[2] Inspirational Stories (Stories to Live By)

Yoga

*YOGA IS THE JOURNEY OF THE SELF, THROUGH THE SELF, TO THE SELF...*

One morning five years ago, Nick Montoya, 56, woke up to leg and back pain so intense he could barely move.
He’d been struggling with it for months, trying to contain it with painkillers, but this was different. The doctor told him he had damaged cartilage in two of his lumbar vertebrae and would likely need surgery.

Two days later, Nick went to the hospital for an epidural treatment to alleviate the pain.

On the way home, his daughter, who was driving, pulled the car over, turned off the ignition, and told him she wouldn’t go any farther until he promised to go to a yoga class with her.

His daughter was right to be worried about him, Nick says. He never made time for self-care or exercise. He worked a high-pressure job as a manager at a technology firm, was coping with a messy divorce, raising three daughters, and helping run the local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
He kept up his energy with caffeinated diet sodas—up to 10 a day. He was 50 pounds overweight. “I could see I couldn’t keep it all together,” Nick says. “It was scary.”
Two weeks later, he went to a heated vinyasa yoga class. “As I was walking to the car after class, I realized my body felt better,” he says. That was enough to convince him to go back for more classes, and he soon became a regular at his local studio in Sacramento, California, where he lived at the time.

Yoga helped loosen his back and strengthen his core, relieving his pain. Best of all, it gave him resilience to cope with his overloaded life.

“During that hour and a half in class, there was no focus other than the practice itself,” he explains. “I could leave the world as it was and just breathe.”

A few months later, Nick signed up for a 200-hour teacher training program, with no intention of becoming a teacher. By the end of three months of training, he’d lost the extra weight, gotten off most of his medications, and just felt happier.

Since then, he hasn’t needed any more epidurals (let alone surgery) for his back.

Nick started teaching yoga on the side—just friends and family at first. A year after that first vinyasa class, he decided the money and prestige were no longer reason enough to continue his high-powered corporate job.
He quit to focus on what truly mattered to him: helping people get healthy. He now brings yoga and wellness programs into big corporations like the one he left behind. And he keeps up his own practice: “Yoga is what’s keeping me healthy so that I can be around for my daughters as long as possible,” he says.

*There are experiences in life that call on you to find a strength you never thought you had.*

*When we practice yoga, we clear the space to begin to touch base with who we truly are, beneath the story, beneath the tragedy. And that can infuse us with a sense of hope.*

*Yoga’s philosophy teaches that all the levels of our body and mind are connected—the musculoskeletal, the breath, the emotional, mental, and spiritual.*

*Practicing yoga with attention to breath and sensation can release what’s constricting your physical body, letting you tap into—and work through—what’s happening on an emotional level, and giving you access to your true, blissful nature.*

*Yoga can calm an anxious state, elevate a depressed mood, and generally allow us to cope better with whatever life brings. And, as an act of self-care, it’s empowering.*

*When a crisis hits, you have to dig deep. Yoga helps people tap into reserves of inner strength to find new hope, resilience, and happiness.*

*Yoga isn’t going to turn everyone’s life around, but it has the potential to do so. You just need to be open to.*

*There is always room for change, but you have to be open to that change.*

✍️Unknown Writer