He fell off a ladder and hit his head.
“It changed me.” He said. “I’m different, angry all the time. Most of the time for no reason at all, just filled with rage.”
“My wife says I’m not the man she married and my daughter, well…she won’t even speak to me after one of my episodes. I can see how much it scares her. We used to be so close.”
She was in a car accident and suffered a concussion.
“It’s been 2 years. My body is mostly healed, but I can’t sleep. The depression scares me the most. I feel like a bad mom, but most days I don’t want to get out of bed.”
“By early afternoon I need an energy drink. Homework, dinner and bedtime feel like chores. I used to be a really happy person, now everything feels heavy and hard.”
“A brain tumor.” He said, softly touching a scar on the back of his head. “They got it all. I have a clean bill of health. But, I had to learn to talk and walk all over again. I was a toddler in a 40 year old body.”
At Yoga Support, we hear these stories on a regular basis. People whose lives were forever changed in a instant from a head injury.
In The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk writes that “…trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain and body.”
Yoga Support offers tailored yoga curriculum to those affected by traumatic brain injuries. We connect specially educated teachers at an affordable cost to help people get their lives back.
You can help support our work by joining us for a donation based class at Leap Yoga, Sunday, June 24th, 1pm-2:15pm. You will experience guided breath work and meditation followed by a series of yin and restorative poses led by Maryeth, one of our rehabilitation teachers.
This sequence is designed to encourage healing and balance in both mind and body. Poses will be seated and reclined with a focus on opening the heart. You will leave with several tools to help aid anxiety, depression and sleeplessness.
Maryeth A Loriaux