After a life-altering trauma, the author sought healing beyond conventional medicine. What followed was a demanding inner transformation—integrating fractured parts, rebuilding self-worth, and shedding inherited identities. Through somatic work, intuitive guidance, and spiritual practice, she championed a personal relationship with God, cultivated self-reverence, and learned to forgive, quiet the ego, and live from Love.
When I first started doing yoga, I was nervous before most of the classes. I felt so timid, in fact, that I started saying quiet prayers before most classes—just simple asks that it be a good experience. Everything about it — from the niceness of the people (by and large, people appear to be on their best behavior in the atmosphere of a yoga studio), the bougie “spa-like” amenities, and just the idea of yoga as some “hippie shit” — was the antithesis of my usual surroundings. I was accustomed to environments that were highly competitive, cutthroat, Type A, alpha in nature. This was different, and I hadn’t developed any “armor” for how to navigate this scenario. As such, I showed up, 1,000%, like a fish out of water.
I stuck with the studio’s “Stability” offering, which was a set sequence of movements that remained the same from class to class. It was already weird enough that I was doing yoga, and I liked the comfort of knowing what was going to happen. What started as a crutch (a method of having some “control” over the situation) ended up working out really well: already knowing the routine allowed my brain (and body) to relax, making it easier to focus on what I was feeling. I didn’t have to be “on guard” against the next pose because I already knew what it was. It also allowed me to notice my own progress as well as the differences in how I felt and performed from class to class.
Even still, I remained guarded in all other aspects. I liked to place myself in the back of the class, by the wall, paying close attention to any movement that wasn’t in sync with the setlist of poses (the instructors floated around, and you never knew when they might offer an “assist”). We were often invited to close our eyes during poses — the idea being that you could focus more intensely on how you felt. I resisted this for quite some time… I wanted to see what was going on around me. I’d even leave them open during shavasana, the pinnacle meditative state at the end of practice.
Gradually, I started to feel comfortable and paid less attention to external stimuli and more to myself. I learned that if I remained calm, breathed through it, and found anchor points on which to focus my attention, nervous system activation could be managed. An unpleasant sensation was just one of many sensations that could be experienced simultaneously. I could choose whether or not I wanted to focus on the unpleasantness or on something else. I also learned that unpleasant sensations are transient; given time, we would move to another pose, and my experienced sensations would change.
As an aside, two books I found engaging regarding breath regulation:
- Breatheology: The Art of Conscious Breathing by Stig Åvall Severinsen
- Science of Breath: A Practical Guide by Swami Rama, Rudolph Ballentine, MD, and Alan Hymes, MD
I found that if I utilized Pilates-inspired visualizations, I was better able to hold poses. Take tree pose, for example: I would visualize a fence post being shot vertically through my body, into the ground. I found this made my standing leg stronger and more stable — an interesting correlation between how our thoughts manifest in our physical reality. I learned that I could directly and instantaneously affect my physical reality just by thinking a “strong” thought.
Incrementally, I learned to tolerate what I felt. Instead of being controlled by it, I could now step outside of myself, observe it, consider it objectively, and then make a conscious decision about how to respond (if a response was even necessary). Just as mindfulness meditation helped me step outside of my thoughts, yoga helped me step outside of my physical sensations (and emotions)… just because my heart rate was up and my breathing rapid didn’t mean anything was wrong. Sensations I had felt during periods of intense stress I could now associate with an atmosphere of acceptance and calmness. Yoga also helped me realize where I “hold” stresses in my body (such as clenching the shoulder muscles). Once I learned this, I could pay attention to how I experienced that area of my body throughout the day. I started to do the work of attaching physical responses to their underlying causes.
The instructors encouraged us to be forgiving of our bodies and ourselves when we didn’t perform a pose as well as we would have liked or as well as we did in a previous class. Our bodies and our experiences were different from day to day. You started to pay attention to what affects how your body feels and performs in all aspects of life… not just yoga. We were told to just allow for what was “showing up” during poses, notice it, and let it pass — reminding us that life is transitory, in a constant state of flux.
