My name is Cands. I’m a trauma survivor and fibromyalgia warrior! It’s an honor to share my story with you.
It started many years ago when I was just 18. I experienced 2 heart-wrenching traumatic events. They were events that happened in quick succession and almost took my life. While I had started studying psychology at 18, I was totally ill-equipped for how post-traumatic stress was about to rock my life. Soon after these events, I developed severe anxiety and panic attacks. It felt like everything inside of me was shaking.
I went into therapy soon after that. My therapist referred me to a mindfulness-based stress reduction course. This course significantly changed the course of my life. It opened my world to mindfulness, yoga and breathwork. I experienced a peace that I hadn’t found in almost a decade. But there was still work to be done, years of unresolved trauma takes time.
Soon after this, I developed fibromyalgia. This is a chronic condition characterised by pain and extreme fatigue. It is incredibly common amongst trauma survivors. That feeling of immobilisation and impending shutdown are closely aligned to immense trauma. My body was reflecting back at me the trauma that had not yet been resolved.
Being diagnosed with fibromyalgia really woke me up to how my body was struggling. I began reading research and with my love of yoga, trying to better understand what I could do to support my body and the healing it had been communicating it needed for so many years. This was a messy, difficult process.
With my psychology background, I had always been pulled towards the effects yoga had on our mental well-being. I enrolled in a trauma-sensitive yoga teacher training. I began working with trauma survivors, and noticed how quickly my healing was paralleling what I was seeing in my classes. I was hooked! I wanted to take this modality deeper. I enrolled in a yoga therapy program, and had my license approved and granted as a counselor. Shortly after graduating as a yoga therapist, I went into remission from fibromyalgia.
Trauma-sensitive yoga and yoga for mental health more broadly, has been a gift to me. It has been the approaches within these modalities that most powerfully impacted my life when other therapies appeared to fall just short of what I needed as a trauma survivor and someone struggling with my mental health.
I hope this inspires you to know that healing is not impossible. Gaining back vitality and a life we love is not out of reach. Baby steps. If my story is anything to go by, every single one of us can rise again.