Student Spotlight: Guest Post by Lance Godard

From Karen:
The Student Spotlight is a place for some of our students to share their yoga story, and inspire us with the ways yoga has enhanced their lives. A short version will be seen in our newsletter, with the extended version of the student’s reflection published here as a guest blog in the Karen’s Yoga Blog space. I hope you enjoy it!

I would love to hear your yoga story! If you would like to be featured in a Student Spotlight, contact me at info@greentarayoga.com

From Lance:
When I first walked into Green Tara Yoga more than a decade ago, I had no idea what Iyengar yoga would become for me. Like many students, I came because I wanted to become stronger, more flexible, and maybe a little calmer. I certainly wasn’t thinking about aging, and I had never heard the words primary progressive multiple sclerosis. Yoga was simply something I enjoyed and hoped would become part of my life.

It was in one of my first classes that Karen told us that one of the reasons we practice getting up from the floor is so that we can continue to get up from the floor. At the time, it sounded like one of those simple truths of yoga: practical, sensible, almost obvious.

Then life changed. Last year, I was diagnosed with primary progressive MS. Today, something as ordinary as getting up from the floor is no longer something I take for granted. In fact, it can be one of the most difficult things I do. I’ve thought about Karen’s words many times since my diagnosis.

I don’t know whether all those years of practice have made getting off the floor easier than it otherwise would have been, though I suspect they have. What I do know is that yoga prepared me for a future I never imagined, and it continues to help me meet that future with a little more strength, awareness, and determination than I might otherwise have had.

Practicing with MS isn’t easy. My balance is, at best, unpredictable. Poses that were once routine now require props, modifications, or simply the humility to accept that today will be different from yesterday. That’s where a teacher matters.

Karen, like all of the teachers at Green Tara Yoga, has never asked me to practice the yoga I used to do. She helps me practice the yoga I can do today: she has an extraordinary ability to see exactly what needs to change in a pose, to communicate those changes with remarkable clarity, and to offer just the right adjustment or prop to make the pose both possible and meaningful. She has never treated my diagnosis as a limitation, only as part of the reality we work with together. I’m honestly not sure I would still be practicing without her guidance.

What has impressed me just as much as her knowledge is her joy. Karen’s enthusiasm for yoga is infectious. She clearly loves the practice, loves teaching it, and genuinely wants every student in the room to succeed, whether they’re working on a challenging inversion or simply finding a little more ease in Tadasana.

Yoga has become something very different than I expected all those years ago. It is no longer about achieving a pose. It’s about preserving the ability to do the things that matter, adapting when life changes, and discovering that practice is not diminished by limitation—it simply evolves.

For that lesson, and for the teachers who continue to make that evolution possible, I am deeply grateful.