Watch Matthew’s story evolve as a beautiful healing adventure here: http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2012/bodys-grace/slideshow-presenceofsilence.shtml#video

This beautiful 2006 interview with Matthew was pointed out to me by one of my adaptive yoga students.  Thanks, MJ!  It’s just over an hour in length, so watch when you have time to settle in or take the time to watch in stages.  You won’t be disappointed.

http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2012/bodys-grace/video-intheroom_sanford.shtml#video

Meanwhile, it’s always the right time to tap into a little inspiration.  FitMS guru Joy Wagner forwarded me this incredibly inspirational video today.  It’s a moving true story about the possibilities that yoga, dedication, and belief in self can unlock.  I hope you’ll all watch and enjoy!

For now,

Namsate

Yoga is a beautiful and demanding life practice.  It requires its students to invest in ourselves physically and mentally to create personal vigor and strength.  It guides us to embrace life-enhancing moral and ethical principles.  As our skill increases, it asks us to use self-discipline and right behavior to create a healthy world.

One of the most challenging places to embrace the practice of Yoga can be in our own families.

After all, we did not come equipped with a fully working understanding of yogic principles at birth.  Growing up, our family members may have had beliefs, habits, and behaviors that exemplified some or none of yoga’s principles and beliefs.  Here in the West, more often than not we come to Yoga as adults.  We begin to learn how to live a yogic life after we have already learned another way.  We have so much to unlearn.  We have a tremendous amount of self-noticing to do simply to begin to perceive what we must unlearn.  Complicating our personal evolution, others may expect us to act in a certain familiar way that no longer fits us.  In particular, friends and family members have come to know us for everything we learned before, everything we experienced with them and the way it was experienced together.  The transition involved in moving into a yogic life may feel foreign, foolish, jarring, even threatening to them.

For the first time in several years, I recently spent a weekend with both close and extended family members as we gathered for a funeral.  After I became deeply ill in 2007, I found myself in an emotional and spiritual crisis as well as a physical one.  Always independent and self-reliant, even in the most extreme circumstances, through chronic illness I discovered in myself a deep vulnerability I had never imagined possible.  I doubted myself in ways I never had before.  I felt hurt and confused by responses to my illness from most of the people I had invited into my life in my pre-yoga days and in the early stages of my personal evolution.

Today, I can say plainly that I craved teachers to feed me yoga, to help me find non-harming in the deterioration of my body.  Ahimsa, or non-harming, is a potent yogic teaching that embodies a wisdom borne through the ages.  Mahatma Gandhi shared it in saying: Be The Change You Want To See In The World and An Eye For An Eye Makes The Whole Word Blind.  Jesus exemplified it in turning the other cheek.  The practice of ahimsa calls us to watch ourselves in thought, word and deed, to learn how harshness and cruelty harm ourselves as much, if not more, than they harm others.   Ahimsa calls us to chose the non-harming path, acting with the intention to create peace and never with the intention to harm.  Neither Jesus nor Mahatma Gandhi, at the time of these experiences all I could take in was that exactly when I was most vulnerable, most needy, I constantly experienced even more hurt, even more confusion, through my interactions with the people in my life.  My softness, my ahimsa, with those around me seemed to encourage them to be even more callous, more thoughtless, more unconcerned.  I needed constant meals of non-harming to help me stay in the world in a non-harming way, in a way that was stronger than my body.   And I was, for a long time, unable to find them.

I became more and more uncertain and ungrounded.  I noticed the most painful, most draining, interactions involved my closest family members and I found myself needing to hold myself at significant distance from them in order to function.

This need, the decisions I made, and the actions I took, hurt and confused my family members and others that I changed my relationship with.  I was aware of this.  And yet, I needed distance in order to survive.  I needed distance in order to learn how to live with the new limits and rules my body was imposing in a way that would satisfy me regardless of the desires or expectations of anyone else.  The floor beneath me had fallen away.  It was in that void I would find the space that allowed me to begin to create a new foundation that today feels calm and supportive to me.

