Listen to your body

You know all those aches and pains you deal with?  Well those are your body`s way of telling you that something isn`t right.  If we all really listened, our bodies would tell us what it needs. Take it from me, I know all about chronic pain.  I`ve suffered with chronic neck and shoulder pain for over 10 years.  I had tried acupunture to physical therapy including everything else in between.  Sure, these therapies helped temporarily but never more than a day.  If I had known then what I know now I might not have had it so bad.  My body kept trying to tell me I needed to make a change but I didn`t even know it was trying to communicate with me.  


I had the absolute worst posture sitting at work, my rear would be on the edge of the chair or one leg draped over the other throwing my entire body out of alignment.  Well, sitting out of alignment for 8 or more hours a day is of course going to wreak havoc on the body.  


It was 10 years ago this year that I first tried Yoga.  I enjoyed the class, continued going every week for the 10 weeks I signed up for, never really practiced at home nor did I even realize the benefits I was receiving.  Like I said, if I knew then what I know now I would not have suffered for so long.  

All I can say is Yoga has changed my life.  But it`s not something you can just do now and again.  You really need to be committed as it`s a lifestyle change.  I encourage you to start off with once a week for two months.  You can do this by attending a class somewhere or in the privacy of your own home, by online videos or even DVDs.  If you`ve tried once, twice or even thrice before I encourage you to try again.  


I tried on three different occasions.  The first was good, the second time was terrible and the third time was brutal.  The first time I tried was a 10 week session and it was only good because the teacher was nice but I didn`t get that what I was doing was so good for my body so therefore I didn`t stick with it after the sessions were over.  

The second time was a year or two later, this was only one class I attended which was at a gym.  I realized that the instructor was not an actual Yoga Teacher but an aerobics instructor who had probably taken some yoga herself and thought she was qualified to teach a class.  My friend and I just looked at each other knowing that this wasn`t Yoga whatsoever.  We couldn`t even walk out because we didn`t want to insult the woman that we would see daily at the gym. 

My third attempt was with an actual Yoga Teacher in fact he was the owner of the Yoga studio I went to however, it was a style of Yoga that to me seemed very bootcampish and I was turned off.  


Well, I am so thankful to my friend Alison as she is what got me back to another studio and I`m so glad she did.  One day at work she said she had been thinking about trying yoga and I said to her, `If you go, I will go with you.`  The two of us never actually made it to a class together because of our work schedules but we got a group of co-workers interested and I ended up going with them.  We had purchased an unlimited week pass, I was only able to go 5 times but absolutely loved it.  

They say in Yoga, `When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.` That`s exactly what happened to me.  My Dad had been telling me since the two car accidents that caused my chronic pain that I should try Yoga.  Which is why I tried it the first time, really just to shut him up.  He kept bugging me about it, which is why I tried again and again.  But it wasn`t until I realized that I had been living with this pain for almost 10 years and knew that if I didn`t do something about it I would live with it for the rest of my life.  So when Alison said she wanted to try it, I took that as a sign that I should give it another shot. I did, I fell in love with it and now I`ve been teaching for almost 3 years!  I finally found my calling in life. I knew I always wanted to be a Teacher, it just took me some time to figure out what kind.