From Rheumatoid Arthritis to Yoga Instructor

I'm Rachel, and I've been living with rheumatoid arthritis since the tender age of 20. It's been a challenging road, but discovering Yoga completely changed my life!

When I was diagnosed with RA it was a really low point in my life. I was supposed to be a fit and healthy 20-year-old just at the beginning of her adult life. However, I was faced with constant pain and inflammation in my knees, hands, wrists, and fingers as well as bouts of chronic fatigue.

I was unable to work as my mobility was limited and it was so bad that I needed my partner to help me get dressed. Thankfully, he was very understanding and supportive but this was not how I saw my life panning out.

It took nearly a year to find a medication that was able to settle some of my symptoms and my Doctor told me to try some gentle exercise. I didn't know what type of exercise was gentle enough for me to do, so had no idea where to start. That was until my neighbour came over to see me one day, she could see I wasn't in a great place and took me out for a coffee.

We got chatting about the Doctor's suggestion of gentle exercise and my neighbour suggested Hatha yoga. She said she had a DVD I could borrow and even if I couldn't do the poses it had some meditation and mindfulness techniques I could try. At this point, I was willing to try anything, as I just wanted to feel somewhat normal again.

I cannot remember the name of the teacher on the DVD but she looked like she was in her late 50s/early 60's, she had a kind face and a soft calming voice. At first, I was unable to do most of the poses but for the few I could do (mainly seated postures and dolphin pose), I would try to do them every other day along with a short meditation. The first big change I noticed was in my headspace, I was starting to not feel so down all the time and I looked forward to my little practice as it made me feel like I was doing something positive for myself. I started to buy every book on yoga, learning as much as I could.

Soon my little routine developed into a longer routine, adding in more poses as and when my body would allow. Eventually, I was able to return to work and this felt great, my life was moving in the right direction.

I kept up with a regular mini practice and over time and with a lot of patience I was able to build up my pose repertoire and practice for longer periods. This is when I started to see a significant change in my arthritis symptoms. Flare-up days were becoming less and less, and the inflammation in my knees and fingers hardly ever occurred. And if I ever took a break from yoga, like if work or family life just got too hectic, then I would notice my condition start to worsen again.

My rheumatologist was pleased with my progress and told me to keep doing what I was doing, as it was working.  But he also stressed the importance of listening carefully to my body. So that's exactly what I did! I learned to modify poses to suit me and made sure to listen to my body, not pushing or forcing just leaning into what my body could do on any given day.