Doing Yoga at home means I don’t have to worry about what others might think of my lack of coordination.

Many survivors have one sided weakness, like me, and so putting their bodies in these beautiful shapes can be more difficult than for the average person. For me, the idea of flailing around like a beached whale in front of strangers was too much of a turn off. That’s why when I saw Nikki’s online classes which I could do at home, I was really interested to find out more. They are small group classes done via the video conferencing platform Zoom. You can turn your camera off if you would rather, which I did for my first session as I wanted to see what it was like first. It’s not like anyone actually watches you doing the poses, as everyone is doing their own thing, so the next time I turned it on again. Plus what’s great about Nikki May, is she’s a survivor too, so she gets it. After 6 strokes and had surgery to remove a brain tumor, she understands all too well the many ways a brain injury can affect us and holds Restorative Yoga sessions specifically for brain injury survivors.

What is Restorative Yoga?

I’ll admit it, I had no idea that there are lots of different types of Yoga which have different aims and intensities. Whilst some are physically demanding, Restorative Yoga is the most gentle, so you don’t need a baseline of fitness to do it. It helps relax the mind and the stretches will work on releasing tension in the body. It’s great for inducing sleep and some people even gently nod off whilst doing these sessions. Also by mindfully engaging muscles in each area of the body we help the nervous system repair the connections in the body and brain to operate them. (I briefly tried to explain before in Exercise can help your brain injury, not just your muscles . )

Nikki has done a specialist course in Yoga for brain injury, so she’s got you covered.

As well as being a fellow survivor, Nikki has completed additional training in how Yoga should be used to support the brain injury recovery process. This course from Yoga International covered:

• Different types of brain injury and their potential symptoms and challenges.
• Neuroanatomy and physiology key concepts.
• How to optimize neuroplasticity and nervous system regulation for healing.
• Methodologies and principles for adapting asana to address things like dizziness, poor balance, spasticity, and learning and memory deficits.
• How to tailor meditation for students with brain injuries to address challenges with attention control and mental health.

Pretty impressive, right. But the best thing about Nikki, is how understanding she is. The first thing she did with me is ask about my health conditions to make sure she knew what things to be aware of.  For example, I told her that I have hypermobility which is where you have extra long ligaments so you are more flexible than most, but can accidently over stretch as a result. She reminded me to take it easy and not to be tempted to stretch as far as I could for this reason. Also she’s relaxed and understanding. She didn’t mind when at the last minute I couldn’t attend a session as I felt unwell, or the time I got confused about which day I was on and accidently missed the next scheduled session.

Nikki has come such a long way and was awarded Headway achiever of the year 2019 in recognition of how she set up her own business and supports other survivors. And what’s so funny, is that it wasn’t until after our first online Yoga session that Nikki and I realised we knew each other! Back in 2015 we went to the same Headway support group. Small world huh!