By Sandra McGuire
I was introduced to Yoga at the age of twelve, and though I have not had a consistent practice all of the years since then, Yoga has been a healing thread that has wound its way through my life. Yoga has always been a place I come home to, a safe, secure place where healing, peace and connection with my body, mind and soul can occur. Recently I went through a very difficult couple of years, where though I needed it the most, I became disconnected from Yoga. In the course of just a few years I went through the breakdown of my marriage, the death of my mother, my own diagnosis with thyroid cancer, major surgery to remove my thyroid, and a car accident, I was a real mess. Again, Yoga was silently and gently waiting in the wings for when I was ready to return to its wonderful healing.
I had a foundation in Yoga, having had the great good fortune to discover it at the age of twelve. I embraced it wholeheartedly, coming home from school and practicing for two hours a day. I fasted once a week and became vegetarian. Although I went through the typical trials of puberty, Yoga gave me a great deal of strength and insight to help me through. I wavered from this path at 14 and became an embittered teenager. Circumstances in my life, including a move affected me enormously, and combined with puberty, I became angry and deeply insecure.
I believe my foundation in Yoga helped me, as I had that memory within of a place of comfort and gentleness. By age 16 I had returned passionately to my Yoga practice, and went through a wonderful transformation. My tough, angry teen image faded away with no conscious effort, just a regular Yoga practice. My insecurity lessened considerably. Instead of feeling anxious about my weight, bad skin and not feeling attractive enough, I found my body naturally balanced out. My weight toned down, my bulges shifted and became taut, my skin cleared up and developed a healthy glow, my hair grew thick and lustrous, and I began to feel beautiful inside, which of course made me feel more attractive outwardly.
In my angry time I had formed friendships with people of a similar temperament, and was very much in the wrong crowd. As my Yoga practice deepened, I just naturally drifted away from them, and established more meaningful friendships with more appropriate people. I made other changes in my life that broke some self destructive habits, and helped me establish myself on a more true path for me.
Due to youth, busyness and various factors, I drifted away from Yoga somewhat. I found though, that whenever I was troubled or stressed, I instinctively returned to it. Many years later after the birth of my first child, I felt exhausted, stressed, and very body worn. Wonderfully, a friend steered me back to Yoga. Again, I found my body healing, my mind finding peace and I was once more equipped with the techniques I needed to regain balance and a sense of peace in my life.
My practice continued and deepened, and I found things shifting inside again. I realized that I was not as happy as I had thought with my life as it was. Very disturbingly, I realized that I was not married to the right person for me. Ironically, as Yoga helped me find my own inner peace, it highlighted the discord in my life that I was trying to ignore. Healing can be powerful and not always easy.
My marriage dissolved not too much longer after that, and I entered into the struggles of a single parent now with two young children. I returned home to my parents house, where my always strong bond with my mother deepened. We grew very close and for a short time we all lived very happily together. I was just settling back into a Yoga routine, when chaos struck with such force that our lives were completely turned upside down.
We were in the middle of a major move across the country when my beloved mother was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer so advanced she was given just two months to live. This was shocking enough as it was, but was made more so by the fact that this woman was famous for her healthy lifestyle and fantastic degree of physical fitness. It seemed impossible that this could be the case. It was terribly disillusioning to those of us who had truly believed that living a healthy life would somehow protect us. Yet she was deteriorating rapidly. We were in the middle of this enormous move, and there was nothing to do but carry on. I think I lived on nothing but adrenalin, and was in a constant state of extreme stress.
Somehow, we got through the move, and Mum re-joined us after a series of radiation treatments. We settled into our new house in rural Cape Breton, and I as a single mother began to be a full time caregiver for my mother as well. We prepared for her death as best we could, and cared for her with love and support. She ended up living seven months instead of two, but as she died there was an enormous sadness that descended on our house, and the sense of loss I felt seemed insurmountable. Numbly, I carried on.
I put my energy into the new place, establishing gardens and trying to regain peace. I tried to practice my Yoga a few times, but I was so deeply stressed, I just couldn’t do it. I was worried I would hurt myself, as I found it so hard to relax and slow down. I couldn’t breathe properly, although I was aware of this, and knew what I should do, I just couldn’t get there.
Just five months after my mother died, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer myself. This blow was almost too much, yet I was still so numb that I went through the motions of life. I prepared for surgery facing it with enormous fear and trying to comfort my children who were equally shattered and afraid. This was the same cancer my mother had just died from.
Everything felt wrong. As I prepared for the hospital, I was hastily tidying up. I injured my shoulder which went into extremely painful spasms. In this completely messed up state I entered the hospital. After my surgery I awoke groggy from anaesthetic, and finding that I could neither talk at all or swallow. Outside was a terrible thunder storm crashing and raging and dropping enormous hailstones. The power went out and the hospital ran on back up. A nurse appeared with an enormous pill I was somehow to swallow, and morphine for my pain.
