This is a particularly personal article for me. A story I have been hesitant to share publicly for several reasons ranging from anger, humiliation, fear of judgement for divulging what is meant to be private to sheer avoidance. As each year passes I find more reasons to share my story than not, closing in on a decade later, those reasons now far outweigh the self-doubt and need to keep it to myself. As the number of both yoga practitioners and teachers increase across the globe, I believe my experience can be a vital lesson for both.

Don’t be mistaken, this is not s story of sadness or pity. This is a story for everyone that has doubted their journey, fallen on their path or come across multiple bumps in the road, be it yoga or otherwise. Questioning your journey makes part of the journey itself. It’s taken me 7 long years to put this article together because it required me to have to face it, to think about it and worse of all admit to myself it happened.

Finding Your Teacher takes alot of Determination… and maybe abit of Karma

18 years ago, after graduating from university, whilst in my very first job selling Viagra to hospitals and a breakup from an outrageously unhealthy relationship, I started yoga by buying my first flip book and taught myself almost half of the Ashtanga Primary series on my bedroom floor. That is, up until some mad and seemingly impossible posture called Marichasana D. Which was when I decided to seek out an Ashtanga class.

It wasn’t easy finding an Ashtanga class back in those days, there were no traditional Ashtanga Mysore style classes in my country, and I ended up being in an ‘Ashtanga-inspired’ class of only 2 students for awhile until the teacher decided to call it quits and open a cafe instead. I had no interest to learn another form of yoga, the draw to replace my time partying and backpacking, was far greater than continuing the frustrating search to learn Ashtanga.

However, life had other plans and the joke was on me. The universe, or maybe a past life samskara*, never allowed the call Ashtanga to die. Instead, 5 years after that flip book, it hit me even harder, and it led me to all corners of the globe to seek a teacher.

I experimented with classes, workshops, intensives, adjustment clinics, practiced with a handful of certified teachers in attempt to get connected to the most authentic teachings. It kept me busy, but it got me nowhere, I was nowhere deeper in my understanding of Ashtanga as I was when I was on my bedroom floor with a flip book.

Don’t get me wrong, I gained some factual knowledge here and there, learned mantras, where my serratus anterior was, and eventually passed a posture or two I was struggling with and gained extra mind stuff. I had no understanding why I was doing it, what the practice of postures was for, nor what changes the practice of Ashtanga was capable of bringing to my life. Afterall, valuable experience cannot come from a weekend, or a month, with anybody on any topic, and I never stayed long enough or devoted my learning with any of these teachers. I kept scratching the surface again and again, and it all felt so superficial.

After a 8 year search, I found a teacher. How did I know? I paid attention and surrendered to every instruction and advice given, I felt he knew me better than I knew myself, and he didn’t even need to know my name, or where I came from or any self imposed descriptions we place on ourselves.

Recognising that I found a teacher meant I had the privilege to finally experience daily practice with one person. I didn’t have to fight for myself anymore, I felt could finally put my learning and journey in his hands to look after, what a relief. It took me so long to get here I wasn’t going to waste this opportunity, I wanted to absorb everything he had to teach no matter what format it came in, because only through quiet experience we can gain existential knowledge. This clarity and conviction of whom to learn from dissolved the desire to experiment with others. Attending classes or workshops of other people begun to seem irrelevant and only created unnecessary confusion.

LESSON #1 Having a teacher is important, having one teacher is vital.

We are not meant to leave our learning entirely to our own accord, it would be hard to remain humble & there’s unlikely spiritual growth without practicing faith & surrender. Finding one is a journey on its own and not meant to be easy, because everything of value isn’t. Once you have a teacher and a shala that your practice can call home, you will finally have the strength to be accepting and confidence to be respectful of any differences wherever you go.

Shit Happens

Then in April of 2012, 7 years to this month, in what roughly took a second and sounded like a biscuit breaking loudly, I was inflicted with a spinal injury while supporting a new Ashtanga program on a visit back home from India. It involved being in a backbend called kapotasana, you can either walk your hands on the floor or if you are extremely flexible and strong in your legs and glutes, grab your ankles from the air directly. I would always walk on the floor but consistently grabbed my ankles from the first time I tried it. The person holding space, had decided, or rather without thought or warning, strongly pulled my one of my hanging hands in from the air to place them directly where he wanted them to be, while tightly securing in my knees, and basically created a pressure cooker environment, where the only place that could create some give, if your body was not able to withstand such a strong and abrupt force, was the middle point of the position…. this breaking point was my spine.

