Meet Jess @themindfulspoonyoga sharing her #yogasavedmylife story with us 💚 These are her words

"My yoga journey began in 2008 after a serious car wreck left me mostly unable to move or function for several weeks. Yoga got me moving again, slowly at first, but I was able to rebuild strength & flexibility"

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"In 2013, a friend invited me to join her for a hot yoga class where she taught & I fell in love with it immediately! After a tragedy at the office where I worked, I quit my job & began an intensive 500hr YTT program, run by my friend's studio, in June of 2013. I began teaching for them as soon as I completed the training

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My husband & I moved from North Texas to Upstate NY in Oct 2014, I found it difficult to find a studio to teach for & my personal practice suffered as well. Fast forward to the summer of 2015, I was diagnosed with an extremely bad case of Lyme Disease. I was bedridden for weeks & easily fatigued for months. I returned to yoga as a way to hold onto my sanity & keep depression at bay. In 2015 I finally found a studio to teach for & returned to teaching

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In summer 2017 I began to finally acknowledge that I was in high levels of pain & that something was wrong physically. After quite a few rounds of testing, I was given the "diagnosis" of Generalized Chronic Pain Disorder. Yoga became my refuge, where I could move my body & feel like I was doing SOMETHING without it being destructive

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In 2017, my marriage hit a very rough patch & by early 2018 we'd separated. What followed was one of the worst years of my life, complications of divorce & personal revelations that I struggled to handle

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Once again yoga became my refuge, moving meditation to ground me in the present moment & keep the depression at bay

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Over & over, yoga has pulled me back to the present moment & helped me through all of the difficult times in my life. It's kept me from sinking into destructive depressive episodes when life threatens to overwhelm me & that is part of why I started teaching, part of why I started The Mindful Spoon Yoga. Why I want to share the magic of yoga with everyone because everyone can benefit from starting a personal practice 🙏

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📸@tcolasurdo