Reconnection with my family members represents a new leg on that creative journey.  I am making myself present to the paradox that my trek toward a non-harming path was a catalyst for pain both in myself and others.  I am grounding myself in the reality that in human life, yogic or otherwise, not all pain is avoidable or should be avoided.  No matter how I might seek to serve or to be non-harming, I am a human among humans.  My choices can be a catalyst for pain.  My continued personal evolution and the steps I take to nourish it may continue to be a distancing factor between the me I am becoming and the many people I have known along the way.  I am learning that non-harming is not the same as the absence of pain.  Non-harming is the taking of appropriate action from an absolute intention to be loving to oneself.  Only in a love that strong can sustainable love of others thrive.

WebMD Yoga for MS Report

(c) Medstar Television

Haven’t heard of it before?

We all do it.  TV Watching Pose is a great starting place for really getting connected to the yoga that’s naturally in our bodies.  The simple act of bringing awareness to TV Watching Pose is yoga.   With the gentle touch of awareness, the pose begins to shift.  We notice something heavy-feeling in the mid-body or something achy and off-center about the body’s weight in the chair and movement comes.  Our bodies begin to become aware of ways they can shift and readjust to find greater comfort and support.

That’s when, as a yoga teacher, I get to make suggestions.

Notice, for instance, how the connection with the floor or chair is stabilized by spreading the flesh on the sitting bones apart.  Notice the changes in the lower back and the increased engagement in the abdominal muscles when the pelvis is tilted slightly forward and up.  Notice how the feet become more naturally engaged when the knees are brought to comfortable right-angles with the hips.  Support, like a folded blanket or pillow, can be brought to any part of the body to help effect the movements that are not yet easeful.

As the whole body becomes more aligned and supported, the pose transforms from the dull, out-of-body experience of TV Watching Pose to the stable, calm, relaxation of yoga.  No matter what the pose looks like on the outside, when the body is aligned or supported, you are practicing yoga.

Thieves Essential Oil Blend

In the winter we all need a boost.  The weather is dreary, unpredictable, and in the Chicagoland area, where I live, temperatures can for prolonged periods of time dip to lows our skin cannot survive.  Our daily activities involve a constant rotation between overly-dry inside climates and cold, wet, frozen outside climates, creating petrie-dish-perfect conditions for ill health.  What we long for is a roaring stone fireplace to accompany us, providing warmth, light, good health, and good cheer, wherever we go.

While it’s not a portable fireplace, Thieves® essential oil is rich, spicy and warm, and offers many aromatically pleasant ways to help us survive and even enjoy challenging winters.   Young Living created this proprietary essential oil blend based on research about four thieves in France who covered themselves with cloves, rosemary, and other aromatics while robbing plague victims.  Those clever thieves are said to have used their knowledge of the properties of essential oils to shield themselves from the contagion-ripe environment in which they perpetrated their deeds, helping them steel good health along with monetary valuables.  Today, this Young Living blend follows the tradition of those four thieves.

Thieves® was university tested for its cleansing abilities. Many happy users find it highly effective in supporting the immune system and promoting good health.  According to articles published by the National Institutes of Health at the US Library of Medicine, the antimicrobial properties of essential oils have been known for many centuries.  In studies performed since the late-1980s, many essential oils and their constituents have been clinically investigated for their antimicrobial properties against bacteria and fungi in thousands of reports.  Young Living provides us with a natural way to combat microbial, viral and bacterial conditions leading to ill health in Thieves®.

Just a drop or two of Thieves® can be used topically or added to a warm bath to soothe aches and pains.  When using any oil or oil blend containing “hot” essences for the first time, like the clove and cinnamon Thieves® contains, use  a small amount of diluting medium like massage oil or a common household cooking oil to avoid skin irritation, or have a small amount of diluting medium available to massage into any areas of skin that may become irritated.

Around the house, Thieves®  is also available as a household cleaner, disinfectant spray or wipe.  For personal care, Thieves® is available in soothing throat lozenges and as a toothpaste and mouthwash.

The Thieves® proprietary essential oil blend contains clove, lemon, cinnamon, eucalyptus radiata and rosemary oils, and provides various anti-bacterial, anti-fingal, anti-viral, disinfectant, expectorant, immune-stimulating,and warming properties.

