California yoga teacher adapts classes for disabled students

From the Santa Cruz Sentinel in California:

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Four decades of yoga teaching has led one well-known Santa Cruz instructor to create classes for those with disabilities, including those who typically move around via wheelchair.

Annica Rose (pictured), 60, started the growing Adaptive Yoga Project two years ago, bringing the popular practice of yoga to those with spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, developmental disabilities and other conditions.

Classes are held Wednesday and Sunday afternoons at Pacific Cultural Center. The program includes a teacher training program in which Rose mentors other teachers and aspiring teachers in exchange for their help in class.

Rose and the director of Cabrillo Stroke and Acquired Disability Center said they believe the two centers are the only ones in the county hosting yoga classes for those with significant physical disabilities.

Rose calls it more of a privilege than a profession.

“I'm so grateful and feel so blessed,” she said. “And I'm optimistic we can see this kind of yoga nationally.”

Cabrillo stroke center Director Debora Bone said people with disabilities need physical activity to thrive.

“And yoga is one system that links the body with more spiritual work and offers a connection to inner peace,” she said. “It is well-suited to serving people.”
Ten students attended Rose's class on a recent Sunday, performing poses in the center of a spacious, wood-floored hall as Rose and four apprentices made adjustments and suggestions. There was soft laughter and quiet and peacefulness in the work.

One student, Lynn Gallagher, has multiple scleroris and is largely confined to a wheelchair.

She said the wheelchair makes it difficult to keep her body aligned, among other things. But when helped onto the floor, she gains strength by doing things such as leaning on a chair while kneeling.

“If it wasn't for this class I wouldn't have any support to do yoga,” she said. “It's imperative for people like me to get out of their chairs and stretch on the floor with a lot of support and props. It's really freeing.”

Rose began working with people with various physical challenges 10 years ago, she said, but Gallagher was a key student in her leap to begin the program. The women met by suggestion of Baba Hari Dass, the silent monk affiliated with Hanuman Fellowship-sponsored Pacific Cultural Center and Mount Madonna Center.

The classes grew with friends of Gallagher and others intrigued by Rose's own coping with worsening osteoarthritis and hearing loss, she said. A mother of four, she said those health and other life challenges turned out to be blessing led by “spirit or God or whatever you wish to call it.”

“I couldn't practice at the level my ego thought I needed to,” she said. “I had to delve deeper and adapt my practice.”

Rose brings a spiritual component to class as well. She read a poem during the recent class which included a line about “the voices that ruin your life” and advised to “keep squeezing drops of sun from your prayers, your work, your friends.”
After studying with various teachers and working in several health-related fields, Rose said yoga to her is about awareness and the concept of Ahimsa, or doing no harm.

“My goal in life is to bring that concept to all students; to be less violent to their body,” she said.

Lila Specker of Boulder Creek, who is working with Rose, said she trained to be a yoga teacher while living in Maui. A long-standing interest in a medical career made yoga therapy training a natural fit, she said.

“I love everything about it,” the 26-year-old said. “It's so great that yoga is for everyone, and it's so therapeutic and awesome to learn what it can do for people.”
Rose said she is grateful to her apprentices and that all yoga teachers are perennial yoga students.

“There is always more to learn and share,” she said.