From www.pranaflownz.com, Kara Leah writes,
“I?m someone who?s life has been profoundly changed in every way because of yoga.
I remember walking into my first class when I was 20 years old – it was held on Auckland?s North Shore and was an Iyengar class. I?d had a spinal fusion four years prior and I was the stiffest person in the class by far. When we went into a standing forward bend, I was hunched over like an old woman, struggling to reach my knees. Yes – my knees!
I knew then that yoga was something I was meant to do, but it was another three or four years before I found my way to another class, this time in Whistler, Canada. Again, I pre-paid for a ten week course, this time an astanga-based class. I remember in our first or second class the teacher brought us into Virabhadrasana I and it touched something deep inside of me I wasn?t ready to face. I stopped right in the middle of the posture, and ran from the class, never going back to complete that course.
It took severe pain and some disheartening news about the state of my spine (degenerative disc disease!) from a doctor to send me back to yoga. When I re-started, I had intense sciatic pain down my right leg, half of my right foot was numb and I was walking with a limp.
Today, eight years later, I am pain free. I can finally sit in Dandasana with my legs flat on the ground and I have full sensation back in my right foot.
But yoga has touched me in many ways other than physical – it has taught me how to live life, and how to open my heart again. It has taught me to accept myself, and to accept others. Best of all, it has reminded me of the joy that is to be found in all moments of life. All we need to is stop, take a breath and then laugh at the absurdity of this human life.
As Twee Merrigan says, ?How can I hate traffic when I AM traffic??
So now, living in Wellington after many years overseas in Canada, I am combining my love of writing with my passion for yoga. My intention with this site, and with my life, is to share my passion for yoga with as many people as possible. Let?s get the whole world doing yoga – whatever type or style of yoga that might be.
Yoga to me means to connect, to unite. It means expanding and opening. So anything that we do that connects us to each other, that unites us as one, that expands and opens us outward? this is yoga”.
Kara-Leah teaches at at Configure Express Kilbirnie, and at Kelburn Rec Centre at Victoria University, in Wellington, New Zealand.
Visit her at her site and blog: www.pranaflownz.com