service

Best Of

/ embracingspirit / 8 Comments

I have never been one to get wound up over popularity contests and certainly have never put myself in the running for a “best of” anything. Instead, I humbly go about my life doing what I believe I am here to do. I am the least competitive person you might ever meet, unless I am competing with myself. I generally pay very little attention to what other people are doing as it relates to comparing myself to them.

Each year our city offers a “best of” contest. For many this is a time for their businesses to be recognized as a great place to go and the awards are often hung up in establishments.

In my quest for to be more vulnerable this year, I decided to toss my name in the hat, but NOT as a yoga studio. I opted to steer away from the yoga studio category since my small studio hosts just a handful of. classes per month and the rest work is out in the community taking yoga into the world of assisted living settings. When I saw the category of “person who makes a difference” I decided that felt much more aligned with me and I decided to go for it.

When people ask the specifics of what I do, most people are surprised if not shocked that nearly every neighborhood in every community has homes that have been adapted to accommodate sometimes up to eight individuals with disabilities that require 24/7 care. These people might be living with a traumatic brain injury, dementia or other neurological condition that requires constant care.

Within that care system, I am blessed to bring yoga to them. I load up my car with straps, blocks, scarves and other tools and off I go. I currently serve over 50 different homes and see close to 375 people per month who are living in these homes.

Most of the time these residents have minimal outside world connection. They occasionally have a community outing but for the most part, they are isolated and with isolation comes loneliness.

Each day that I get in my car to commute (sometimes 200-300 miles), I am filled with excitement. I get so much from them that I often say that one day I will return to my beginning roots when I taught yoga for free and just do it because it is so rewarding. Thankfully I am very fortunate and blessed that I earn a living doing something that I love so very much.

What I do not love is the lack of awareness the world has for people who could be your neighbors. The lack of neighborly love and a desire to engage with others is maddening. Most of the homes that I visit have never met their neighbors. Imagine how fulfilled these people might be if you took your passion or hobby or gift and shared it with them? What if more people included them in the neighborhood cookie exchange or even an email list to offer the occasional help? Can you imagine the mutual joy that would come by sharing an audio book or a game of cards?

I want people to realize that as we all age there is a likelihood we will one day be having the same lonely experience in the last chapter of our lives. How can we as a world make a difference?

This is not about ME being the best of anything. This is about the BEST people I get to serve each day.

I want THEIR stories to be known. Please consider voting for me so that as the awareness grows on the lives living in assisted living, perhaps more people will choose to serve them.

VOTE HERE

**go to city life and scroll to “person making a difference” find my name (Stacie Wyatt, Embracing Spirit Yoga)

About Stacie

Stacie believes that it is her life purpose to share the gift of Yoga with anyone who is willing to say yes. In addition to raising a family and being an advocate for those with disabilities, Stacie is founder of Embracing Spirit Yoga which specializes in bringing adaptive Yoga into community centers and rehabilitation clinics. Bringing her depth of compassion to the mat–or the chair–she offers students the opportunity to grow as an individual in all aspects of their life. She is currently contracted in over 50 assisted living settings.

With over sixteen years experience, Stacie Wyatt is an E-500 hour Registered Yoga Teacher with Yoga Alliance Certified Brain Injury Specialist, Life Wellness Coach, Senior YogaFit Instructor, Mind/Body Personal trainer, Stress Reduction and Meditation Instructor, Pilates Instructor, and Barre Instructor. Stacie is also certified in Integrative Movement Therapy™and is also a believer in the power and application of essential oils for health and wellness and proudly shares doTERRA essential oils.

Stacie brings her personal life experience of raising a daughter with a disability and over 12 years working in special education to her everyday Yoga classes making them accessible and enjoyable for all abilities.

In addition to teaching classes at a variety of local centers and health clubs, Stacie also continues to offer Yoga and Wellness coaching individually to those seeking private sessions.

What the Eyes See

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Eyes that look are common; eyes that see are rare.

He sits on the end of the sofa with a warm blanket and foam boots to keep his ankles from hitting each other as his body uncontrollably shakes.

He watches every move I make. He cannot speak or move voluntarily.

He attempts to smile at my horrible jokes. I am certain on my bad hair days when I acknowledge that I just didn’t have time to deal with my hair, he is laughing.

While I teach the adaptive yoga class to the other residents, he watches every move I make.

When I hold his hand and we talk about how horrible the football season has been or the beautiful changing weather, his eyes stare into mine.

There is an inaudible language that is spoken. His eyes see and express so much.

This week as we were chatting, I mentioned that I believe the eyes see into the true spirit or a person.

