Wheelchair to Saddle – Featured Yogi – Jane Eccles

Yoga Medicine is thrilled to be featuring our very first Share Your Story! This month’s featured story comes from Jane Eccles, an inspiring yogi who used yoga as medicine to rehabilitate her body after a life-threatening illness. What resonates in Jane’s story is the potency of the yoga practice to transform and heal our lives. Read all about her road to recovery in “Wheelchair to Saddle” featured below. Thank you Jane for sharing your passion for yoga with us and the world!

Wheelchair to Saddle: Thank Goodness for Yoga!

After the birth of my son, I contracted Necrotising Fasciitis (NF) known in the press as ‘the flesh-eating disease’. I was given 2 hours to live, told I’d be in the hospital for a year, told I’d be in a wheelchair, was left without abdominal muscles after numerous surgeries to cut out the NF. Life has been a battle, to say the least. I live with daily pain and the easiest of tasks are draining but many people say they would never know if they didn’t know my story. Which is how I like to be – smile and get on with it!

So where does yoga come in? I had learned to walk again and had decided to walk a marathon. I did this with sheer grit and determination but I still wanted to push myself further. My husband qualified as a Sports Science Yoga Coach www.sportsperformanceyoga.com and from when he began to study my life became a little easier (or I learned how to deal with the pain better) 🙂 He has been coaching me for 5 years now and this summer we completed my WheelchairtoSaddle challenge, cycling over 1000 miles from John O’Groats to Lands End in 13.5 days! When I bought my bike, 2 years previous, I couldn’t even get my leg over the crossbar.

Yoga is embedded in our family. I have been training for the past year to begin teaching yoga to children. I now focus, not on what my body cannot do or its disfigurement, but what it is capable of. Yoga has given me the ability to challenge myself.

Read more about Jane’s incredible road to recovery