The burgeoning practice of SUP Yoga offers creative movement in life, a current of healing energy, and mental focus.
Flow. That is the word that best describes my overall feeling about everything related to stand up paddleboarding. I was first introduced to standup paddleboarding in late 2009. Two weeks later I was introduced to the idea of SUP Yoga. As a fitness instructor since 1981, I have always been open to learning or helping create new formats to stay current and avoid burnout. Standing on the water was a tremendous experience of creative flow; I was passionate about all three forms: SUP, SUP fitness, and SUP Yoga. You see, at that time, I was trying to stay busy and inspired in order to keep myself distracted from the emotional pain I was experiencing from a lost relationship the prior year (an experience that is now a gain—pratipaksha bhavanam).
When I was in college, I wrote a paper for a sports psychology class about the flow experience, based on the writing of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Beginning with my introduction into this new and rapidly evolving world of SUP, I was caught in an ultimate flow. I felt as if I was flowing in a current of beautiful energy with amazing people passionate about creating possibilities, programs, and products, relating to this new (or re-invented) activity. A former business partner and I broke off from our original group, and we taught and traveled, sharing our ideas about how SUP Yoga and SUP fitness programs could be done on land, in the studio, in the gym, on water, and in the pool. I’m sure people thought it was just a fad; but, as you can see, it’s still growing.
Sometime in this same year, I began to notice a small, painful lump in my right breast; I avoided the pain by pulling my sport bras on like pants to prevent the elastic from snapping the lump. I was so content and happy in this flow that I had no time to be interrupted. I ignored it as if it were a fibrous cyst. Besides, how could someone with my healthy lifestyle have something like cancer? My energy started to drop and I pulled away from my business partner and focused on just teaching SUP Yoga for groups and at special events, while maintaining my regular teaching schedule of group fitness and yoga classes at the gyms and studios.
In late 2012, the lump suddenly grew in size and it could no longer be ignored; it poked out of my skin when I raised my arm. I was diagnosed with triple positive, stage 2 breast cancer in January 2013—on my birthday. I began chemotherapy in April 2013, thinking that I’d be able to teach yoga throughout my treatment…ha! I had such a bad reaction to the Herceptin drug that I ended up in a wheelchair, unable to finish treatment. I had a double mastectomy in September 2013 and completed a full year of physical therapy until I was able to slowly begin teaching again in September 2014: first, yoga in the studio, and just recently, SUP Yoga. The physical healing is still so much more than I ever imagined.
Sometimes life events can shake us to the core: cancer, a death, the end of an important relationship. These very events can serve as wake-up calls. Personally, I know I am still healing on many levels from a lifetime of stuffing emotions, and this cancer scare has served as my wake-up call to do what I need to do in order to let go of the stuff that no longer serves me so I can be free.
If you ask me what the practice of SUP Yoga is to me, I can tell you this: much like the practice of yoga on firm ground can be a vehicle for healing, the same can be true for SUP Yoga. The water’s movement can represent life’s speed bumps, the moments that require a deeper focus than we need in a more stable environment. The practice of SUP Yoga on the ever-changing surface of the water is a metaphor. Nothing is constant. Are we going to make necessary adjustments to maintain the flow, peace, focus, steadiness, and clarity, or are we going to fight, grasp, force, and resist change? Our practice on the mat is an indication of our approach to life off the mat.
Try SUP Yoga and see what comes up! Find the flow, the effortless effort, the quieting of the mind’s fluctuations. I intend to find that place each and every day, on and off the mat, on and off the water.
Suzanne Yeo BSPE is a fitness professional and yoga instructor who loves and teaches SUP in all forms (including Yoga and Fitness). She teaches groups and individuals on land and in the water at a number of locations and is an advocate and organizer for events including Standup for the Cure in Newport Beach. Email her at fitnessyogini@yahoo.com