By Carolyn (Karuna) Beaver

Vicky has been taking Svaroopa^® yoga classes for nearly 20 years.

Even though she doesn’t teach, she has taken Foundations and Embodyment^® Yoga Therapy training. This spring, she took a bigger leap. At Lokananda, she took Embodyment^® Plus; she took the Magic of Ujjayi course online.

Preparation for Embodyment^® Plus required her to give a large number of Embodyment^® sessions. We happily embarked on an Overlap Healing Series with one another. I also gave Vicky some yoga therapy sessions, targeting specific physical issues.

She says, “I always stand up straighter, feel lighter, and more easily experience joy after a class or a session. This happens every time. That’s why Svaroopa^® Yoga is so attractive to me.”

Now Vicky finds that this experience is ongoing, especially after Overlap Healing and yoga therapy as well as Embodyment^® Plus training and the Magic of Ujjayi course. She says, “My experiences last longer and are more sustained. It’s pretty profound. Things are going deeper.”

She has noticed subtle, yet profound, changes in her body mechanics as well. In college, she sustained a bad ankle sprain. Although she had a cast, she had no therapy for her injury. That, in combination with some mild scoliosis, has caused 45 years of lower leg, ankle and foot pain. One leg is slightly misaligned and shorter than the other.

In her “do more yoga” mode this spring and summer, things changed. “As my sacrum would relax, my leg would literally unwind. It didn’t feel ‘screwed in’ any more. I felt muscles in my glutes, thigh, hip, calf and foot that wanted to unwind and be on point — just like a ballerina. That release in my spine was releasing the tension in my leg and unwinding all the way down to my foot.”

Because of travels, she has not been doing as much yoga practice or therapy recently. Yet she is still noticing the benefits. “I can tap into it more easily. It’s just waiting to be acknowledged again. I pick up more readily.”

“And, my feet are not hurting. At the end of the day, my feet would be yelling at me. Now they are not.”

Vicky also has a much better understanding of how all the practices work together. “I used to think that Embodyment^® or asana or Ujjayi were just replacements for one another. But they’re not. You get so many more benefits when you work with all three together. They don’t merely complement one another. They build upon each other.”

As a student. Vicky has always asked lots of questions. She wants to know how to get precise alignments and how things work. “In the past, when the releases have happened,” she recalls, “I’ve felt the benefits, and I’ve wanted to know why. But now, I don’t have to. I know my body is doing what it needs to do. That’s the biggest take away for me.”