Helen Ferguson
I started practicing Yoga when I was 26 years old & living in London. I’d been travelling for over a year and the party lifestyle was taking a toll on my physical and mental health. I had struggled with weight fluctuations throughout my teens and early 20’s. Low self esteem meant I often attracted the wrong sort of people and situations into my life.
I wanted to change but didn’t know how to bridge the gap between the life I had and the life I wanted. I stumbled into a Bikram Yoga studio one day and signed up for a month. That first class was absolutely brutal, but afterwards I sat with a feeling of inner peace and euphoria that I had never experienced before, so I went the next day ,and the day after, then 14 days in a row!
That was enough to reveal to me that the bridge I needed was this amazing prescription of 26 postures and 2 breathing exercises in a 40° room! From then on, everywhere I travelled, I sought out the Hot Yoga studio and took classes. I became more confident and outgoing and felt better than I ever had, physically and mentally A teacher casually made a comment one day, “You should go to teacher training!” It was an exciting idea that took root in my mind, and in time I brought the idea to fruition and became first an instructor, and then studio owner of my home studio, Sangha Yoga - Queenstown.
For over a decade I led classes in the amazing practice that had so transformed my life on every level. However, after a serious snowboarding accident I developed neuromuscular dysfunction, which caused chronic and often debilitating pain. While I still gained many elements of physical benefit, and a huge amount of mental and spiritual benefit from practicing 26&2 , it became clear that I had to make a change in how I moved my body, the dysfunction had become too patterned into my practice. The solution presented itself in the form of alternative ritualised sequences such as Foundations/re-patterning and 7 Salutations, and the discovery of the incredible benefits of Aerial Yoga! Through those practices was able to reset healthier movement patterns and heal my dysfunction.
