One of Annie’s photographs…
I was just going about my business, working my life as it definitely keeps working me and there it came…a poem written by one of our students. She offered it as a way of saying thank you for what she receives from our adaptive yoga classes. It blows my mind in this season of death and rebirth.
In this time of bodies destroyed
receive the thousand colors of love–
stronger than the despair that marked
one end.
Winds blow, darkness presses
but
the dawn comes, light fills the world,
the body is reborn.
Annie is fierce, willful to a fault, and has a heart the size of Montana. She loves the outdoors, loves hiking and kayaking, and is one of the most gifted photographers I have ever known. This last talent is supposedly only a hobby. With most of her day, Annie is a schoolteacher for children with special needs. She lives in north Minneapolis and sometimes wears hiking boots.
Annie’s body is changing and she has been fighting it. She lives with a fairly rare neurological disorder that makes her limbs, especially on one side, fire randomly out of her control. This makes walking difficult and balance even harder. She walked into class a few years ago with canes and an attitude to not give in to her frustrating body. Unfortunately, her condition has progressed and her willful attitude only aggravates her symptoms and she receives an incapacitating level of fatigue. Now she must come to class in a wheelchair and partake in only some of the poses. The truth is that Annie has never been a better yoga student. She is exploring her unminding body through ease and grace rather than will and effort. The result is her words above.
Read her poem again. Know that through an incredibly difficult body, another body is being reborn. Feel her words. They are for us.
Now look at her photo again…feel the hope, the bursting color, and the succulent droplets of water.
If you ever wonder why I do what I do…it is to witness people like Annie.
Annie creates books of her photographs, accompanied by her poetry. I dare you to explore her work further. If you are interested getting some of these books, write to info@mindbodysolutions.org and we will send your contact info to her.