From Loss To Healing: How Yoga Changed My Body And Mind

My relationship with yoga is longer than the one I have with my husband James. I can still remember those initial heady days. The arrival of my first proper yoga mat. A “sticky” mat which I thought was genius! I couldn’t wait for class and went twice a week. I was a yoga sponge wanting to absorb and understand everything. I fell in love.

In those early days my relationship with yoga was very much a physical one. I’ve mentioned before how I would practice the postures I’d learnt in class at home and on holiday, trying to put sequences together.

My body shape changed. This was huge for me. I’d lived a very unhealthy life commuting to London where my only exercise was walking to and from the station.

This initial physicality continued until I fell pregnant for the first time. I can’t begin to tell you what that news meant.

In my twenties I had been told I was unlikely to get pregnant naturally. If I did it would be an ectopic pregnancy resulting in termination. Consequently, I was given an early scan. It confirmed I was pregnant and the foetus was in the right place – a miracle. We cracked the champagne open with our parents and started to make plans.

Not long after our world crumbled. We were told there was no heartbeat. After further scans I was advised to let nature take its course which took six weeks. It was like my body refused to let go of everything we had longed for. Eventually I miscarried at Christmas.

A year later I was pregnant again. That pregnancy ended in a successive Christmas miscarriage. Christmas thereafter became associated with grief rather than joy.

Three more miscarriages followed – five in total. I was completely broken. My body had failed me. It couldn’t do what it was meant to do. There was a sense of self-loathing. I felt pointless.

As a couple we were grieving not only the loss of our babies but the future we would have had as parents. We did our grieving in private due to the stigma around miscarriage.

It was an article in Om yoga magazine which saved me. I decided buying the magazine might help reconnect me with my practice and make me feel better about my body. One of the feature pieces was about “Yoga Girl” (Rachel Brathen) who taught paddleboard yoga in Aruba. It was accompanied by photos of clear blue seas and happy faces. I was sold. Luckily James indulged my whim. Aruba is a long way to go for a yoga class but I was completely captivated by “Yoga Girl” and was determined to practice with her.

As it was someone else took the class. Epic disappointment. I’m not great in the water and like to be able to put my foot on the bottom. Yet there I was doing three-legged dog on a paddleboard in my swimming costume. My body that had let me down so badly was there for everyone to see but no-one was looking. No-one cared other than me. I fell in a couple of times – I wasn’t the only one. Life felt fun!

That one yoga class, the focus of our whole trip, gave me something to look forward to and offered me hope. It was probably the first time I realised that yoga meant more to me than simply the physical practice.

Suppressing grief has been with me from an early age. When I was nine years old my mum died following a severe asthma attack. She was on a life support machine for a while until my Dad had to take the decision to switch it off. What happened wasn’t spoken about. She was rarely spoken about. I don’t know how I reacted other than I felt for years it was my fault.

More recently, as many of you know, I watched the woman who thankfully came into our lives and became my mum, my best friend, die. It felt like a double whammy, having lost a mum before. For the first time in my life I didn’t have to hide my grief. Nevertheless, I found myself once again feeling there was no way out of the darkness. If I’m honest it’s taken a long time to feel a whole lot lighter.

In the depths of my grief one of the only things I knew would help was to be with my yoga teacher Elaine back in Essex. She had always offered me a safe space. Sanctuary. Prior to her leg amputation, mum had been to one of Elaine’s sessions with me. The photo we took outside the yoga studio holding our mats is one of my favourites.

Returning to the studio I was greeted with warm hugs and beautiful flowers. Lying on the mat with my arms out to the sides it felt strongly like mum was there holding my hand. It felt real. Yoga was one of the many special connections I had with her. This class was not about the shapes my body would form and how they felt from a physical perspective. Rather the peace these postures and being in this space offered. It was a sense of homecoming.

As with any relationship, the one I have with yoga goes through ups and downs. The relationship has naturally shifted since I’ve become a yoga teacher. It comes with more strings attached. However, yoga appears to have a habit of reminding me just how strong our relationship is when I need it the most. I’m so grateful for what it brings to my life during good times and bad.