Gayle Belsher's amazing story!
"I began yoga on the advice of my family doctor after repeatedly complaining to her about upper back and neck pain following a motorcycle accident.
While yoga has definitely helped those problems, its benefits have far exceeded the medical ones that I originally sought.
To my surprise, I have found the Iyengar asanas to be wonderful symbolic lessons about balance, strength, and commitment in daily life with practical applications I did not anticipate. 
For example, borrowing the idea of "effortless effort" from yoga and applying it to classical guitar has relieved a lot of my hand and arm strain during long practice sessions.
When I returned to motorcycling after many years' hiatus, I was thrilled that the body awareness I'd been learning on the yoga mat allowed me to ride with more calm focus on the communication between my body and the bike, resulting in more enjoyment and greater stamina on the road.
In my professional life as a clinical psychologist, I've incorporated the practice of pranayama into psychotherapy, with the result that my patients continually remark on the calming benefits it has on their anxiety. Likewise, several of my psychologist colleagues and I have been impressed by the huge therapeutic benefits of mindfulness meditation, that fantastic nonjudgmental alertness that I first discovered on the yoga mat, in savasana.
Needless to say, for me, yoga has been a rich journey with many and varied delights"
|