I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in November of 1976 at the age of 14. My biggest desire in life has been and remains to find the root cause and correct it. Seventeen years ago I was introduced to yoga.
My first yoga class was at a Bikram Yoga Studio in Boca Raton, Florida in November of 1999. The room is heated to 110 degrees and there are 26 postures that are repeated each class. I sweated so much I lost 4 lbs during the class. The postures are designed to “squeeze” the toxins from every aspect of your being; physical, mental and emotional. Class is over and the 90 degree heat in Boca feels like a cool breeze. I would go to Bikram yoga classes almost every day for the next 6 years. Sometimes I would do two classes; “A double.” In 2002 I had the opportunity to take three months off from work. I would wake up, go to the 7am class. Come home, go for a 3 mile run around 1pm and then go to the 4pm class. I literally, transformed myself. Bikram began to get old. The same routine, the heat, the stink….
I decided I wanted to deepen my practice so, in September of 2006, I went to a 200 hour yoga teacher training course at Kripalu in Massachusetts in the Berkshire Mountains. While Bikram had systemized yoga into a 90 minute “torture chamber” that had tremendous benefit, it was very narrow in its exploration of the “map” of yoga. Kripalu enlightened me to a much deeper understanding of what yoga is. The yoga postures; poses; Asana’s are but one aspect of many in the map of yoga. When I told one of the senior teachers at Kripalu that I had been living with type 1 diabetes since age 14, she said, “Now that is a yoga pose.” Since 2006 I have continued to practice yoga and even guide some others in the inquiry of yoga. Yoga is, ultimately, not something you do…….It is, instead a path of inquiry. As such, it has accelerated my quest to understanding and correcting diabetes.