The ridiculousness of it was, it was a posture that I have been able to do since the day it was added to my practice, there was no need for it. I didn’t become a better yogi or more advanced practitioner, I certainly didn’t get any closer to reducing the fluctuations of my mind (one of the definitions to the purpose of yoga). I’m pretty sure the act was of no gain to the teacher or studio in which it happened either. There was no explanation during the process of what I should be paying attention to or work on, there was no instruction to help better understand the posture, there was no teaching. There was simply no point.

The next few months left me unable to inhale without pain. I winced to roll out of the bed. It took me 5 months to retrain a simple moment called Sun Salutation A. It took an hour a day to do 5 of them followed by lying on an ice pack along my spine for another 20mins, before reluctantly entering a room to teach for the first time. As you can imagine, directly out of an incident like that, I was absolutely against strong adjustments in a yoga class, possibly even more than I needed to be, fresh out of an adjustment gone wrong.

Eventually I went to a chiropractic and physiotherapy clinic to have an X-ray to find that my throracic vertebrae had dislocated and the deeper muscles and tendons attached was torn. It was shocking, but I remained positive, and decided I will do everything takes to heal and get back to normal life and practice. I told myself, injuries happen, it’s an occupational hazard, it was not like it was intentional afterall. I did my duty to politely inform the teacher of his mistake and was met with a blank stare. I was upset, but not angry, afterall I believed it was something that would heal.

Little that I know at the time, it would lead to 7 years of dealing with pain and something I have come to accept will require me to manage daily for the rest of my life. Each year that I suffered the frustration, sadness and anger grew. Eventually, I discovered in an MRI, a herniated disc in the lower back completed the other end of this break.

MRI 1 in 2014. Posterocentral herniation with annulus tear indenting thecae sac & nerve roots. There’s no pain like nerve pain!

It was all too much to take, physically, mentally, emotionally.

Driving blind through unexpected turns

In the 5 years that followed the injury, I had to relearn how to lean forward, turn and arch my spine more than 20 times. Every time I had a back spasm it led to the retraining of that same basic sun salutation movement again and again. It was mentally exhausting to need complete attention to every vertebra and muscle groups in order to make the most basic movements. Every time my hands couldn’t pass my knees I would end up in tears on the mat before I even started. I must have cried on the mat in pain or frustration or both several hundred times by now. Every now and then there would be steady growth of recovery and I would get a glimpse of regaining the practice as it had been in the earlier pain-free days, a light at the end of the tunnel, just before an unpredictable spasm will set me back unable to walk again for days. I didn’t even know at one point if the spasm was purely physical or the body’s automatic response to protect it from further trauma. My physical capability swung from one day to another, I never knew what I was able to do each time I stepped on the mat. The inconsistency drove me nuts, it felt like I was hitting my head against the wall. I threw myself even deeper to my yoga philosophy studies, it kept me going, knowledge would be my stability, intellect thankfully doesn’t swing in its capability and nor let me down as my physical body had. Books gave me a wider perspective to the practice on the days I couldn’t move. It is one of the main reasons I am still here, practicing and teaching, because without the philosophy, yoga would have only meant physical movement, and once I was robbed of it, which we all will be one day in our later years, it would mean nothing anymore, I would have given up. The study of yoga philosophy gave me a in-depth understanding that it was so much more to that, I begun to see my asana may have been compromised, but not my yoga.

“It is one of the main reasons I am still here, practicing and teaching, because without the philosophy, yoga would have only meant physical movement, and once I was robbed of it, which we all will be one day in our later years, it would mean nothing anymore, I would have given up.”

LESSON #2 Its not enough to just say asana is only 1 limb.

Have you ever thought when you don’t have asana how are you going to be still an Ashtanga practitioner? If it wasn’t for yoga philosophy I would have given it all up, because yoga was only asana to me, and now that it was gone, I would had no to reason to stay. Go and read now, find out why are you on the mat, if you have any intention of longevity in this practice.

The holistic learning of yoga is essential as a lifelong practitioner. The value of knowledge and wider perspective to understating its purpose will be your platform when the walls crumble, we age or the unexpected happens.

