“Dis-ease essentially means you are not at ease. When your body does not know how to rest, the energies become chaotic.”
– Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
Anyone who came to hear about my upcoming training seemed fascinated and curious about the program. “keep in touch!”, ” share pictures!”, ” OMG! I want to do it!”, ” What do you get to do?”, ” What kind of a place is it?”, and so on so forth, they posed numerous questions. To quench their curiosity and to feel the presence and support of my family and friends as I go through this journey I decided to invest my time and efforts into this blog.
My life changed drastically in 2009. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. I was 41 years old. Dermatomyositis is what the doctors called it. For three years prior to the diagnose my days were mired with erratic symptoms, tedious visits to various doctors completely lost on a journey to find an answer to all my ailments. I remained clueless that something was seriously wrong with me and something was way off and my health was actually deteriorating, in ways that I could not fathom at that point. Looking back I am appalled at my total lack of awareness and mindful existence.
Months after I was diagnosed, after a skin biopsy, in 2009, I still resisted treatment as I was uneasy with the thought of being on steroids for the rest of my life like the doctors had suggested. The disease progressed rapidly and literally brought me down to my knees. Muscle atrophy was making my day to day living tedious. Muscles were so weak that I would fall down due to lack of balance and be unable to pick myself up until my husband came to my rescue. I would take 30 minutes to slice half an onion and would be so exhausted by the effort I would rest on the couch and find myself waking up from a dead sleep after many hours. Severe rashes, hot, itchy and angry red, made it impossible for me to wear regular clothing and I would drape myself in a wet thin towel to get some temporary relief.
I finally decided to go in for the dreaded steroids.
It was a miracle!. Prednisone and Methotrexate my two steroid friends made me feel well almost instantly. The miracles of modern day medicines should definitely be appreciated and praised. The steroids completely cleared my symptoms of muscle fatigue, skin rashes and I was feeling immense relief and reveling in the joys of day to day mundane chores! I mean it! I was so happy to be able to do my laundry, cook, clean, walk, brush my teeth, dress….clearly, my perspective of life had changed. I was aware of the shift in my energies, conscious thoughts and actions.
Unfortunately, my euphoria was short lived. Steroids helped me to get rid of my nasty DM symptoms but they were a bane for the long term. The initial feel-good weeks morphed into a strange sense of dullness, weight gain and severe identity crisis of sorts!. Seriously! I could not recognize myself in the mirror! My hideous reddish blue purple rash was gone! Instead, now I was pale as a gecko with chipmunk cheeks and heavy with an extra 35 pounds! I looked like a stranger.
As my dear Kinesiologist friend Sanda mentioned many years later ” When one goes through trauma in life you are in a state to access tremendous spiritual growth.”….(something to that effect!)
Yoga kept me sane during these months. I practiced my own sequence albeit very slowly. Six months after I had been on my high dose steroid treatment I received a profound gift in the form of Sanda.
My first experience with yoga began in 2001 on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. My family and I had the opportunity of our lifetime to move to the Garden Island, in 2001 for a period of 4 years. My husband and I were the students of one of the best yoga teacher, Joy Antonia (Joy’s website). My children were very young, at that time, a four-year-old and one year old. I knew at that time that I liked Joy as a person and I felt very comfortable taking private yoga lessons from her. She would arrive at our home at 6 am every morning, on time, with a smile and a beautiful open energy of love and calmness. There were mornings when I could not drag myself out of bed on time for my class, due to lack of sleep, a gift of having young ones who would not sleep through the night! On those mornings Joy would patiently wait on our porch until I was ready and would even carry my very young sleepy-eyed child while the other one sat around sucking her thumb, quietly watching me do yoga. What I did not realize at that time was that Joy was a beautiful spirit perfect to teach yoga. I am grateful that she taught me so well and safely without pushing me to go beyond my level of comfort. She fine-tuned the sequence to suit my level of flexibility and ability, so at the end of each class, I was left with a feeling of quiet accomplishment! That feeling motivated me to take her classes for a long period of time. Her instructions and cues have stayed with me all these years and it saw me through my time of illness. I hear she teaches Yin Yoga practice on Kauai. I cannot think of a better teacher suited to teach such a restorative, healing and loving practice.