Here is the first of our Yoga Sol Stories.
This new feature will be a chance for you to tell your story to help inspire others who may be struggling or to give you a platform to feel pride and satisfaction in all your efforts and your achievements, not just in Yoga Asana but how Yoga has effected you as a person.
Sarah is our first ‘Solian’ to share her amazing story of regaining her health and managing chronic pain.
I first met Claire from Yogasol in April 2014. At the time I was 25 years old but the first time I met her I told her “I feel like a 25 year old stuck in the body of an 80 year old!”
I had been having health problems for more than 5 years. After a back injury, a neck injury, one surgery and being misdiagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and hashimoto’s Thyroiditis when I was 19, I was fed up with the medical system and the countless doctors who had failed to help me.
I had seen dozens of doctors and specialists who couldn’t offer me anything to improve my day to day quality of life. I spent a few years feeling totally disheartened that, despite my young age and all the time, energy and money that I had spent, I didn’t really have control over my health and I felt like rubbish every day.
My chiropractor recommended I try yoga and gave me Claire’s number. I was hesitant as I had been to one yoga class in a gym years earlier and I found it to be intimidating and hard.
Claire was the first person who really listened to my health problems and actually understood what was happening in my body. She told me she was going to teach me how to sit, stand and walk from scratch. I was surprised at the level of knowledge of anatomy that she had and she guided me to slowly and gently re-train the way I lived my life through yoga.
Three years later, I cannot even to begin to describe how different my life is thanks to yoga. While my health problems didn’t magically disappear, my day to day quality of life is so much better and I feel like my own age.
Through yoga I have the tools to manage my health in a gentle and loving way. I wake up every day feeling like, although my health and body are not perfect, that I can live my life to its fullest and I have control of my health.
The knock on benefits to my mental health, personal relationships, work performance and overall happiness have been bigger that the physical improvements.
It sounds cliché to say, but yoga truly did change my life.
My greatest yoga achievement has been earlier this year when I completed my first headstand. For someone who has had chronic back and neck problems and an RSI injury in both wrists, to stand
on my head was something I never thought would be possible!
