Coming home to the body
What do you do when you can’t push through pain anymore?
If you are anything like me, you’ve spent a lifetime diminishing and dismissing physical symptoms like pain or exhaustion. Honestly, we are conditioned and socialized to keep going, to keep doing, to push ourselves to the brink. We ignore our bodies for as long as we can get away with it.
Then, there is the endless trail of promised quick fixes and band-aids that barely keep you going until the next flare of pain, exhaustion, or symptoms.
I know you just want your body to stop hurting and cooperate with your best-laid plans. The not-so-secret secret to less pain and more energy lies in small, intentional movements and the healing force of awareness. Therapeutic yoga is the application of yogic principles to the individual to heal and strengthen the body, mind, and soul. Working in this way increases awareness and reduces pain so you can reclaim lasting ease in your body and energy for your life.
My first yoga class put me on the path of healing.
In 1994, I signed up for my first yoga class in my senior year of university. To put it mildly, I was stressed out with a chronic eye twitch, and I knew I had to do something different. The yoga class in the catalog felt fated, so I signed up. The room where we practiced was magical - light streamed through the arched windows, and dust moats drifted down through the sunbeams toward the honey-colored wood floor. When I laid down for my first Shavasana (corpse pose) at the end of practice, something utterly astonishing happened.
I landed in my body for the first time ever. I could not stop crying, which was embarrassing as hell, but I was hooked. That class was the start of a lifetime love affair with yoga. It ignited a longing to be at home — at peace —in my body.
But yoga wasn’t the end of my path of learning and listening to my body. I didn’t know it then, but it was only the beginning.
From yoga to therapeutic yoga
Nine months ago, I was facing numbness in my hand and persistent pain in my neck and lower back yet again, I felt desperate for real answers to move without pain. I signed up to study therapeutic yoga, vowing first and foremost to be my own best client, Committing to a daily practice of intentional, gentle movement has changed the way I move. I am free of physical pain - a first for me. I still have numbness (because of M.S. lesions), but as a woman who has pushed and injured myself repeatedly and often, it is incredible to feel such consistent ease and suppleness in my body.
Quietly, I’ve been working with women who have persistent pain, mystery symptoms, and/or exhaustion, and the results have been just as positive for them. Coming to the sessions with anything from shoulder pain, chronic neck tension, or migraines to low back, hip or foot pain, the women I’ve been working with are changing their movement patterns and rewiring their brains for ease. These women are experiencing less or no pain, more strength, and more confidence that their bodies are capable when tended to in this way.
Therapeutic yoga, with all its many facets, can support healing and create more ease in the body, which nourishes your life.
Stop putting yourself and your body last
Our collective relationship with our bodies and how we push ourselves is fucked.
I know what it’s like to push to exhaustion, to dismiss the symptoms in my body, and to ignore the pain until it just won’t be ignored. If you are anything like me, you would like to focus on the things that are important to you - your work, your family, enjoyment, creative expression - but your body is making it impossible. I know, my friend. I know.
Whether you are experiencing chronic pain, exhaustion, or endless symptoms, you can live with less pain and more ease. Once you have addressed the exhaustion, symptoms, or pain, the energy that has been bound up in keeping the symptoms at bay can go toward more of what you really want in your life.
And I want that for you. I want you to have less pain and more energy for your one wild and precious life, as Mary Oliver would say. And that’s why I am sharing individual yoga therapy for you.
Small movements with a big impact
If you want a different way to be in and with your body, sister, I’ve got you. When you heal your body through movement, breath, and stillness, magic happens. The pain settles and dissipates. As pain is reduced, you enjoy increasing clarity, and you have the energy to act on your truth. Your intuition is amplified, and you know without knowing if you know what I mean. But first and foremost, your body feels stronger, more supple, and more fluid, which is the basis for your best life.
Your best life, lived fully, matters.
Currently, I have two spots available for individual therapeutic yoga. Over twelve weeks, we will meet nine times. You will settle the nervous system and nourish the body you live in with movement, stillness, and breath. You will build awareness of your body’s language in such a way that you will experience a reduction in pain and symptoms and an increase in energy. You will feel a greater sense of suppleness, strength, and energy for the life you are meant to live.
Hi, I’m Nona.
I help women access their innate intelligence and wholeness to create a life with less pain, greater ease, and more energy for what matters most. I believe in the power of connection, movement, breath, and stillness to transform how we move through the world.
I am a master-certified coach, yoga therapist (in training), and energy medicine practitioner with a master’s degree in psychology. But more than that, I am a mother, a wife, a storyteller, an artist, and a human - just like you.
If you’d like to connect, I love to hear from readers. Click here to contact me.