Please listen to the interview below:

Matthew Stafford instructing a yoga student.

Tickle the bottom of Matthew Sanford’s foot, and he won’t feel it.

He’s been paralyzed from the chest down since a car accident more than 30 years ago.

But squeeze his ankles — really squeeze them — and he’ll sense it.  A subtle energy, a sort of hum, will rush from his bone and spark to life in his brain.

Help Sanford onto a yoga mat, and the 44-year-old who hasn’t walked since he was 13 will achieve poses that trouble even the strongest able-bodied practitioners.

Not that that’s the point.

His message is not about how he is able, despite being disabled. It’s about how we all can live more fully in our bodies with a stronger mind-body connection. And don’t you dare say he overcame anything, he says.

“We’re always taught to ‘overcome’ disability,” Sanford says. “But you can’t overcome your body. I didn’t become a yoga teacher because I overcame anything. That’s exactly wrong. I’m a yoga teacher because I live an altered mind-body relationship.

“Your body is the best home your mind will ever have, and it’s the only one you get. ”

Sanford, a yoga instructor, is a speaker and author of “Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence” (Rodale, $14.95).

Life for Sanford changed forever on a late-night drive with his family from Kansas City to their home in Minnesota. The car hit an icy overpass and careened down the embankment. The accident killed his father and 20-year-old sister. His mother and brother escaped with no serious injuries. Sanford, who grew up playing sports, was paralyzed from his fourth vertebrae down.

Doctors at the Mayo Clinic were quick to point out that any “feelings” he had in his legs were phantom sensations. They thought it best for him to ignore them because the fact was he’d never walk again. Why get his hopes up?

For the next 12 years, Sanford lived that way, life as a “floating torso,” he says, dragging his lower half around.

He focused any physical activity on strengthening his upper body. He finished school, earning a graduate degree in philosophy from the University of California, Santa Barbara. When he was 25, he met a yoga teacher named Jo Zukovich, who took him to a local martial arts studio and helped him get out of his wheelchair to sit on the floor.

And then something simple yet life-changing happened. With Zukovich’s help, Sanford spread his legs wide.

“It was really emotional,” Sanford says. “It was really powerful. I had tears coming down my face, but I didn’t know why. But then I realized, I hadn’t had my legs wide for 12 years. Why would a paralyzed guy have his legs in a wide ‘V’? And I realized the answer — because it’s my birthright to live in as much of my body as I can.”

That was 19 years ago. Sanford’s life has since been transformed through the practice of yoga.

He now teaches at yoga conferences around the country. He has won awards for his pioneering ideas in medicine. In Minnesota, he teaches regular yoga classes as well as adaptive classes for disabled people.

He also speaks at business conventions because his message about mind-body connections applies to everyone, not just people with disabilities. Sanford says we should all pay more attention to living fully in our bodies and recognizing the subtle sensations there.

Why?

“Because they will improve the quality of your life,” he says. “It will improve your connection to your life. Your relationships change. Your stress will go down. Our culture is in a hurry, and we’re moving too fast. We’re stressed out, and we don’t take time to integrate subtle aspects of who we are through these practices.”

A few years ago, Jonny Kest, the owner of the Center for Yoga, which has three locations in metro Detroit, read Sanford’s book and was so inspired that he invited him to be the keynote speaker at the Midwest Yoga Conference. He then brought him to Michigan for a series of workshops; he arranged the upcoming visit, too.

Kest says watching Sanford teach an adaptive yoga class is like watching a roomful of light bulbs flick on.

“It goes on in the eyes of people when they’re suddenly aware of something they weren’t aware of before,” Kest says. “People start to wake up.”

It’s that awakening that can be so beneficial to healing, says Amy Samson-Burke, a physical therapist who teaches yoga with Sanford at the Courage Center, a Minnesota-based rehabilitation and resource center for people with disabilities.

“As the patient begins to have a greater sense of mind-body awareness and live in their entire body, they feel the connection in their entire body, and they become more engaged in the healing process. And they heal better,” Samson-Burke says.