Just then something amazing happened. Watch this…

Think Yoga is all about asana (postures) and touching your toes?

The Last One

/ embracingspirit / 2 Comments

In many of my experiences walking into into a group home to share Yoga I am often met with much reluctance. I think this is partly because so many view yoga as it is something you do on the floor with a somewhat healthy body in strange shapes.

For someone in a wheelchair this idea seems obviously impossible and out of their ability or comfort zone, and rightly so.

Several years ago I was standing in the kitchen of a home a couple years ago trying my best to cajole a few guys into joining me. I often have to frame it in terms of “hey, come over here and hang out with me for a minute”. I get to chatting and asking them questions and engaging in them, and then usually before long I have them hook, line and sinker. This particular day was just that except that the only person in the kitchen was a large man who made several wisecracks to me about doing yoga.

I started with my usual onslaught of engaging questions like what did you have for lunch, did you see who won the football game, what is your favorite season, how long have you lived in Colorado, etc. Within a few minutes, we are in a deep conversation about the mountains and things we agree make Colorado awesome. After a short while passed and he made another crack about yoga, I giggled and said we had actually just been practicing yoga for the last fifteen minutes.

I explained to him what the definition and essence of yoga is and that is exactly what we have been doing. Gotcha! I exclaimed as he grumbled something about weird yoga people. I offered him a professional foot rub and the rest is history.

Since that day, he and I have met twice a month for 1:1 yoga for over two years.

Here is what it looks like—I arrive and wake up him for a nap, I insist he come out of his room (he prefers isolation and even though I honor his preference, part of the deal with me is some resemblance of boundaries and expectations), he shuffles his large and partially paralyzed body to an easy chair in the living room, I plop down on the floor and rub his feet and then with his permission I move his body for him. I stretch his left side and listen to his horrible wise-cracks and jokes.

Just like that, I was able to get a skeptic to see that Yoga is union, coming together and finding a sense of self in the moment.

In time I have watched as his confidence grew and we went from me moving his left side to him agreeing to arm wrestle me, pull me up from the floor and reach for me. Prior to Yoga he often said “I can’t move my left arm, it is paralyzed”. Now he sees that while it may not be as strong as it was before his accident, it is moving some and he is building strength in his once really strong arms.

After about a year of working with this man I arrived one day to learn he was in the intensive care unit. It didn’t occur to me once to not swiftly drive over to the hospital and complete our yoga session there.

He was intubated but awake when I walked into the strange sights, smells and sounds of an ICU. I introduced myself to his nurse and explained I was his yoga teacher. The quizzical look on her face was something I see often when people don’t fully get what I do. I asked her if I could rub his feet and she agreed that he would probably like that. As I stood next to his head to say hello, his eyes opened and he looked shocked to see me. I teased him that he couldn’t get out of yoga by being in the ICU so we better get busy. His eyes filled with tears and even though he couldn’t speak, I understood what he was saying.

As I finished up rubbing his feet and was packing my things his heart rate and breathing became labored and alarms got louder and louder. His oxygen was tanking despite being on a ventilator. I instinctively put my hand on his chest and said “Watch me. Breathe with me”. After about 30 rounds of deep breathing, his numbers returned to as normal as they could given his situation. The nurse stood with her eyes wide open. I told him I was going to glue a picture of my face to the ceiling so that every time his oxygen dropped he’d see my face and remember to breathe. His eyes twinkled.

It is one of my greatest pleasures to showcase my students’ yoga practice to people who would never see yoga through this particular lens. The first feat is getting the students to see it’s not twisted bodies on the floor, the second is showing staff or caregivers the possibilities. Moving his body for him created not only connection but also the movement his once healthy body still desired.

This beautiful soul had his last foot rub a couple weeks ago and took his final breath this week. I will deeply miss our time together and what he gave my life. It is usually the least likely Yoga students that bring me the most. I hope that he valued our time together as much as I did. He was a special one.

Follow me for more goodness!

Losing and Lessons

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It is fair to say that every human on the planet has lost something or someone. We have all had events or people in our lives that invited us to feel loss. For some it has been the actual loss of a person, or perhaps the loss of an opportunity, or even the loss of a dream.

