I remember the first time I knocked the wind out of myself, falling flat on my back and quite obviously not landing a small ski jump I attempted at 6 years old.
For a moment, breathless, my brain screamed, "Help, I can't breathe. Am I going to die?" Luckily, my breath was restored within moments; I got up and bombed down the ski slope at high speed.
I grew up in Vail, Colorado. My father was a hard-core skier, a ski instructor, and I learned to ski as I learned to walk. Thanks, Dad! Amazingly my injuries were few as a young ski racer and mountain adventurer unless you consider frostbitten toes twenty years later from all the cold days spent outdoors.
In my adult years, I learned the sport of surfing in Maui, Hawaii, and quickly developed a passion for it. I continued this passion as I moved to S.California, Encinitas, to study yoga with yoga master Tim Miller. His yoga studio, at the time, was within walking distance to Swamis. My passion for surfing continued, and as I returned to Maui after four years of training, I went to Longbeach to ship my car back to Maui. On the way back from Longbeach, I stopped at Tressels with a friend, and during my only time surfing there, I took off on a wave bigger than I expected and tore my meniscus on the spot. Surgery and recovery were straightforward though having a knee the size of a watermelon leaves its imprint on the brain, not to be repeated. Through the acupuncture and rehab process, I experienced a full recovery.
In 2005 a few years after meniscus surgery, I met with my greatest injury, luckily not from surfing but from aerial acrobatics. While living in Maui, I worked backstage at a theater performance called Ulalena. It was a resident show at the time, developed by the same producers of Cirque du Soleil, depicting Hawaiian mythology through live dance, chant, and acrobatics. Live acrobatic performances highlighted the theater performance, particularly the aerial tissue. A long fabric hangs 30 feet in the air where the acrobat ascends and descends, doing contortion and dancing along with the silk material. It is beautiful!
As I developed a hobby of doing this art one day, I rigged the material at another location and had an error. The fabric came unrigged from its anchor point. I plunged 15 feet to the ground, landing on my wrists, shattering both simultaneously while fracturing my ankle bone and cracking my vertebra in the lumbar region. Cast from fingertip to above the elbow, wrapped with a back brace and cast from toe to below the knee, I was wheeled in a wheelchair out of the hospital after surgery to place pins in my wrists. Within three months -4 months, I experienced a full recovery through the power of meditation, visualization, yoga, breathwork, acupuncture, physical therapy, prayer, blood, sweat, and tears.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, it's true. These personal healing experiences add to my years of professional training to support others in powerful healing processes.