Science is beginning to catch up to what Sanford says he knows firsthand about the power of the mind-body connection.

Last summer, he underwent an MRI of his brain for a study at Rutgers University. The team of doctors mapped his brain as they squeezed his ankles. The images showed that his sensory cortex lit up in the same way it would in a non-paralyzed person.

For Sanford, this test proved what he had already discovered — his lower body might be considered dead, but there was still, somehow, life there.

“It’s a level of sensation that I know exists,” Sanford says. “And it’s missing in our rehabilitation practices.”

Cheryl Angelelli, the Rehabilitation Institute’s marketing director, says the philosophy there is to treat mind, body and spirit. But she’s excited to see how Sanford broadens that message.

“I think it’s important for patients to see that you don’t have to quit living when you’re faced with disability,” says Angelelli, a quadriplegic who is a world-record Paralympics swimmer. “There are many possibilities for you in life.”

Through his non-profit Mind Body Solutions, Sanford hopes to spread more information about the mind-body connection to the health-care industry. He thinks if workers are trained to understand the subtle, powerful nature of that relationship, they can pass the information on to those they try to rehabilitate.

“We need people to come through the health care system and leave that experience more connected to their body, not less,” Sanford says. “The simple idea is they’ll take better care of themselves and help others to live more vibrantly in their bodies.”

Yoga isn’t the only way to understand that, he says. But it’s the medium that works for him.

“Yoga gets you to live your body in more spaces,” Sanford says. “Yoga makes you feel more alive.”

In an adaptive yoga class, some students stay in their chairs. Others take to the floor; it often depends how much help there is. Regular yoga poses are modified to produce the same benefits for those who can’t stand.

In his traditional classes, Sanford teaches from his chair or the floor, leading people through standing poses that he obviously can’t do. But he understands them as well as any teacher, Kest says.

“We always teach that yoga is about more than just the posture,” Kest says. “And to have a yoga teacher that can’t demonstrate every pose is very good for students. It’s not about how you look in the poses. It’s more important how you feel and how present you are in each and every moment. Even if you could look exactly like the person next to you, you would feel it differently.”

When Sanford pulls himself into a ‘V’ position with his legs raised, he says he can do so because he’s come to understand his body’s subtle sensations well enough to develop balance and flexibility if not abdominal strength.

And if he can experience that, anyone can.

“A lot of people have preconceptions of what yoga is,” says Sanford, who lives outside Minneapolis with his wife and 9-year-old son. “They think you have to be flexible. Beginners often imagine they can’t do yoga, and that’s part of what I say to them. If I can do yoga, you know you can, too.”

By Krista Jahnke

(c) 2010, Detroit Free Press.

This is the scene at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia, where students attend weekly adaptive yoga class. Derived from traditional yoga, poses are modified for those with disabilities or health conditions.

Hundreds of miles away, longtime instructor Karen O’Donnell Clarke says the limitations could have a number of sources: multiple sclerosis (which she has), a sports injury, fibromyalgia or even a sedentary lifestyle. Post-surgical conditions, Parkinson’s disease, stroke and arthritis may also cause some impairment. “Pretty much if you name a health condition, yoga can help with it,” she says.

Physical therapist Sarah Knopf says the class’ popularity is due to many patients asking what else they can be doing to strengthen their bodies or overcome a health challenge quicker.

“The adaptive yoga will take into consideration the patient’s limitations,” Knopf says. “A lot of patients with MS, for example, don’t do well if they get overheated. So, with adaptive yoga, the instructor will take things nice and slowly, focusing more on breathing and relaxation…. If you are doing yoga in a gym, it’s a little faster-paced.”

Instructors say one benefit of adaptive classes is that more than one or two people in the group are doing something differently.

Evette Abron, who attends weekly adaptive yoga class at Jai Shanti Yoga in Atlanta, has MS and suffers from poor balance. She says she feels less self-conscious in this environment. Because of the personalized attention, she doesn’t feel bad if she can’t do something correctly or even at all.

Adaptive yoga is not just for those who have balance problems. People in wheelchairs can also benefit. The poses are modified in a way that anyone can take part.