For this past month or so I have circled back as I do so often every year around my daughter’s birthday. In my own process of evolving and working to be the best version of myself that I can be, I have given myself permission to feel anything and everything when it comes to her birthday. For years I stuffed the emotions that I thought some might see as an ungrateful and resentful mom. I have since learned that nobody’s opinion really matters when it comes to how I feel, as my feelings are valid and real, regardless of what they are. I am able to now openly share with myself and others that there is indeed a loss when it comes to her. She was born this little perfect sweet little baby girl but within a few years was identified with multiple developmental disabilities and the reality that my relationship with my only daughter was not going to be that of my friends you had a “typical” daughter. I was not going to have (easily) conversations and mother daughter outings. Instead, I would forever be her mode of transportation and decision maker. I would not be helping her to plan her dream wedding, but instead I would be planning where she would live when I am too old to care for her. I wouldn’t be celebrating her college degree and career path but instead finding appropriate day programs for her to feel some resemblance of purpose and meaning in her life.

That is a huge loss.

Through the process of my wakeup years ago, I realized that within the loss is a great lesson.

I am now able to see all that I have gained. I have taken the loss and created something amazing and powerful through the lesson of acceptance and grace. You can hear my whole story here on this awesome podcast. I chose to accept and do something with this amazing gift I was given, through her and as her.

The point is the lesson I have learned was that life doesn’t always give us what we may see as the ideal, but if we open our hearts to seeing the lesson, it may just rock your world.

When my children’s father died in 2014 I experienced another huge life changing lesson through the process of loss. I had already lost him in many ways as we divorced when things got too much for him related to our daughter and the vastness of what our life had become. To be completely honest, he wasn’t the greatest dad and he definitely was not able to show up for himself, or the kids, however I was willing to see the lesson in his unfortunate death. One of the greatest days in my life as a mom was witnessing my boys show up for him, regardless of his inability to show up for them. You can read about that pivotal day in my life here.

When he died, he was alone. He had made decisions in the last year of his life that prompted his last few days to be that where he was not surrounded by anyone as he transitioned. The painful reality of his last few years was just too much for my kids once they had said their beautiful goodbye days before, and he was estranged from his friends and family.

That was a big loss. Not just for him, but for my children, and in a way myself.

The lesson I learned from that loss has become a huge part of my life and service work. Within a few months of his death, I had a mystical and powerful yearning to volunteer in hospice. I woke one morning from a deep sleep knowing that I had to serve those dying and that nobody should die alone. I also had another deliberate truth that my service would be rubbing people’s feet while they were making their journey. I am not even a foot person! But, I knew it was what I had to do. So I did.

This week, one of my yoga students whom I have been spending time with every two weeks fell gravely ill and when I arrived at his group home I was told he was intubated and in the ICU. Due to his previous injures our yoga sessions are essential me rubbing his feet and moving his paralyzed limbs. When I heard about his his current condition, it didn’t not occur to me to NOT go. I jumped in my car and off I went with my magic hands and open heart.

The smells of an ICU and the sensory overload within the space can easily overtake you, if you allow it. Tubes. Alarms. Machines. So much to be distracted by.

I walked in and he was awake but obviously unable to speak. I grabbed is hand and watched as his eyes twinkled with recognition. I did my thing and when I went to say goodbye a single tear fell from his eye.

All alone.

The lesson of acceptance and regardless-of-what-someone-did-or-didn’t-do-you-show-up came from those two losses in my life. I know with every fiber of my being that had my girl been born not as she was and had their father not been who he was and not died the way that he did, I would not have been there for my student, and the countless other strangers who I have had the honor to rub their feet.

I know that.

Loss? Yes, for sure.

Lesson? Absolutely.

Choose Kindness

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I have come to learn that during this season of focusing on our own goals and our own aspirations we can sometimes become consumed with ourselves.  This is not necessarily a bad thing but I have found that this time of year we can lose site of the opportunities to show kindness for someone else as we strive to close out our busy year with achieving our own goals that we may have set for ourselves.

Last week, as I was leaving a class at a senior facility I grabbed my bag and attempted to hurry out to get on with some personal errands I had to do.  I stopped for a second to say goodbye to a sweet little man who often just sits at the computer and cries.  He chooses to never participate in yoga and I rarely see him interact with anyone. Instead, he just cries. Weeps is more like it.

There was my moment to choose myself, or choose kindness.

I pulled up a chair and leaned towards him.  He wiped his tears and stuttered a bit as I sat to talk to him. Since the yoga class prior was about setting goals for growth and personal development, I asked him if he had a goal.  He very quietly whispered, “do you think it is too late to learn to read?”

He is 61 years old.  He had never learned to read.

No wonder he sits in front a computer crying until someone types into the search bar what he is looking for. I got a bit closer and pulled up an easy online reading game and together, we sounded out the letters of the alphabet and some simple words in the game. His face was beaming when he realized that he looked at a picture, a letter and a word and together “read” the word apple. He clutched at my arm and said, “I am reading”.

Five minutes of my life.

I got out of my life and my goals and gave kindness.  It really is so simple.

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