RAINY RIVER — Everyone arrives to yoga for a unique reason.
For Meghan Spooner, a yogi (someone who practices yoga regularly) and teacher at the Rainy River District School Board, her journey to yoga began after a neck injury on her fifth full marathon.
Nothing seemed to relieve her pain. Two years in, someone suggested that Spooner give yoga a try.
“I couldn't move my neck at all,” she said. “And I couldn't turn my head side to side at all. I had gone through physiotherapy, I had gone to the doctors, I had an MRI scan, everything was in place, but it was muscular.”
“So the yoga helped to ease that pain and relax my upper back. And the more I got into it, the more I practiced, more frequently I did yoga, the more I found that my mobility came back.”
“It worked wonders for taking care of the pain and for dealing with all the other stuff that came with it, but also that there was a lovely community locally that I became involved with,” she said.
Prior to getting involved with the local yoga community in Fort Frances, Spooner followed a video online called P90X vinyasa yoga with Tony Horton.
Spooner received her yoga teacher certification around 2015 to help her develop a better understanding of herself as a yogi. She eventually taught yoga classes at the Fort Frances Public Library Technology Centre for two and a half years before the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to a backlog of health and safety requirements, she has not yet returned to teach classes but hopes to one day.
Currently, Spooner does her own yoga practice at home.
When most people think about yoga, they likely think of yoga asana, which refers to the physical postures. The purpose of these postures was originally to prepare the yogi to meditate for longer periods of time, says Spooner, who explains that asana is only one aspect of yoga.
Yoga can be a great way to exercise, handle trauma, develop flexibility, or practice mindfulness, but most importantly, yoga is about being connected.
“Connecting to the body and the breath, and the world at large, or for the ability to sit and just be in space. Work out any junk in your mind or to calm yourself or just be present in the world around you. That's what yoga is. Yoga is not just the asana. It's super multifaceted,” she said.
There are no beginner yogi, only people interested in being in the yoga class. A lack of flexibility has been one of the most common concerns people have when it comes to yoga. However, Spooner reminds us that yoga is more than accomplishing cool poses.
“Yoga is not about achieving a headstand or all these other really wacky wild things that we see on the internet,” she said. “Yoga is strictly about being connected to yourself. And so the flexibility comes with time with the practicing of Asana, but it's not the thing that anyone ever needs to worry about. It is strictly about being in your body and being comfortable in your breath and just being present.”
Being present impacts our wellness in more ways than one. Growing up with anxiety since she was a teenager, Spooner also found that yoga helped to relieve her anxiety in difficult situations as an adult.
“Rather than being reactive, I found myself slowing down… and able to call myself present in my body at that time to just get through what I needed to get through,” she said.
Spooner encourages everyone to use yoga as a tool and take what speaks to them.
The local yoga community called Tru North Yoga Cooperative offers a rotation of classes that include a beginner's class, flow class, power yoga, and fusion class.
To decide which class is best for you, residents are encouraged to speak with an instructor.
Dee O’Sullivan, a certified yoga instructor at Tru North Yoga Cooperative, says it is also a good idea to try all the classes and see which one resonates with you.
“Part of me is just wanting to tell people to come and try and not to worry about whether it might be too hard because you don't know until you try,” she said. “It's really important that you find an instructor that resonates with you and a style of yoga that resonates with you because there are so many different different types.”
However, O’Sullivan notes that individuals with injuries or health conditions should speak with their instructor first to make sure they are safe.
O’Sullivan began her yoga journey through her work as a physiotherapist. Many yoga poses were used when she worked in a children’s program to help kids meet their physio goals.
Her curiosity was sparked when O’Sullivan noticed that the yoga poses seemed to have other impacts, too, such as helping the kids calm themselves and be more present.
“Yoga really is a toolkit,” she said. “It is an ancient practice, actually, from an Indigenous culture in the east of Asia. And so it has hundreds and thousands of years of experience and knowledge that comes with it, which we're now finding is backed by neuroscience.”
“It really does offer you different ways to help you on your path to wellness,” she said.
Brian Cousineau and Tracey Coran are also instructors at Tru North Yoga Cooperative. Yoga class schedules are regularly updated on Facebook, where the booking page can be easily accessed.
The Fort Frances Times / Local Journalism Initiative
