FINDING MY WAY BACK INTO MY LIFE – THROUGH YOGA
As a child, I dreaded yoga. Growing up in the spiritual land of Nepal, yoga was everywhere- at school, at home on TV channels—all around, I had had enough of it. I got exposed with yoga all too well, without really knowing about yoga, though.
My life turned upside down one day when I suffered a stroke at the young age of sixteen. I was just a regular school-going kid And just like that, I found myself fighting for life in an intensive care unit. My life was dependent on a ventilator machine and some IV needles hooked into my skin. I was surrounded by suffocating oxygen masks and feeding tubes. – I had undergone three brain operations within the span of just two weeks. I could have died any moment.
Over the next two months I was stranded on my hospital bed without knowing what would happen next. Was there something better, something bigger waiting for me at the other end of the roadI was finally out of hospital gowns, but I still had to take a lengthy list with me- a long list of lifelong medicines, and of lifelong chronic conditions- the left side of my body still half-paralysed, distorted speech, and a dragging foot.
I then tried all means of conventional therapies, mostly, to little or no avail.
Until one day, I decided to reconnect with my childhood acquaintance- Yoga.
In my first yoga class? I was the worst student.
People way older than me could perform better– in endurance, strength as well as balance.
I was only sixteen and still struggling to sit with folded legs without pain!
Call it faith, or the Divine’s plan for your life, I did show up in the class the next day.
Then the day after,
and after again.
This acquaintance was now my new bestfriend.
As long as I stepped on my mat every day, I was perfectly okay in my body, at times I even forgot that I had a stroke.
I was mentally, spiritually and physically healthy again. I found home in my own body. I found myself again.
. But that isn’t where the story ends. It’s where it rather starts.
Surviving the stroke wasn’t just enough. In addition to a brain injury, years later, I am again faced by a spinal cord injury—a neurological disease called syringomyelia in which nerve damage is caused due to cysts in the spine.
This has given me a walking disability and everyday mobility is extremely difficult.
After the spinal injury, I was forced to question my entire existance, and the second chance that God provided me after the stroke.
Doctors questioned my profession as a yoga teacher. Nurses thought that I was delusional.
Even you would not belive that I teach yoga– if you were to see me just from the outside, walking with a cane and my leg braces, or on my mobility wheelchair.
Yes, I am at times on a WHEELCHAIR, but I teach yoga.
Because yoga is universal. Its teachings donot discriminate people based on age, religion, or body type and ability.
Yes, I am disabled and I may have a limited mobility, but my practice — and my teaching — is limitless.
Yoga had taught me the value of consistency. It made discipline a necessity and perseverance a habit, therefore I couldn’t have given up.
The brain injury back then, and the spinal cord injury now—I cannot judge which one was worse. One shook my mind and the other weakened my body.
But Yoga? It gave me the guts to start again.
So let me show you what it means to be at home in your body.
Allow me to guide you through your breath and your body.
Because till this day, I am reminded of what my surgeon said as he discharged me from that hospital ,
“It’s a miracle that she survived. God must have set a purpose for her.”
With my yoga teaching, I am rightfully set on that PURPOSE.