Yoga won't help me walk again. But it has allowed me to 'feel' my legs for the first time in years
The mention of this ancient exercise system may conjure images incense-filled rooms, but its principles can offer practical benefits to the disabled
Matthew Sanford, right, with Tim Rushby-Smith. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian
I have never tried yoga, so I arrived for a class at Triyoga in Chelsea feeling pretty intimidated. My inner cynic expected sinewy people standing on their heads in a fug of incense, but instead I find a large white room scattered with purple mats, foam bricks, blankets and other participants. I choose a space and sit on a mat on the floor.
When our teacher, Matthew Sanford, arrives he lays a calming hand on my shoulder and in a soft American voice describes me as sporty and determined to the point of bloodymindedness. He recognises this, because I am on the floor with my wheelchair parked next to me – and we are both paraplegic.
Sanford was just 13 when his family's car hit a patch of ice and slid down an embankment. His mother and brother survived, but his father and sister were both killed. Asleep at the time of the accident, he suffered a broken neck and back, among other injuries. He was in a coma for three days.
"I was a very athletic kid, and I loved feeling my whole body," he tells me. "After the accident, doctors told me I didn't have sensation and I believed them. They called the tingling and burning in my legs phantom feeling, in case I took it to mean I would walk again." Actually, as I know myself, the constant "noise" in my legs, which can be anything from an almost pleasant, warm tingling to excruciating pain, may not be functional, but it is certainly real.
Sanford duly followed the traditional approach to rehabilitation: "I learned to make my upper torso really strong to overcome my body. That's a metaphor for everything, because you can't overcome your body."
Then, 12 years after the accident, Sanford was in graduate school studying philosophy when he met a yoga teacher. "We explored what the principles of yoga meant for a mind-body relationship such as mine. I started to feel that [phantom] sensation again, and I thought: 'I belong here. I can't do the poses like everyone else but I can feel the wholeness that is at the core of the poses.' That's the true heart of yoga."
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