“Educate yourself, fill yourself with knowledge, because that is the one thing nobody can ever take away from you”

— My Mother. Thanks mom, it is one of the many important lessons I will carry with me forever.

Tens of thousands of dollars was spent of osteopaths, physiotherapists and chiropractors for many different therapies each year ranging from spinal decompression table therapy, lasers to facilitate ligament healing, ultrasounds to reduce inflammation, massages to break scar tissue from muscle tears, adjustments to realign the body, letting blood with needles from the lower back, Bowen therapy, Rolfing, acupuncture and even acupuncture with electrolysis. Most gave temporary relief. None removed a problem I so desperately wanted to disappear.

[Personal definition of an adjustment in Ashtanga class: a physical assistance which may include anything from verbal advice, a simple tap to bring awareness to an area in the body, taking control of a student’s body with the intention to support its movement to its limit that particular day or any combination of these. The purpose of an adjustment is to either safely support a student in their movement or teach a student how to use their body in a particular posture by indicating where they should engage and relax simultaneously. An adjustment is not placing a body into what you think an accomplished posture looks like, placing a student consistently in postures, is not only a recipe for injury, but also means that either the student is not yet capable and ready, especially if they require someone to do it for them daily, or the student will never have the space to learn how to use their body. When one is struggling in their practice it’s the place where most growth can happen. If a teacher has no patience to see their students struggle, the students in the room will never have the patience to experience yoga. This style of teaching is mindless, like factory work, students are on a conveyor belt being packaged in the same way, everyday.]

LESSON #3 Learn the difference between someone moving your body to teach you how to move vs showing you how deep they can position your body.

Stay with your teacher long enough consistently for months or years, so they will know your body’s physical limits well enough to know if you truly are with injury or fear. If you are a teacher, touching a body for the first time, ALWAYS be on the safe side, never have the need to prove yourself, because it can be detrimental and NEVER worth the risk.

I struggled to practice and reason to teach, I struggled to find a voice about it all. Worst of all I struggled to let go of the question .. ‘Why me?’

One day in the middle of weekend away, the universe couldn’t have sent a bigger hug, out of nowhere, I bump unexpectedly into my yoga teacher in a foreign land to us both. We had a quick coffee, spoke of everything except yoga, until he asked ‘how is your back?’. My response was, ‘Im trying, but sometimes I cant even do a sun salutation without pain’. Unlike me, he’s not a man of many words and his simple response hung over me for many nights after that… ‘why dont you do something else?’

WHAT?????

It was so uncomplicated. And yet I drove myself crazy trying to understand what he meant, before swiftly moving on to other things like the weather. A true teacher lets you ponder and discover knowledge yourself, no spoon feeding was to be had. We want so desperately in this day and age for others to take away our problems and get angry if they don’t give us the formula. I wondered if it meant to quit yoga, I had just opened a school, should I shut that down? Does it mean do another sequence of postures? Let go of physical activities all together? I went nuts. Then my mind quietened and the extremes were removed from the equation.

I slowed down on the therapies, instead of letting go of practice I changed what practice meant to me, I decided to use the yoga to heal instead, it was cheaper too. I went back to the source, focused on what was being asked in basic movements. Let go of what it meant to have an Ashtanga practice, rearranged my sequence, took out things that were aggravating an inciting pain, added rehabilitative ones, learned a couple back therapy exercises from my teacher and spoke to some very supportive friends in the community. I turned my struggle into compassion to to students with injury or health conditions, instead of quitting teaching, I used all the lessons and experience in retraining of the body to safely bring Ashtanga to students with just as much or even more compromised movement than I.

I spent more than half a decade fighting to get the chance to move daily without pain, gaining new and exciting postures for progression was the furthest thing from my mind. You can’t think about buying a Ferrari if your fridge is empty. The smart approach to Ashtanga as therapy worked. For the first time in 5 years since the incident, I arrived in India, capable of everything I had done before the injury. It took double the time now, but I felt it was a miracle to be where I was after everything I had done to get there. “This was it!” I thought, 2017, the year where finally my annual birthday wish is going to come true… ‘please let this be the year I get to practice without pain’. I made it. I had learnt so much about the practice on both a physical and philosophical level, gained so much insight to my own body and movement, overcome some heavy mental and emotional hurdles.

