Meet Antonia @mindfully_me_ sharing her #yogasavedmylife story with us. These are her words 💚

"Isn’t it strange that we memorise bad moments so much better than good ones? I remember it as if it was yesterday: I was playing outside in the garden when I heard someone crying. It was a cry of agony . At first, I didn’t know where that cry came from. When I ran inside the house to tell my mother I realised who’s cry I heard. My father had been very sick for quite some time, but it never occurred to me that he could actually be gone someday. His fight was over, and he’d lost . I felt like something just froze within me. Everything that happened after is basically a blur. Just the feeling remained. Today I know just how deeply my father’s death and absence traumatised me. I understand that all that followed, my depression, my eating disorder, the disconnect from my body, were natural byproducts of deep childhood trauma . If I had sufficient support within the family, things might have been very different. Instead, everything was falling apart. As a child I’d be as wild & free & careless as children should be. It took me a solid 12 years to reconnect with that child and, on that note, my own body . When I first found my way onto a yoga mat it was simply because I tried to deal with serious anxiety and overwhelm. At age 22 I was still, unconsciously, abusing my body in various ways like binge eating and obsessively working out. In yoga I found a way to relax and unravel some of the tension I so carefully had built . When I decided to take part in a yoga teacher training my spiritual practice began. Yoga and the philosophy behind it stirred up things within me that had waited to be uncovered and dealt with for a while. It taught me to choose and practice self-love and kindness instead of hatred and punishment. To stay with myself, not battling through the situation but breathing through it, staying in the present moment . Within my practice I found awareness. Awareness of my breath, my thoughts, my ego, my patterns and fears, and most importantly my innate capacity for joy and love 💚Antonia" . .