Clayton Yoga Passionate Why: Sarah Slattery

Passionate Why Essay
Clayton Yoga recently celebrated the graduation of 6 more awesome yoga teachers! The following blogpost is written by a most beautiful and recent Clayton Yoga Teacher Graduate.  We hope you enjoy reading about Sarah Slattery’s Passionate reason for teaching and practicing yoga.

I don’t heal the body. The body heals the body. I align spines and minds with the divine and make people fine. 
The last three years have been a rocky road in graduate school pursuing a Doctorate in Chiropractic. I have learned a lot about how the body heals holistically, but something was always missing. Yoga is that missing link. Re-establishing the mind-body connection through breath, meditation, and movement combined with Chiropractic care can improve not only the body’s holistic healing mechanisms, but the mind and soul as well. I want to teach yoga because I want to teach responsibility. A personal yoga practice for many has the potential to fill in the gaps in their chiropractic “rehab” care. Even simple breathing exercises can be beneficial for patients, especially those under chronic stress.

My goal is to build a wellness Chiropractic practice that incorporates yoga and meditation. I love yoga because the more I practice the more spiritual my understanding of healing becomes. Yoga has also given me a certain confidence in my body that I have never had before, and this confidence is something I hope to pass on to my students in a world of vanity. I enjoy yoga because with every practice there is discovery. Whether it is the easiest way to get into a pose, or the regulation of breath, each practice is new. I have realized through yoga practice it is nothing more than my ego that holds me back, focusing on healing breaths allows me to detach from the ego, and accept what is right now.

Breathing and meditation have been the biggest struggles for me, but now that I have learned different breathing techniques, this part of daily practice is what I strive to share the most with others when they have reservations about certain poses. Meditation takes practice for everyone, and for me I find that the best way to meditate is to just relax on the floor with my eyes closed and some peaceful music. Everyone is different though, so what may work for me may not work for the next person and that is OKAY! That is what I love about yoga. It can be modified for everyone and anyone! Just the other day in the clinic I was treating a patient with a complaint of shoulder pain, after her appointment, she did a forty minute yoga session with me, including but just a few shoulder stretches.

Re-establishing the mind-body connection for her was all she needed to overcome her pain pattern. That was amazing to me. Yoga can help people with any ailment, but especially people with chronic pain. Frequently, chronic pain patients have a psychological component due to mental duress experienced with physical stressors on the bodies. Stressors can come in many different forms, but a few of the common ones are trauma, thoughts, and toxins. Yoga helps people relieve these stressors from a personal, sovereign, autonomous level. This is why I LOVE yoga. Yoga is the missing link to my chiropractic practice, and I have helped quite a few people so far with regular practice. I am excited to see what the future holds bringing these these two beautiful healing modalities together.

Are you interested in joining our upcoming Clayton Yoga Teacher Training team?  Is so, why not set up a personal phone consultation with us and click here: www.claytonyoga.com/call.  We know you will absolutely love this yoga training course and are here to help you do a great job!