How Iyengar Yoga gave three people their lives back after suffering injury, abnormality and pain
Bullet damage, a fractured spine and scoliosis; three people who were suffering from pain and lack of movement turned to a form of yoga taught by B.K.S. Iyengar, and improved the quality of their lives immeasurably
The crack of the gunshot was deafening. It took Shobhna Chellaram a few minutes to realise she had been shot by one of the band of armed robbers who had ambushed the car in which she and her family had been travelling along a deserted road in Lagos, Nigeria. The bullet shattered the base of her pelvis and ruptured her femoral arterial branches, lodging in her buttock.
After being flown to London, she spent two months in hospital and had two operations to clean up the mess from the bullet, and returned home on crutches.
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“Lying on my back was excruciating and sitting up only aggravated the pain. I went into severe depression and frequently woke up at night with anxiety attacks. I wondered if I would ever be all right again, ” recalls Chellaram, who was 36 at the time.
Thirteen-year old Anees Chopra, a Grade 8 student in Hong Kong, had always dreamed of becoming a dancer – until she was diagnosed with scoliosis, an abnormal sideways curvature of the spine. X-rays showed a 41-degree curvature, and high risk of continued deterioration. Inserting titanium rods in her spine was the only option, her parents were told. Dancing was out of the question.
“I had to wait for two hours before an ambulance arrived and was taken to a hospital in Chiang Mai in excruciating pain,” says Martin. “I had fractured my spine in four places and was airlifted back to Hong Kong for surgery. The operation, to fuse my spine, lasted five hours. I was in and out of physiotherapy for weeks and remember crying out in pain.”