It lasted a month.

Hell No

Half way into my trip, an assistant in the room did exactly the same thing. The only difference was:

1. Instead of on my knees, I was standing.

2. I had told her the day before that I had been dealing with a back issue for several years and to please be gentle and cautious. I even shook my head at her moments before to please not try and catch my legs with my hands, not out of unnecessary fear, but as a legit request, from a body she had no experience with and was not her student.

She didn’t listen, her ego got the better of her, just as it had with the first time around. As I stood on my legs with my back arched, and proceeded with my hands towards the floor behind me, she grabs the same right hand, pulls it in, despite all the wrong physical signs I was giving, ankles high up, legs widening into a split, elbows out, and grabbing the inside of my ankle instead of the outer ankle as intended, but mostly ignoring I had told her I had a back issue.

I said nothing, she looked at me and said “You don’t know how to receive a backbend adjustment, your elbows are all wrong” followed by “lets do that again”.

I looked at her and plainly said ‘no thank you’.

I couldn’t walk the rest of that day and the 3 days after, I couldn’t do any of my practice for the remainder month of the trip. I probably would have cried again too if I had the strength to pick my jaw from the floor. The same assistant who hovered over my mat daily as a safe zone for herself, now busied herself when it was time for my assistance because she knew.

Just before I flew out, I did another MRI, and it said the same place where I had a herniated disc was now herniated in 2 locations on the same disc.

The-nile isn’t just a river

It turned everything upside down, and I begun to question everything. I may have left India that trip happily newly engaged, but I also left angry. I was upset at everyone and everything, the practice, the assistant for the blatant violation, my teacher for not protecting me, the wasted years I spent on a practice to only again be hurt by it, I doubted the path, again wondered if I should continue practising or teaching and worst of all I was so angry at myself, because first time shame on you, but 2nd time shame on me, how could I let this happen again?

MRI 2 in 2017. Now with para central annual disc bulge causing bilateral foramina narrowing & abutting bilateral traversing S1 nerve roots, in addition to previous posterocentral herniation.

LESSON #4 There is infinite wisdom in ancient practices.

LESSON #5 Everybody journey is different,

there is no better or worse experience, there is only our personal journeys to navigate through. Understanding this makes judgement a waste of time and energy,

I went home, I had a shala, students to look after, I felt like hypocrite teaching, and worse the teaching was a further strain on the back. I refused to get on the mat, I refused to spend more money on therapies, my ever so supportive newly minted fiancee told me, ‘hey just throw yourself into organising the wedding, distract yourself!’ Avoidance only works for a couple of months, it doesn’t come naturally to me, I rather solve problems and plough ahead. This time I couldn’t, how could I? I didn’t know where to start. I felt like I had already tried every approach, but mostly, I felt like I didn’t have the energy to fight any more, physically and emotionally. I used it all up the past 5 years. Gave it everything I had and I didn’t want to do it again. I was so angry and upset the only way I dealt with it was to ignore, distract myself.

Violation comes with trauma, both physical, mental and emotional. Each one of these struggles takes a lot of time to overcome, we cannot let hate consume us for too long, because we will be hurting ourselves even more than those that hurt us.

LESSON #6 Only when we are angry we expect apologies…

they do nothing, they cannot reverse the past, they cannot or undo pain or give you peace, only you can do that. Why give your violator the control of your state of mind? I never got an apology from either situations, and I thought it was why I didn’t get closure. I was wrong. Find the strength to get it on your own. Nothing good can come from our ego’s demanding action. Forgive and learn to make the best decisions for yourself for the present day. That is how we move on and set ourselves free.

Once I had to strength to regain my determination to heal, I decided no more therapies this time around, I will consult and discuss with professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds about safe body movement and mechanics, and do the hard work required to rebuild my own body movement. I spent a year training with a functional movement trainer, took some pole dancing classes to remind myself that moving could be fun and bring happiness regardless of your range of movement, worked one-on-one with a pilates instructor to see their views on both isolated and complete movement control, consulted an adult gymnastics strength coach about minimal strength required to safely approach difficult actions, even took private sessions in Muay Thai to feel strong again and learn their take on training for injured professional fighters and worked with a sport physiotherapist to gain even more knowledge and perspective on movement dynamics. I stayed away from the yoga mat the entire time. It was something I was not ready to face emotionally.

