Finding Healing Through Movement: Veterans Yoga Project Comes to Our Community

I learned about Veterans Yoga Project about two years ago after going to a yoga class at Surf City Brewing. This was the first class taught by Doug King that I had been to. We started talking after class about yoga and then got into what we both do for work. Within that one conversation, I knew the universe had meant for Doug and I to meet. At the time I was working in the pain management clinic at the Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune.

Chronic pain is a complex diagnosis to treat, but that same complexity allows for a wide range of helpful treatment interventions. As a true nerd at heart, I find chronic pain to be one of the most interesting topics to learn about, as well as to educate my patients about. Most patients I meet have never actually been able to sit down with a provider and have them explain the complexities of chronic pain and help them understand it better. When you know more about your nervous system and how it works, it makes addressing your pain feel a bit easier and progress more attainable.

Immediately after that first conversation with Doug, I looked into Veterans Yoga Project. That following Monday I shared this newly found resource with my fellow providers at the pain management clinic, and started to recommend their online classes and videos to every service member I treated.

One of the most wonderful things about yoga that I tried to share with my patients was how it allows you to calm down your nervous system. You take the time to be present and focus on your breathing, which in turn stimulates the vagus nerve and helps us shift into the parasympathetic nervous system (which is our rest and digest setting). Most people in chronic pain spend too much time with the sympathetic nervous system (or fight or flight) elevated; this is also true for people with anxiety and PTSD. So the recommendation for yoga was not to become the most flexible person or to achieve the ability to do head-stands, but to be able to create that time to connect with your breath and your body and address chronic pain from a different angle. It’s hard to do that though when you are following a video on your phone or your computer, or doing something for the first time that’s maybe outside of your comfort zone.  When you don’t have any individual guidance or someone to ask questions, or when you’re trying to clear your head and focus on your breath but you are in your house with an unlimited amount of distractions, it makes a great resource much less effective. VYP has in person classes, but at the time the closest class was in Fayetteville.  I tried arranging to have Doug come to the hospital to teach a class in the pain management clinic, there were too many regulations that prevented us from making that happen. So from that point forward, becoming a physical location for Veterans Yoga Project was added to my business plan for Big Moves.

Fast-forward a year and a half: my dream of Big Moves PT & Performance has become a reality, I reached out to VYP asking to partner as an in-person location for classes, but no response. The universe works its magic once again, and Doug and I reconnected at a yoga class at Salty’s Surf Shack. With his willingness to donate his time and expertise to teach classes, my request to host VYP was approved.

Veterans Yoga Project uses trauma informed yoga to decrease pain and stress in veterans, active duty service members, military, family members, and first responders. They are in their 15th year as a nonprofit doing this wonderful work, serving those who have served our country and our communities. Partnering with them is easily one of the most rewarding milestones of starting my own business,  and I am looking forward to seeing this program grow and support more people and families in our community. I am extremely grateful to Doug for his time, expertise, love of yoga, willingness to pay it forward, and sharing in my passion of helping others.

These classes are for every veteran, active duty service member, and their family members, regardless of what their stress levels are, struggles they have or don’t have, or their physical capabilities. I absolutely encourage you to come if you are struggling with physical and/ or mental pain. I also encourage you to come if you are feeling well and want to find place you feel you belong in this community. Everyone can benefit from taking the time to be present, breathe, and move in a way that thanks their body for what it does for them every day.