"2 years ago my father in law was killed in France in a RTA."

Here's our Mental Health Community Champion @helenbashfordyoga with a beautiful #yogasavedmylife about her mother in-law Beverley 💚

"With the shock of his death came the additional shock of it happening abroad where there was no opportunity to speak to those that treated him. No chance to say goodbye

18 months later my mother in law started yoga with me, simply because she was being nice. She was the ‘least flexible person’ & thought she might be good practice for me. She had no yoga interest herself. She came to yoga with a long standing back issue, a very raw bereavement & accompanying anxiety.

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She started once a week & in all honestly I didn’t expect to see her after week 2. But then she booked 2 classes a week, & by the end of summer it was 3. She didn’t increase her classes because she had a sudden goal to bend into a pretzel, but because she started to notice yoga was helping her cope. To use her words ‘I feel calmer & less anxious when I do yoga, if I've had a break those feelings start to creep back. I also feel scrunched up & as if I need pulling back out. Yoga has given me time & space to be able to clear my mind of everyday stuff & to not think of anything other than what my body is doing, it’s also given be a sense of achievement & self worth’. .

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A couple of weeks ago she met with friends who hadn’t seen her for months. Their comment? She was unrecognisable. She is mentally resilient, physically stronger, her body shape has changed, & the back pain is all but gone. 3 of her friends have since booked yoga classes.

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I’ll take the opportunity to say how incredibly proud I am of her for starting something so outside her comfort zone & at such a difficult time in her life, for tolerating my constant chatter about nervous systems & breathing when she’s probably inwardly rolling her eyes, & for continuing to hit the mat week in week out because even though she doesn’t quite understand how it’s working she knows it is. It’s genuinely an honour to watch up close yoga doing its thing - helping people recover, one class at a time.

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All hail yoga, all hail Beverley"