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.