hidden deep inside. A developmental pattern of self-reliance and keeping feelings hidden, became reinforced during these years.

I was 17 years old when she died and while my friends were all bursting with excitement at leaving high school, going to university and flatting, I was numbing my pain and feeling lost in a world that seemed too cruel.

I eventually came to therapy in my late 20s when I discovered Yoga and meditation techniques. This was my introduction to start to safely encounter my inner world, with a gentle, quiet gaze, and under the safe guidance of a good teacher.

I learned to access my inner world through my physical body, in a natural, slow, compassionate way. These practices have been my anchor for 23 years now and will remain with me forever.

Yoga saved my life.

In addition, I have a strong connection to nature through my adventures in the mountains, as well as food gardening and land-care. I firmly believe that nature is the greatest mother and the embrace of forests, lakes, rivers, mountains and seas, is very nourishing.

Through my adult years I had the support of a Gestalt psychotherapist for some time and I undertook various trainings to deepen my own healing and to start to help others too. All this whilst raising a family, which can be a healing and learning journey in itself.

Further painful experiences were to come in my life, with the loss of our family farmlet,  when I separated from the love of my life and father of my children; the death of my children’s father after a prolonged illness; raising 2 teenagers on my own; estrangement from some family members and so on. Not extraordinary events, but cumulatively they had a deep impact and created ongoing stress.

Inevitably in life we will all experience some kind of suffering. This may be due to one shocking event or multiple, on-going painful, threatening or toxic events or situations.

It may make the headlines or it may manifest quietly in relationships with family or primary caregivers. Even as a baby, the developmental imprints can begin with a difficult birth, or being left to cry too long or not being able to breastfeed.

It may be that an accident or illness befalls you, but basically no-one gets through life without some challenge, obstacle or difficulty.

I look back now and I am so grateful to the teachers who appeared in my life and the close Yoga friends I have, who are doing their own inner work and know what this entails and what it delivers.

This ancient tradition has influenced many modern, Western, somatic psychotherapies, including those that I employ in my one-to-one and group work.

Using mindfulness (or focussed attention), gentle breath awareness (or if appropriate simple breathing exercises) and feeling into the senses of the physical body, we can  safely access the subtle layers of thoughts, emotions and memories.

Whether it be via Internal Family Systems, Hakomi Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing or Embodied Processing… all these therapeutic approaches contain aspects of the ancient wisdom developed 5000 years ago in the Indic culture.

My preference is to utilise the tools I gained through my Embodied Processing trainings and this is always informed by my decades of Yoga practice and teaching.

My yoga asana teacher supports me in bringing awareness to my inner world through focused inward attention, physical postures, gazing point, energetic locks and breathing.

I do the same as a Yoga teacher and it becomes even more potent when I can work intentionally with a counselling client using focused one-to-one guidance with the Embodied Processing techniques, to explore particularly stuck aspects of self.

After finding a much calmer, more curious and compassionate way to experience my own life, I am so grateful to be in service to the wellness and happiness of others.

I am living proof that terrible things can happen and it is possible to feel all the feelings and return to a balanced, peaceful state.

I’ve made it my mission to help unlock the full potential in life and to enable thriving, in place of surviving.