Never in my whole life have I felt farther away from the peace, comfort and solace of Yoga. I felt fractured physically and spiritually. My hospital stay was very difficult. No one could give me anything that really helped the pain. The medication they gave me made me feel sick and hallucinate, yet didn’t really help. I spluttered and gagged whenever I tried to swallow anything, even water. I had a drainage tube coming out of my chest, a huge bandage across my throat, an IV tube in my arm and a heart monitor on. The atmosphere of the hospital was noisy, disruptive, intrusive and unpleasant. The hospital food also did nothing to promote healing. I was stunned, miserable and desperate to heal. I was acutely aware that I was in a downward spiral. The pain, stress, emotional strain and frustration I was feeling, were all pulling me further into what felt like a very unhealthy place. My reserves of strength were gone and each drug and strain seemed to compound the problem, rather than help it.
After two weeks in hospital I returned home. It took almost two months before I could talk again, and almost as long for my shoulder pain to ease. The pain from that had not been helped by being stuck in a hospital bed with tubes in me that prevented mobility. This had led to the pain spreading into my back and up my neck. As a result of this, plus the surgery, I was breathing very shallowly and with difficulty, sometimes really struggling. Although I was still unable to properly swallow, I made myself herbal tea and quietly tried to drink it and return to a healing path.
It didn’t take long till I had my Yoga mat out. However, my body was such a mess, and felt so different and fragile, that I did little more than sit on it and try to breathe. Gradually, I tried some gentle movements of my shoulders. Day by day, bit by bit, I gently stretched, rolled and breathed my way back into establishing a connection with what felt like a different body.
My pain began to ease, my swallowing slowly improved, and the vice grip of shock I had been in ever so subtly began to lift. I wanted to return to Yoga, but in this remote place, I had no teacher, and my body was so different. I no longer had a Thyroid and I was terrified of working my neck area. I was still on a medication roller coaster too, as the doctors tried to regulate and find the balance of Thyroid replacement medication and calcium that was now essential for me to take.
So I breathed. I breathed and breathed. I felt energy (Prana) gradually filtering through my body. It felt like a wave of life washing through me. It reminded me of balance, healing and vitality, although I still felt very wounded and anything but vital. That breath turned things around though, and returned me to the Yogic path. Before too long I was practicing some gentle leg stretches, reconnecting with my body, becoming acquainted with this new me. Though it was a minimal practice, it opened the door to a familiar path.
Eventually, I was doing something close to a normal practice, though still shying away from anything to do with the throat area. The sense of healing that Yoga offered me was enormous. To me it encompassed such power and vitality that was in sharp contrast to the state I had been in. Prana washed through me, pushing out the pain, the fear, the medication, the poison that I felt was there. Most importantly, Yoga offered the reminder that I could heal. That I could take charge of my body again. I had felt like such a puppet at the mercy of doctors, now I was returning to myself. I was connecting again with my centre that I knew was a place of balance and tranquility. Yoga felt like silk threads returning me to myself. Soft and gentle yet so remarkably strong.
After a few months I felt relatively normal. However, emotional turmoil and all the chaos I had lived through, can’t just disappear. I was on my way back to wholeness, but it was not an easy journey and I was not there yet. Just after this my car crashed. I was shaken, and hurt my other shoulder, but was basically ok. However, my confidence felt shattered. I was living in a place where driving was a necessity, and yet, now driving put me into panic attacks. I was terrified. I had no choice but to do it anyway, which is probably the best. However, several times I nearly caused another accident by panicking and having to suddenly pull over.
It has now been eight months since the car accident. I have resumed a full Yoga practice and that has helped my body heal, strengthen and regain much depleted energy. Pranayama and Meditation have helped me to control the panic attacks and to breathe effectively again. Living with severe long term stress, I had developed very shallow breathing that had made my doctor think I was suffering from Asthma. I feel well again, I feel balance, I feel deeply connected to the spirit within and without and I feel a much deeper peace with the world.
Yoga definitely helped me regain this. Its gentle power has been a phenomenal healing force for me. Yoga is all about connection, balance, vitality, tranquility and inner strength. I can’t imagine anything that is a more magnificent source of healing power.
I am very grateful to the doctors and the medical system that I was involved with, it probably saved my life. That system though, is about intervention, medication, surgery, and operates on such a huge scale, that a holistic, personal healing journey needs to come from another place. Yoga was there for me, once I was again able to open myself to it, and it has provided me with the healing path that I so needed.
The wonder of Yoga to me is that pretty well no matter what stage you are at, or how deep your practice is, it nudges you gently in the direction you need to go. When only able to practice hesitant, tiny little movements, it was enough for my body to say YES.
Ever so slowly, ever so gently, Yoga opened me up and brought me back to a considerably more solid place. Those tiny stretches, those initial painful breaths, have now made way to deep stretches, full, deep breaths and I am now greatly enjoying Sarvangasana (Shoulder Stand) again, although I thought I never would.
Just as it did for me when I was an insecure teenager, or an insecure, frazzled new mother, or raw from complete physical and emotional chaos, the gentle thread of Yoga was there to catch me, and pull me up and restore me. It is a truly marvellous healer.
Sandra McGuire teaches Yoga in the Mabou, Nova Scotia, Canada area.
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