|
The novelty always wore off and the weight piled on and on over the years from the usual bad eating habits, an under-active thyroid and antidepressants which seemed to affect me the worst out of the lot, piling on the pounds despite my diet staying the same. However it was in 2002 at a weight of 13 stone (I’m 5’2), my heaviest, that I really needed to do something about it. I saw an advert on the TV for a yoga DVD that said you only had to do 10 minutes a day and I just thought even I can do that! So I bought the DVD and started doing ten minutes a day at first, then thirty, until I could work up to the whole eighty minutes. Within a week of doing just ten minutes, I had lost four pounds and I hadn’t really changed my diet or anything at that time so thought it could only be the yoga. From then I was hooked, even doing it sometimes twice a day! Slowly I felt my tastes and attitude towards food were changing, and I only seemed to want or crave “naughty” foods at the weekend and in smaller amounts. The rest of the time I just didn’t want that kind of food. After a year and half of doing yoga DVDs and self-teaching, I was 6 stone lighter and feeling better than I ever had. I was eating healthier, although still had my weekend naughties! I even started teaching it to my partner as he saw the obvious benefits it had given me and was into it much more than I thought he would be, and both of us started practicing together and studying its history and philosophy. All was going so well when I was suddenly struck out of the blue by the devastating news that my partner of nine years had committed suicide. What can be said about this? There are no words to describe how this feels. Your mind cannot comprehend it in the slightest, that my partner didn’t die naturally or by accident, but chose to. I was so numb and at first yoga was nowhere in my mind, except for trying to sit and empty my mind of the whirring bustle of emotions and thoughts that kept invading. After what I believe was about a week, (although everything seemed to be going in slow motion), I felt a longing to do yoga, if only a little. I suddenly felt this strange sense of strength in me that even to this day, I don’t know where it came from or why, but things I previously felt unconfident in regards to were no longer an issue. Slowly, little by little, yoga crept back in and it helped. It helped calm the myriad of questions and emotions I had swimming aimlessly in my head, and it calmed my breathing when anxious and tired from crying and I felt I still had to do it for him, so therefore there was a focus, a focus I so desperately needed at that time. It took nearly three years to get through it. I wouldn’t say get over it as I don’t think you ever get over it, but you learn to live with and except it and realise it was that person’s choice, not mine. My life had to go on. Hence to say there have been other situations since then that have tested me. As in everyone, life and yoga has been there for me through them, even if I wasn’t able to concentrate fully on it, I could still do a little when I needed, I could study its philosophy, I could still learn. That is what’s so rich about yoga; there is always something new to learn.
And it was this that then led me on to wanting to teach others yoga, but I also wanted to counsel other people that had been through what I had.
|