Finding Yoga: How My Practice Carried Me Through Pregnancy & Healing
A Journey Home to My Soul
It all started with an invitation. My brother took me to my very first yoga class while I was visiting family in Boston. I still remember him saying, “Stop pointing your toes, flex them instead. This isn’t a dance class, Liz.”
As someone who grew up dancing, pointing my toes came naturally. But something about yoga felt different—familiar, grounding, like coming home. After that first class, I returned home and began a daily practice that would quietly change the entire course of my life.
Pregnancy, Stillness, and the Deepening of Practice
Fast forward a few years. During COVID, I became pregnant with my fourth child, my sweet son Beau. That season of life held unexpected challenges—I was diagnosed with Polyhydramnios, a condition where excess amniotic fluid builds up during pregnancy. I was measuring more than 10 centimeters larger than expected and spent the final three months on bed rest.
On the surface, it felt limiting. But in the stillness of that time, yoga gave me a way to move inward. I leaned deeper into the teachings, not just the physical practice. I began a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training, not to teach, but simply to enrich my own practice. Teaching was the furthest thing from my mind.
During those months, books became my companions: A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, Walking Each Other Home by Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush, Light on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar. Podcasts, Instagram accounts, online teachings—anything that fed the fire of curiosity within me, I devoured. And strangely, it all felt less like “learning something new” and more like remembering something I already knew in my soul.
Yoga as Support Through Uncertainty
Two weeks before my scheduled c-section, contractions began. My brother and mother rushed overnight to help with my girls while my husband returned home from a business trip. But because of the fluid condition, an early section wasn’t an option.
So I labored—with active contractions—for two long weeks.
During that time, yoga became my lifeline. With my brother’s help, I leaned on my practice to steady me through pain, to open my hips and heart, to calm my fears. My daughters would giggle and mimic my movements, crawling onto the mat, while I slowly and awkwardly tried to rise at the end of practice.
Finally, on the scheduled date, Beau was born—healthy and perfect. After a difficult surgery to reconstruct my uterus, I went home with a sore but grateful body, and a heart forever changed.
The Beginning of Alma
Yoga carried me through one of the most vulnerable, uncertain seasons of my life. It gave me grounding when fear tried to take over. It gave me stillness when I felt stretched beyond what I could bear.
That was the moment my deeper journey truly began—the journey to soul. The journey to Alma.
Yoga was never just exercise for me—it became my teacher, my anchor, my path to remembering who I was meant to be.
And this is how The Alma Sanctuary was born: as a space to share that journey, to guide others back home to themselves, and to hold the truth that wellness can be both grounding and transformative.
If you’re on your own path of rediscovery, whether through yoga, meditation, or simply slowing down, I hope my story reminds you that healing and transformation are possible—often in the most unexpected seasons of life. This is just the beginning of what I’ll be sharing here at The Alma Sanctuary. Stay connected for more practices, tools, and soulful guidance to support your own journey
