If you are one of our members, past, present, or future, I’m grateful for you. Your support means we at Glo also have the opportunity to become a more cohesive team. Our work enlivens us and you are a source of inspiration. Hearing from you is a gift.
Your stories share experiences of learning and life-changing transformation that impact the world. Revealing your vulnerability, you privilege us with your attention and abilities to reveal deeper self-understanding and care.
We see ourselves in your stories. You help us see the world differently. You help us to see more world. You challenge us and remind us of the positive differences we make together.
Thank you!
Inspired by your stories, each month I’ll be sharing a conversation with a member of Glo, where we dive deep into how their practice has affected their everyday life. This month, I had the pleasure of speaking with Emer. I was curious about how Glo is part of her routine.
Emer joined Glo in 2016. She shared with me on our call that prior to joining Glo she had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. She was going through a very difficult time, at times could barely walk, and was searching for a way to manage her stress, pain, and recovery while avoiding medication as much as possible. Early in our discussion, she mentioned at around the time of her initial diagnosis, she wasn’t being fair to her body, living in her head a lot.
Her vulnerability led our conversation down a wonderful path I hadn’t anticipated. I’m so inspired by her energy and her story. She reminds us to seek the opportunities to reframe our perspectives, to question and shift the pressures we put upon ourselves, and how to engage with our self-care routines when it seems dauntingly hard to do so. Some passages from our conversation are below. The shortened audio version of our conversation is here.
I’m not fibromyalgia. I am not anxiety. These are states and they are moments we can pass through, that we can overcome. They don’t define us… My body was shouting at me to do something and I had to listen.
I know no matter what, I will feel better after I’ve been on the mat than before I’ve been on the mat. There will always be some positive shifts.
Being aware of the fact that I’m fighting with myself for some reason, that’s learning that I’m able to take away. The fact that I’ve achieved that, that I’ve done it, it’s an accomplishment for me for that day and I’ve definitely learned something new about myself.
There’s a practice I do for myself. It’s a mindfulness practice, every morning, and I think for anyone that has any type of pain or chronic pain it’s so useful to do this. Literally every morning I just say to myself, “what does my body need today?” That’s it. I sit with it for a couple of minutes and I don’t go with the initial, “my body needs to stay in bed.” I try and tease it out a little bit and do a quick sixty-second body scan, and that’s when I decide: am I going to do a class or do I need to rest?
And when I do take a class, I let that after-class feeling really marinate. One moment just struck me. It was a challenging class for me and I just remember finishing that class and lying down and feeling this feeling for about ten minutes and it was a feeling that my body had never felt before and I felt like my body was finally going, “Thank you. Thank you for finally listening to me. This is what I’ve been talking about, this is why I’ve been shouting at you in pain.” I try and dial into that feeling when I’m not really feeling up to it.
Emer’s three favorite classes right now:
Top of the Morning with Kathryn Budig
Yoga Conditioning – 30 min
Happy to Be Here with Steven Espinosa
Hatha – 20 min
Slow and Simple with Stephanie Snyder
Vinyasa Flow – 20 min
