He is showing his students how find the mind-body connection so they can learn to "feel" again.
"It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 1978, and we just hit ice going over a bridge. And our car tumbled down the embankment. My father and sister were killed," Matthew Sanford recalled.
Doctors told Sanford he'd never feel his lower body again.
"They know my spinal cord has been severed," he said.
So he devotes his life to proving them wrong. "That level of sensation is present in the mind-body relationship. It's not going to make me walk again, but it's crucial to a full recovery."
From his wheelchair, he's become a certified Yoga instructor, teaching others just like him and showing them how to feel their bodies once more.
Samantha Drost was paralyzed by a wave while swimming. Traditional therapy taught her to forget her legs and focus on what she had left. Yoga helped reconnect her brain to her body.
"I was more aware of where my feet were and my legs were, and the people that were helping me noticed they didn't have to lift as much," she said.
To put some science behind his work, Sanford took part in a Rutgers University study. Doctors took MRI scans of his brain. As they squeezed his ankles, his sensory cortex lit up in the same way it would a non -paralyzed person, meaning the brain recognized the pressure.
"My paralyzed body still has an energy that flows through it," Kevin Bjorklund said. "There's still a life force there."
Bjorklund fell of a tractor at age of 3, and he's been paralyzed from the chest down ever since. He says Yoga helps his breathing and eases fears of falling.
"There are universal principles in Yoga that don't discriminate," Sanford said.
Living and moving with the whole body, paralyzed or not.
Sanford started a non-profit company called Mind-Body Solutions. He travels the country training other Yoga instructors and speaking to health care leaders about incorporating Yoga into traditional therapy.
WHAT IS YOGA: Yoga not only involves stretching, but it is more about the balance between mind and body, a balance that nearly 16 million Americans strive for. Yoga's main goal is creating a balance through strength and flexibility, and this is done by performing a variety of poses and postures that have different physical benefits. The poses can be done quickly back-to-back creating heat in the body, or they can be done slowly to increase stamina and perfect the alignment of the pose. Yoga is ever changing, not the poses, but the way different people perform the poses. There is always room for improvement and development in yoga, both physically and mentally. (SOURCE: Iyengar Yoga Resources)
PARALYZED YOGA INSTRUCTOR: Matthew Sanford, a yoga instructor, has been paralyzed from the chest down for 30 years. He cannot feel the tickling of his toes, but if you squeeze his ankles very hard he will sense it. Michael preaches that we can live more fully in our bodies with a stronger mind-body connection. Michael finished school with a graduate degree in philosophy. When he was 25, he met a yoga teacher who took him to the local martial arts studio and helped him get onto a mat. Sanford had miraculously spread his legs wide. It changed his life, and now Sanford teaches yoga at conferences around the country. He has won many awards for his pioneering ideas in medicine and now speaks at business conventions and tries to use the power of yoga to inspire those who are not disabled too. (SOURCE: Lifebeat) PARALYZED YOGA: An adaptive yoga class is where some students stay in their chairs, while others take mats on the floor. The regular yoga poses are modified to benefit the people who stay in their chairs. Sanford usually teaches from a mat on the floor, however, he does teach in his chair as well. He teaches standing positions too, that he cannot do, yet, he understands how to do them just as well as any other teacher. Sanford believes that it's not how you look in a pose, but how you feel in it and how present you are while doing it. Sanford can now put himself in a "V" position because he has come to know his body, balance, and flexibility so well. (SOURCE: azdailysun.com)
For more information:
Mind Body Solutions
http://www.mindbodysolutions.org
info@mindbodysolutions.org
(952) 473-3700