The craziest thing was, after a year of intense body moment study and experimentation, I started to find links and learnt that it was all very similar. The practice of Ashtanga Yoga even though formulated based on scripture from thousands of years ago, contained the exact same approach and philosophy of all movement systems present today. It was astounding. Absolutely mind blowing. Akin to travelling the world and experiencing all the different cultures to find we are all the same internally, that across the globe have more incommon and are united in more ways than we realise.

For example, I have repeatedly heard my teacher say “The reason bandhas are not mentioned in the 3 elements that constitute asana practice, is because it should be engaged all the time. The slogan for TRX is “all core all the time”. I begun to put the pieces of the puzzle together and was shocked to find everything ‘new’ based in the ‘latest’ science research, was alley existent in the Ashtanga practice. Maybe just with difference terminology, bandhas is the old way to tell you to engage your transverse adominis, your functional core during movement. There are a million more examples, but basically, in stepping away from the practice, I came back to it with an explosion of deeper understanding and respect for the system of Ashtanga Yoga.

“Why don’t you try something else?” He had said. Coincidence? Fate? Intution? Guru Super Powers? What ever it was it was Madness.

Home practice. Surrounded by those you trust = therapy.

I now only practice at home and allow 2 people to move my body during my practice, my yoga teacher and my husband. I have personally made the decision that until the day comes again that I allow others to adjust me, there is no need for me to be in the class or shala of others. It is not their fault and there is no need for me to disrespect their work by showing up to their sacred space only to ask them not to touch me. This is how I intend to end the cycle of ego and anger. I will not allow the ego from others put onto me be passed on thru my actions to others.

2019 is the year that not only marks the 7th year since a pivotal moment in my lifespan of practicing yoga, but also the year that now I have officially spent more years working with injury than without. I have lost about 30% of mobility in all directions of my spine than when I first started yoga, but I have finally found myself blessed that I am able to still move and breathe everyday. I won’t be making the same birthday wishes anymore. I won’t be exposing my body to anyone that hasn’t seen me practising daily. I have learnt to now have a backbone in my life, and the art of saying no politely, funny how it took an injured spine to learn to stand up for myself.

The 3 purposes for this article

TO YOGA PRACTITIONERS: I want you to know that are places & teachers that dont hurt you, it is not ok to be consistently with injury from the practice, either your teacher is not paying attention to your limits & hurting you or your teacher is not paying attention to you hurting yourself, or aware if you may have unhealthy habits of movement. Teachers should know when to be supportive & how to balance their approach to help you overcome fears & teach you awareness in your body.
TO YOGA TEACHERS: I want teachers to look at their egos, ask themselves every time they move a student what is their intention & purpose. Force should never be an option, learn to customise adjustments and intensity as not all bodies can take the same force. Just because we took on the role of teachers, it shouldn’t mean we have all the final answers & stop growing in our journey.
TO EVERYONE THAT HAS WALKED AWAY: If you have been struggling, thinking of quitting, already quit or ever said “Yoga hurt me”, I want you to realise that the practice of AshtangaYoga is healing and therapeutic, that it is not the practice that injures it is either the ego of the student or teacher that injures. So I want you to not give up & let go of anger if you have been wronged or violated. Don’t let the past events define you and worse than that don’t let the mistakes of others rob you of the beauty Ashtanga yoga can bring to your life. Working thru trauma, building belief & trust, keep going and help others with compassion. If I can see it after everything, I know you can too. Find a teacher that suits you or practice in your home.

LESSON #7 A lot of people opened up to me about being hurt,

there seemed to be a massive correlation between the teachers known to injure students and they way they practice. Not all the time but often they are practitioners that are very forceful to themselves in their own practice, push the the pain, push thru the tiredness, die trying mentality. If you can’t be kind and respect your own body, how can you another’s. Overcoming trauma takes time, requires to acceptance, truthfulness and while we are going thru it best avoid places we are unable to keep it in check. Spreading our pain to others creates a viscous cycle. Process, contain and come out stronger.

