Robin Dunn Bryant

In 2006 I was diagsed with breast cancer. Suddenly all that mattered was my body. After two surgeries, chemo and radiation I hardly recognized myself and was physically and emotionally disconnected. I started practicing yoga at our neighborhood YMCA. Fast forward a few years and I was struggling. I was working an extremely stressful job, often working 80 + hours a week and I'd developed stress-induced high blood pressure that they weren't able to control with meds. I was at the doctor's office for yet ather appointment and the nurse practitioner made the mistake of asking me how I was. I started to cry. I wept for in the office for 45 minutes. When I left, with a te in hand excusing me from work for 2 weeks, the nurse implored me to make some changes so I could save my own life. I’d spent the majority of my life living in my head, igring my body’s requests (and demands) for rest, decent food or exercise. I stayed in relationships with partners; friends and employers even though being around them made me feel sick. I igred my body and all of its good intuition and kept trying to intellectualize my way through life. And I was so sick that I couldn’t do that anymore. I moved deeper into my own healing, integrating yoga, Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE), meditation and Reiki into my home practice. My time on the mat compelled me to write, which was a relief for me because I’d been suffering through writer’s block. I took aspects of this practice to the yoga studio where I teach and as the framework for the Somatic Coaching I developed.