Healing the Chasm Within

I've been practicing yoga for 35+ years now. In the beginning I wasn't consistent, but then it started to become my refuge. I loved how it made me feel and wanted more.

Over the past 16+ years as a teacher, I have shared many stories of how it has transformed me, including ones about how it has helped my digestion, stabilised and mobilised all of my joints, changed my cortisol and adrenaline levels, and completely changed my worldview.

Those achievements are notable and powerful, and definitely good reasons to commit to a practice. Looking back though, I think the real story is how yoga has healed the chasm within me. The chasm that tore through me from my experiences of trauma.

I don't often speak about my trauma stories, because there are people involved. People I love, and others not so much. But I do know that my story must be told, and I know it will help others.

The effect of trauma is huge. There are physiological effects on the nervous system, like my diagnosis of PTSD, meaning among other things, if I’m not careful, I can become hypervigilant and can get stuck into one of the stress response modes. And mental/emotional effects: periods of depression, low self esteem etc. There are plenty of other effects as well.

But for me, the biggest effect of trauma is my total abandonment of myself.

I stopped listening to my own voice and stopped trusting my own gut.

It didn’t feel safe to truly be me, so I hid myself and showed up as whoever would be accepted most, by whoever I was with at the time. This masking was exhausting as I often had to change several characters within one day.

I became my own enemy - Somewhere deep inside I thought I had let myself down by not protecting myself when I was younger, and I could feel that I was betraying myself every time I wore a different mask.

Over and over, I attracted the exact same characters into my life, who had harmed me in the first instance, because they were familiar and felt ‘right’, and so I got harmed again. I repeated further and deeper traumas, and it created a further and deeper chasm within me.

And this is the reason I now help people with trauma recovery. Because I have lived it. I have lived in despair. I have lived with the shame of knowing that I was the common denominator, and so, mustn’t there be something wrong with me? I have done time as a total recluse, unable to face social scenarios. I have suffered, deeply, on every level: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

The real story of what yoga has done for me is a love story. It’s a story of total transformation. It’s about how, through intention, practice and community, I became reunited with my self. With my soul.

It’s about how I gradually replaced my hypervigilance with curiosity and my negative thought patterns with optimism. It’s about how I learnt to take off my masks and walk with mana, showing up as my true self, and being ok with the knowing that others could take it or leave it. I gave myself space to experience whatever I was feeling: the good, the bad, the ugly - without shame. I started listening to the messages from my gut and my heart.

I learnt what it means to really love myself, through thought, word and action.

I was once called a ‘yogavangelist’ for being such a passionate proponent of this path for healing. I’m ok with that. I’m so passionate because I know the value. It’s because of yoga that I have healed the chasm and become whole again.