How yoga has helped me navigate change
When the path ahead is unclear, yoga can help you navigate the uncertainty
I’ve been practising yoga for over 25 years and now yoga is one of the most important guides for how I live my life, particularly when I’ve faced and managed change.
Discovering yoga while pregnant
Becoming a parent at the age of 30 was by far the biggest change challenge I’d ever faced in my life. Thankfully, my yoga journey started in 1999 when I was pregnant with my first child. I joined a class at the local gym and was instantly hooked. While I loved being able to stretch and move into fascinating shapes that I never thought I could achieve, what really intrigued me was the sense of peace and calm that washed over me, even though some of the practices and poses were challenging.
Once I had my second child and my corporate career evolved, yoga started to help me actually manage my life. I was becoming more committed to finding time to roll out my mat.
How yoga helped with my divorce
When I separated from my kids’ dad in 2008, I went through a rollercoaster of emotions. And yet, it was probably the first time in my life where I knew with absolute certainty that the path ahead would be worth the pain.
Here’s what I learned about myself going through a divorce and having yoga as my foundation through that change…
You don’t know how things are going to turn out in the end ... until you get to the end. And actually, there is no end. I found that yoga, and particularly breathwork, helped me deal with the uncertainty of change. When one issue was resolved, another issue would arise. At each juncture, I would feel tired or sad or just overwhelmed. But then I’d take myself off to a yoga class where I could find the space and time to reconnect and anchor back to discover the path to take that felt true and right for me and the kids.
Dealing with the ‘little things’ during the divorce was surprisingly difficult, like scheduling the kids’ activities and visits and school runs, or navigating the emotional turmoil of managing relationships. The little things added up. Yoga helped me stay centred and grounded.
Learning to remember to breathe was key. Through it all, you just have to keep breathing. Then, later, you’ll realise that divorce forces you to change, to stretch, to grow. It’s not pleasant, but once you go through it, you are not the same. You become more you. Change driven by divorce is inevitable, and yoga can be a guiding light through the whole process.
Becoming a yoga retreat junkie
In the spring of 2013 I attended my first yoga retreat. I only knew one person who was attending, and I hadn’t practised with any of the teachers before. I was so nervous that on the first night when we sat around the fire and introduced ourselves, I was utterly tongue-tied. We spent four days in a log cabin in remote bushland on the NSW south coast, near the banks of a wide and slow-running river. Alongside dedicated women I discovered seasonal yoga practices and learnt more about ancient yoga philosophies, which led to a deeper spiritual awareness. What an amazing, mind-blowing weekend that was. I had finally found my thing! My tribe! My passion!
After that, my yoga journey ramped up. I continued to practice different styles of yoga, including Iyengar, Ashtanga, Restorative and Yin classes. I attended as many yoga retreats as possible, including returning to that retreat in the bush by the river. As I immersed myself in the practices and wisdom of yoga I could experience how it was helping me navigate life’s constant challenges.
Facing a health crisis
For about five months in 2015 I was experiencing strange and increasingly severe symptoms. I finally started undergoing a slew of tests to find the cause. That September I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. (You can read more about my MS diagnosis here.) After that life-changing news, I changed. Heaps! Not just my lifestyle, or my diet, or my shoes (no more high heels!). It changed my whole perspective on life.
Yoga became a key element of my recovery and my ongoing management of the disease.
Changing my career
In 2016 my yoga teacher from that first retreat, who had become a wonderful and supportive friend, planted a seed by encouraging me to do a yoga teacher training course. I came up with all kinds of excuses and reasons not to go ahead. Talk about impostor syndrome! Yoga had helped me in so many ways, and yet I hesitated.
Five years later I left corporate life. Strangely, the global pandemic offered a silver lining, allowing me to reassess my priorities and recalibrate. It gave me the space and the impetus to create the life I felt I was being drawn to. Such a huge career disruption helped to highlight and unravel other aspects of my life. Safety, structure, certainty - it was all up for grabs.
Adjusting to a new way of working brought up confronting realisations about how deeply my sense of self was intertwined with my work identity, and how my concerns around financial security were making me feel trapped in the corporate hamster wheel.
The pull towards a new way of being in the world grew stronger.
Becoming a yoga teacher
Eventually, I took the leap and immersed myself in an incredible 12 months of yoga studies and teacher training. Navigating away from the corporate world towards the unknown was hard and scary.
And yet all the while, there was yoga. The practice, the teachings, the wisdom.
What an incredible gift yoga has been throughout so many changes in my life.