We like to claim we have been wronged, say that it shouldn’t have happened. The truth is, suffering is part of all journeys, whatever form it comes in, to accept it is to free yourself from it and move on. Life will always place you at a fork-road and test where you are at in your growth, if you are ready to move on, it will bring you another fork-road later, if you are not it will bring to back to the same fork-road so that you may again to work towards growth as it had with me.

The Other Side of the Tunnel

Everybody has a different path, nobody will go thru the same journey. Yoga practices are far from what they are portrayed to be on the internet and definitely cannot be representing in a photo, let alone staged in perfect time with the sunrise and crashing waves. So don’t ever compare yourself to what is not real. I wanted to write this because despite of everything, here I am, practicing, teaching, not angry or frustrated anymore, working hard, giving as much as I can and best of all smiling. There is no perfect yoga journey, and there is no ideal path we should envision.

Each year since that flip book in 2002 I have grown & matured in my outlook, I am never the person I was the year before and I have no intention of being the same person next year. I found a stronger voice and even more purpose than before. My journey has shown me that the Ashtanga practice is more than just the sequence, my own teacher has taught me Ashtanga can be a therapeutic practice too, I have no hesitation to take on students with physical issues in this practice, and have many with herniated discs in class.

To Learn Yoga is to Learn Life

Let this story keep you going, give you the encouragement and strength to never give up.

Use every seemingly dead-end to widen your perspective on the many possible different routes you can try to get somewhere.

The real person I wrote this for is me. To let go of the narrative, the victimisation and a past experience that dies not define the person I am. We always think the worst happens only to us when things go awry, but time will tell that sometimes when our journey feels like an unfortunate one is really just a journey.

You are not your past, nor are you your future, and you are most definitely not defined by your life events. Who we are is who we choose to be today, the decisions we make now. Today I choose to be happy to know I am able to breathe, move, have a practice that tests me, reminds me where my limits are, give me spiritual maturity & growth. I’m surrounded by spiritual knowledge everywhere from the people I have met to the books containing ancient wisdom and grateful for all that I can see around me with my eyes and feel with my heart.

Most forms of spiritual seeking involves learning to work on our egos to find our true selfs hiding under it, thereby setting our suffering free to find an untouchable happiness. In the case of yoga teachers, we have an even bigger responsibility to work on our egos, not cause we need to find our happiness, but because if we don’t we can harm someone for the rest of their lives.

If can save 1 person from going thru what I went thru or made teachers stop and shift they way they approach adjusting a student from showing what their ‘adjustment skills’ to instead teach by adjusting and speaking in aid of longterm benefit of the student, this article and my struggle the past 7 years would have not been in vain.

LESSON #8 Nothing in nature is linear.

Bodies like life is not meant to move in straight lines. When moving your body or the body of others, watch how the most effective way to experience movement is in an arc or spiral just as how our DNA is structured …. literally.

I may have started with the title “a bumpy yoga ride” but I will leave you with this …

“Straight Roads Do Not Make Skilful Drivers”

— Paulo Cohelo

I want to thank all the friends in the community that helped in this journey that spent the time to give me support and advice from sharing their own personal experiences with me over coffee to sharing messages, pain patch stickers, morally supportive conversations, to covering me in some adjustments that I was physically unable to do that day, to carrying me out of the shala that one time or even asking me how I am every now and then. I never forget kindness: Angela Jamison, Barry Silver, Brian Giangardella, Connie Yan, Deva Mcredy, Ethan Lee, Renato Libernati, Tarik Thami, Petri Rasinen, and anybody else I may have forgotten that has taken a moment to visit, send a message or give me faith while in pain.

To my teacher, that never put any expectation on my practice, showed me what selfless intuitive teaching and adjusting looked like, allowing me to have a teacher whom I have no fear, complete trust was the biggest and most curial gift you could have given me during this time. Thank you.

And my husband, whom I met 7 months after my 1st injury, whom has only ever known me in this state and has been the only person in the world to witness the daily struggle on and off the mat. Who struggled himself to let go of anger in the process and yet maintained support in so many ways I have lost count during this time. I love you, thank you.

The amount of lessons truly learned during this journey was way more than just the 8 written here. It would take an entire book if I really wanted to share all of it. So I haven't really done it justice, but I hope this extremely long ‘compressed’ version is enough

* samskara - mental impressions, recollections, or psychological imprints that influence the actions and decisions we make, and the cycle of karma.E