Weaning off the pain pills through yoga

Valerie Peters has been practising yoga for two decades when a spinal injury accompanied by intense headaches left her in constant pain despite multiple visits to the hospital.

She sought a solution to alleviate the pain without needing to keep taking prescription pain medication.

"From a young age, I loathed taking pills because of their side effects; this made me to join yoga as a lifelong therapy,” says Valerie.

This led her to her gain additional training to be a yoga teacher in addition to her training in education psychology, working with cancer patients and depressed people in Mombasa.

She explains that there are many different branches of yoga, all of which can ultimately lead to the experience of union. As an instructor, she majors in the practices of Hatha Yoga ; a system of physical postures whose higher purpose is to purify the body, giving one awareness and control over its internal states and rendering it fit for meditation.

In her classes at Bahari Beach Hotel fitness studio in Nyali, she teaches learners in groups but acknowledges everybody as an individual, therefore making her to build up specific moves for each individual.

"I train people with unique challenges such as cancer patients and others with mental wellness challenges, this calls for appreciating everybody the way they are,” she says.

Valerie says she is passionate to indulge cancer patients in her yoga classes with the belief that the disease can be fought through all fronts, including finding inner peace and calmness. "Yoga gives those suffering peace of mind as it slows down the mental loops of frustration, regret, anger, fear, and desire that can cause stress," she explains.

She goes on to explain that the design of yoga is aware of the fact that stress is implicated in so many health problems-from migraines and insomnia to lupus, eczema, high blood pressure, and heart attacks-if one learns to develop a calm and peaceful mind, they are likely to live longer and healthier alongside treatment.

"Improved flexibility is one of the first and most obvious benefits of yoga. During a beginners' first class, they may probably not be able to touch their toes, never mind do a backbend. But if they stick with it, they’ll notice a gradual loosening, and eventually, seemingly impossible poses will become possible,” she notes.

According to Valerie, there are many myths about yoga practice and its benefits. She says the true purpose of this old practice was never about contorting into the perfect pose, wearing cute yoga outfits, or building a social media following with sexy backbend photos, "yoga is about a lot more than physical prowess, preternatural flexibility, or having the perfect yoga booty."

Farhana Adamji, 47, is a yoga student in Valerie's class. She also fell in love with yoga as a form of body fitness and mental therapy in 2000 after developing an acute back problem that made her fly to India in search of medication.

Farhana indicates that each time she practices yoga, it takes her joints through a full range of motion, and this has helped in preventing degenerative arthritis or mitigate disability by "squeezing and soaking" areas of cartilage that normally aren't used.

"Yoga has got my blood flowing throughout the body especially specifically through the relaxation exercises learnt that helps in blood circulation in hands and feet," she notes.

According to Paramahansa Yogananda, author of bestselling Autobiography of a Yogi, recently featured in the Netflix film Awake and who brought yoga to the West in 1920 with the Self-Realization Fellowship, “many people think of yoga as just physical exercises-the postures that have gained widespread popularity in recent decades- but these are actually only the most superficial aspects of this profound science of unfolding the infinite potential of the human mind and soul.”