"Eight Years ago, I was involved in a sledding accident causing a whiplash injury. As minor as it seemed at first, it give me a life of chronic neck pain. It was debilitating at times
I went to regular massage therapists, weekly chiropractor visits, acupuncture. Eventually, I resigned myself to the fact that I would live like this forever. It didn’t help that my day job requires sitting in front of a computer all day. So between my desk sitting stiffness & whiplash injury, I was in for a lifetime of pain & therapy. Until I met yoga
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Yoga was not intended to help my neck pain. Initially just for fun & learning challenging poses. When I did my first wheel, I could barely lift my head off the mat & for that split second I held myself up, I was in excruciating pain. So naturally, I avoided any poses that caused pain. Yet somehow, I started noticing a positive difference with my neck
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To explore this healing practice further, I signed up for YTT. It was not an easy journey for me, but it was well worth all the growing pains: the biggest was to understand the difference between pain & discomfort. @laurie_levenstein (my teacher trainer) taught me that I needed to find the edge of my discomfort (wherever that might be for me) & learn to just be, to breathe through it. My first Yin class felt like one painful pose after another & I hated it. You had to breathe in a gravity intense pose for 7 minutes 😨! All I wanted to do is cry. Actually, I did later at home. But I kept coming back to my YTT for the sake of not quitting & eventually learned how to be comfortable in my discomfort (both physically & mentally). And with time, I also learned that my edge of discomfort can be used as my driving force to grow
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I can now say that I can do a wheel pose comfortably (see my #wheeleverywednesday challenge) . I can also say, I no longer need a massage therapist or chiropractor for my neck
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I know without doubt, yoga saved me from a life of chronic neck pain
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And it gave me so much more that I didn't even know I needed
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And for that, I am forever grateful 🙏❤
