maya dattani kundalini yoga
Being different wasn’t easy for me. I grew up in a school and feared going in
every day. I would get called names and my glasses would be thrown from person
to person while I tried to catch them!! I was tall, I was skinny, and I didn’t
have the same colour skin like them. I was in a predominantly white school, with
only a handful of Asians and no Black people at all. I stuck out like a sore
thumb!! I hated it!! I did whatever I could to try and fit in and blend into the
crowd. There were many times where I cried myself to sleep. The wanting of
belonging was heavy in my heart. As you can imagine this affected me growing up.
Growing up I barely had a voice, or an opinion on anything. My self esteem was
so low, I hated the way I looked, and most of all I hated being at the centre of
attention. The years passed and I got married at the age of 22. I thought I had
it all, a home, a husband and my beautiful little boy. I could put the past
behind me. This all came crashing down when the relationship with my husband
came to an end. I moved back in with my parents and went through 4 years of
battling the court system over our young boy. I was made out to be an unfit
mother who couldn’t be capable of looking after our son. I became really down, I
mean really down!!….. I suffered from panic attacks and depression, and really
hated myself, and my life. I remember one day driving my car and all of a sudden
I had to pull over!! My eyes had become hazy and I couldn’t see properly, my
breathing became shallow and my chest was hurting! I could feel the panic rising
as I dialed my dad’s number to come and get me from the side of the road. I felt
broken, completely shattered both mentally and physically. I thought there was
something seriously wrong with me and that I needed to be fixed! The day came, I
remember it so clearly. I was in the kitchen after putting my son to bed. I was
just about to take my depression medication and something inside of me just
flipped, like a light switch. I could hear a voice in my head very clearly. This
is not my life, this is not how I am supposed to live. I took action. I threw
the pills in the bin, ( I don’t recommend this unless you speak with your GP)
and said enough is enough, no one can change things for me, I have to do this
myself! At that point I became determined to change my life around and I would
do anything I needed to do to get myself better. That day I googled stress and
panic attacks, and days that followed I read more and more. I could see I wasn’t
the only one suffering. I started to see a glimmer of hope. I came across a
Kundalini yoga DVD called Stress and Detox, the teacher had the same name as me,
Maya, so I saw it as a sign that I needed to give this a go. I had tried yoga
before but this was something so different on many levels. It was weird, she did
some funny breathing and chanted words I didn’t understand but I kept an open
mind and continued. I felt different, I felt better than I had done in ages.
After practicing consistently for a few weeks I remember telling my friend I
felt like I was drunk without the alcohol. I was getting high on life, and I was
beginning to see a way out. This was my journey of how I found Kundalini Yoga.
Over the years, I discovered I had a lot of health issues due to stress, I had
no idea that stress could do this to my body. I thought stress was just all in
the head. How wrong was I! My digestive system was way off track, I had become
intolerant to so many foods. I suffered from severe lower back pain for years,
where I had to take pain killers most nights. I also suffered with UTI’s pretty
much every other week, and horrific migraine attacks where I would be bed bound
at least 8 – 10 days a month, they were so painful and I was unable to function
at all. As well as Kundalini yoga ( the yoga of awareness) I worked with
Ayurvedic practices (an ancient health care tradition from India dating back
over 5,000 years.) It’s where you work with your mind/ body type to bring
yourself back into balance. I also practiced Mindfulness, and Art therapy. I
found peace by being creative, it took my mind off the worry, it brought me joy
to see the things I created, and I still love it now. I learnt to slow down my
breathing and my overactive mind, and my body started to follow, relax and heal
itself. All these practices and experiences of life have made me who I am today!
I wouldn’t change it for anything now. I have learnt so much from these
experiences and now I can help other people in similar situations. I know going
through divorce was hard and at the time I couldn’t see an end. However, it gave
me a new lease of life, a new sense of freedom. To live life on my terms and I
love it! I remarried and have an amazing relationship with my husband, whom I
truly love and trust. I can completely be myself, I do not have to pretend to be
someone who I am not. My son is living between both houses. He is now 15 and l
love spending time with him and love his big squeezy hugs when I can get them
out of him. And the ex husband is still in the picture and is a great dad to our
son. From a life that I hated, to a life that I love! I know once I took back
control of my life and made my choices consciously, everything changed for me.
This allowed me to set my boundaries and move forward step by step. It wasn’t
easy but I did it. This process allowed me to create my life rather than to let
life happen to me. If I can deal with a marriage ending, and child custody
battle through the courts, that resulted in me being at my lowest point, ever!
The stress, the anxiety, the health issues and the feeling of being helpless,
incapable and unhappy, then you can too. This is why I do what I do. I love to
help people feel better, feel better in their mind, their physical body, help
them to connect and learn to love themself. And uplift their soul. It gives me
great pleasure to see them smile and actually know it’s for real, and it’s
coming from deep within the heart. This is why I call myself the Conscious
Change Creator. I am here to help you create change consciously.
