Waking Up

Waking Up

Many people say that yoga is just something they cannot do. They claim that their body is not made for it or just incompatible with what the practice of yoga entails. One thing that most of those people have is four working limbs. Matt, however, does not have this luxury. After being in a severe car wreck that killed his father and sister, he was left paralyzed and in extreme pain. Medical efforts were given to alleviate some of the pain in addition to spiritual efforts to rely on God. After his condition became increasingly worse, he said that he "trusts no one" (63). This was before yoga changed his life.

One thing right out of the gates that makes me relate to Matt is his inability to trust people. I trusted my parents and told them about my eating disorders, depression, suicide attempts, and self-harm after I had hid all of this from them for six or seven years, it did not go that well. I was told to just decide to be happy and get better. I went to see a psychologist to fix all of my problems, but I suffered a severe relapse and was trying to tell him about it. While I was divulging information about how my self-hard and eating disorders flared back up, he was literally nodding off. A professional that was trained in this field essentially betrayed any trust I had left in me. If someone in this field could not help me, then who could? Because of this, I relate with Matt’s issues to trust other people.

Going into this book, I was very intrigued as to how someone who suffers from paralysis could do yoga, and Matt amazed me throughout it. One of the most amazing things is that he notes that through yoga, “I grew in dimension as my entire body began whispering to me once again…Progress is what you make of it” (168). I also related to this. When I first started to seriously practice yoga, I thought that my body was a prison that I had a life sentence in. I hated it and everything in it. I thought that through yoga, I could begin to love my body, and I was right. I grew and continue to grow internally in my body as I accept it more and more—from the fold my stomach gets when I sit down to the stretch marks on my lower back.

These things that I am overcoming are minor things when compared to everything that Matt overcame, but I suffered from a different kind of paralysis, an emotional paralysis. Through yoga I too began to feel. However, it was not my body that I was feeling, like Matt, but my emotions that I had bottled up inside of it. One quote at the end of the book really resonated and has continued to echo in my mind after reading it “If nothing else, my life has taught me one thing: The mind and body that I have are the only mind and body that I have. They deserve my attention” (222). I only have one body and one mind, and, with the help of Matt’s memoire, I can one day wake up loving it.