I've been on a Yoga for Cancer teacher training course this week with one of my incredible teachers, Vicky Fox - something I've wanted to do for the longest time.  I feel so enriched by all the learning this week, but I've wanted to share a particular takeaway as we round out the week.

I know many people who have had cancer, as I'm sure you do too.  In the UK at least, with up to one in two of us expected to receive a diagnosis in our lifetimes, cancer is bound to touch all our lives in some way or another. This training has reminded me not only how unique everyone's experience is, and never ever to assume what that experience might be, but to meet people where they are, and to empathise and assist in new ways.

While I haven't faced something as life-changing as a cancer diagnosis, my body has given me its own lessons in vulnerability this year: recurring back and groin pain, and a shoulder injury that has left me unable to move my arm in the way I once could without thinking.  For the first time, I've had to live with months of sustained restriction, pain and the anticipation of pain, with the frustration of not being able to do what once came easily. 

My body is slowly teaching me compassion, patience, and the truth that ageing, illness, and change affect all of us.

As a teacher, I want to say this: I know I haven't possessed the skill to adapt my classes for everyone who needed it, and I feel that painfully now.  Some of you may have come to yoga (mine or others' classes) with personal challenges and felt unseen or "unable." For that, I ask forgiveness for ever knowingly or unknowingly alienating people from a practice that is valuable to anyone who wishes to be uplifted and empowered by it.  And I pledge to do better.  Because in truth, all of us are both "able" and "unable" in different ways, at different times in our lives.  All of us will feel pain, injury and illness. 

I've often thought that some of the best yoga teachers are those who have faced great challenges in their own bodies — who know what it is to be stiff, distracted, anxious or injured.  But having been in a relatively "able" body for most of my yoga years, I've sometimes found it difficult to relate to others' challenges.  Perhaps finally, my own body is giving me the gracious gift of that lesson, and I hope it will continue to make me a better teacher.

I learned so many practical things this week: how to offer modifications for all bodies, how to support people through side effects of treatment, and why breath, mindfulness, and posture are often the first and most important things to address.  But - I'm finally getting to it! - a memorable takeaway from the week - a beautiful meditation I hadn't come across before:

Just Like Me...

You start by imagining someone in your mind's eye.  It could be someone you've found challenging or difficult to relate to recently (we all have them in our lives, don't we?)...

Go ahead, close your eyes and imagine them before you.  It starts something like this:

• This person has a mind, body and heart, just like me.

• This person has thoughts, feelings and emotions, just like me.

• This person has had difficult times in their life, just like me. 

• This person's body will one day change, falter, or fail, just like me.

• This person longs for safety, health, and love, just like me…
  

It's so simple, yet so powerful.  This meditation shows us a way to recognise in this moment that someone else's struggle is mine, and that they might recognise their struggle in me.  That we are the same. 

That feels especially poignant right now, when seeing others as unrelatable, whether in our personal relationships, communities, or even across nations, seems commonplace. Easy to see someone as so different from us in their behaviours, ideas, beliefs and politics beyond our capability to understand.  We may find ourselves judging, disliking, othering, or even hating.  But this practice calls us back to our shared humanity with such truthful simplicity. 

That's been my takeaway this week: to return to this recognition so tragically easy to forget — whoever stands before me is just like me.  Human, just like me.  Fallible, just like me.  Injured, just like me. Scared, just like me. Divine, just like me. I'll be practising that little meditation often, especially when compassion and understanding feel the hardest to find, to help me acknowledge the suffering in others, as well as my own.

I've recorded the meditation and shared it on my WhatsApp channel if you'd like to have a listen. It's a small thing, but I hope it brings you a moment of grounding, connection, and peace.

Let's practice.