Over time, the studio felt “safe.” The staff learned my name and made a point of speaking to me. They took the program seriously, but they didn’t take themselves seriously. It was a playful atmosphere in which they made it safe for you to try, fail, and try again, encouraging you to “trust the process” and “let go of that which isn’t serving you.” They would encourage us not to look at ourselves in the mirrors and instead focus on how the poses made us feel. This was physical activity that was less about performance. Instead, it was more about self-exploration.
The physical changes were what appeared to be most prominent. I lost a considerable amount of weight, my posture improved, I developed baseline “whole-body” strength, and I felt more flexible and “sound” in my body. Simultaneously — and not intentionally — I started to change my diet and pay more attention to what I put in and on it. I quit smoking cigarettes effortlessly. I just woke up one day… not interested anymore. It was great! I found more joy in other activities because of this new freedom in physical movement.
More impressive, to my mind, than the physical improvements were the mental and spiritual ones:
- Improved self-awareness (which directly improves relationships with others)
- Improved self-esteem and self-confidence
- Developed a belief in my self-agency
- Increased capacity for patience
- Improved mental flexibility
- Improved resilience
- Established a growth mindset
- Became less judgmental
The results were empowering. Yoga encouraged me to recognize the “space” between thought/feeling and action. In that “space” was the opportunity to make an intentional choice. Rather than react, a response could be chosen. I found myself actively making different, better decisions, largely regarding my worldview. The mantra personal growth became a type of mental anchor for me. I’d realize where I might have an erroneous belief about a situation and then actively choose a different belief. The results were impressive. As Carl Jung put it, “It is not that something different is seen, but that one sees differently.”
That shift in perception opened the door to another. I let go of the dogma I was raised with. It had never fit, but I carried it anyway, thinking I had to. Over time, I saw how it fed shame, and I’d had enough. I wasn’t turning away from accountability—just from the belief that something was wrong with me at the core. That weight wasn’t mine, and letting it go was like dropping a heaviness I didn’t realize I had been carrying. I felt lighter. Brighter. I turned toward the shared truths echoed across traditions and chose to follow my own experience of God.
I believe I was able to complete this phase of individuation because I had cultivated a sense of inner strength and safety—nurtured not only by my yoga practice, but also by the supportive environment of my new home and workplace. That acceptance gave me the courage to trust myself.
I loved the way I felt after a yoga class. The body was flooded with feel-good hormones, and what stressed me out before class no longer seemed like a big deal afterward. On a day I went to yoga prior to work, my boss noted that I was way more chill than usual. I explained why, and he responded, “People are going to think you’re high.” Again and again, when I did yoga before work, co-workers would make comments about how different I seemed. One told me that my “personality came out more and more every day and [my] personality matched [my] smile.”
I began opening up with others. Pieces of my story started to come out of me, and it felt like a great relief. I had allowed myself to trust certain people, and it hadn’t come back to bite me. I had to acclimate to the new reality that my facial expressions actually gave me away now… I’d lost my poker face. I opened a social media account and switched out my flip phone for an iPhone — noteworthy, since I had sworn off both after my experience in the city.
Because of yoga, I had learned to work in partnership with my body. I learned to pay attention to it and could recognize when it was telling me it needed attention. Timidly, I began to think it was possible to trust the physical signals I was receiving. I became interested in intuition because I desperately wanted to be able to trust myself.
When I say intuition, I mean instinct—gut feelings; the ability to walk down a street and feel when you need to get out of there because something “isn’t right.” I also mean self-esteem—self-reverence: the quiet authority to trust what you feel. I had never developed this skill, as I had been too busy suppressing my genuine emotions. Combine this with the internal (and external) struggle to advocate for my sanity, and my internal compass was pinging all over the place.
Eventually, I had to sit myself down and have a talk. I asked myself, “If you can’t trust your own instincts, what have you got?” I decided to just “go with it.” If I ended up being crazy, so be it. I was done with the internal struggle… it was exhausting.
Around this time, the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk worked its way into my life. It was an absolute revelation, and it explained to me why yoga had been so beneficial. We’ll pick up here in the next posting.