October 2009
The participants arrive at Thorpe Community and Senior Center, ready for action. Bins of equipment stand ready to offer each person maximum benefit in a yoga workout. Good wishes and grins greet Iyengar Hatha Yoga Instructor Melinda DeBoer-Ayrey as her students spread out around the room. “You have enough space there?” they ask one another and joke as they set up.
Armed with water bottles and towels, the 
group has the gusto to pull off a challenging exercise routine in any setting. Except this isn’t just any setting. And this isn’t any group of yoga enthusiasts. This is Melinda’s Stretch & Laugh Chair Yoga class. Three of the five members that day manage with some degree of wheelchair assistance. None has any hesitation to participate. It’s an attitude that propels them through their tough days. Continue reading “Flexible and Accessible”
Sarah held a raisin and explored it with her nose, eyes and hands before putting it in her mouth. There, she noted the fruit’s lumpy shape before chewing through its firm skin to the fleshier inside. Finally, she swallowed it, reflecting on the sweet taste. “It sounds simple enough when you describe it (the class exercise), but each member of the group agreed that we’d never experienced anything quite like it,” she assured me. This was practice in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). 
Oh, my aching sacroiliac. My back’s SI joint had been shooting pain through my most basic motions: sitting, standing and sleeping. Like most people, I made a doctor’s appointment. The physician only took care of backs and wouldn’t even glance at my sore knee. “Might they be related?” I asked. After an evaluation, an MRI and physical therapy, I was released, and I guess, pronounced well. Except, I wasn’t. To pursue it further, I needed a pain management specialist. The tests said all my healthy individual parts should be working, so why the twinge? 
A couple took their fourteen-month old son to an animal fair where the little boy especially enjoyed the snuffling pigs. A week later, the family walked by that same area with their son in his stroller. He began pushing at his nose—the sign for a pig. The parents looked at each with wonder. The pigs were long gone, but their son remembered them.
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