And then there was light

How I discoverd yoga during a super dark time in my life

In the first episode of Soul Secrets with Allison, I take you back to the beginning to when I first discovered yoga during a really dark time in my life.

I waste no time getting vulnerable with you as I share:

>>> The horrible trifecta of challenges I was facing (and just how much I was struggling).

>>> The surprising place where I discovered yoga.

>>> The profound shift I felt during my first class and how it changed my life forever.

Click below to hear all the nitty gritty of my journey now…

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Read the full transcript here:

Hey there! I’m Allison Laframboise, and I want to welcome you to Soul Secrets with Allison.

In this first episode, I want to take you back to the beginning to when I first discovered yoga and how it got me through a really dark time in my life and how it changed my life, setting me on a path of spiritual exploration and awakening and a path that I’ve stayed on for more than 20 years.

I’ll try to paint this picture for you of just how dark this time in my life was.

I was going to college at Boston university. And I found out that my boyfriend at the time – who was going to college in Maryland – was diagnosed with a really serious type of cancer. It was a really rare type of lymphoma that the doctors didn’t know much about.

And it was so unknown in terms of how things would go for him and what the future was going to hold and whether he was going to live or die and what this was all going to look like.

It was so upsetting.

And when I learned of his diagnosis, my world turned upside down, and I was just devastated.

It made it even harder that we were eight hours away from each other by car. So where I wanted to be there for him and support him and be together, we were so far away, and that made it so much harder.

What made it even harder for me was that in his process (which I can never understand, and I would never judge) but in his process after living into the diagnosis a little bit, he withdrew emotionally and just really shut down.

Clearly it was what he needed to do.

But for me, I was even more devastated because I wanted to be there for him. I wanted to support him and he wasn’t answering my phone calls. He wasn’t returning my email messages. We didn’t have phones yet, so we weren’t texting. (well, we had phones, but they weren’t texting phones. You know what I mean…. 😉

So I was just shut out so upset, so scared, so worried and and devastated. It was really just like a knife to my heart when he stopped communicating with me for the most part. So I was a mess.

Now, separate from this — before learning about this devastating diagnosis and having our worlds turn upside down by that, I had been in therapy and was in therapy working on healing from sexual abuse in my childhood.

So I was just raw.

I remember one time I went to my therapy session for my hour long session and it was over and I left my therapist’s office, walked out of her door and just started sobbing.

And Boston university is a city campus. And my therapist’s office was in one of the neighborhoods near the us.

And I walked everywhere.

So I had this long walk home and I just walked right to one of my girlfriend’s apartments that wasn’t too far from my therapist, just a mess. And she opened the door and I just collapsed into her arms and she just held me and comforted me as best as she could.

That’s just an idea of just how raw I was and how challenging of a time it was for me. 

At the same time, on the outside to most people, I looked great!

I was a straight a student.

I had a work study job.

I went out, I was social.

I went to parties. I went to bars and clubs, and I went to the ice hockey games, which is the big sporting event at BU.

And so most people, you know, thought I was doing great. It was just my closest circle of friends that knew how much I was suffering inside.

Compounding all of this, I started getting really obsessive about my body image.

It was really kind of the perfect storm because I went to school my freshman year and gained 20 pounds. And once I realized I had gained 20 pounds, I was like, “okay, I’m gonna get into shape. I’m gonna start exercising more. I’m gonna eat better. I want to drop those 20 pounds.” And because there were so many things that were out of my control in my life – big things – my boyfriend having this serious type of cancer, pushing me away, being so far away from him.

As well as all this stuff that was opened up around the sexual abuse from my childhood, I felt like I was out of control and then focusing on getting in shape and losing weight and getting really fit and looking good, became something I could control.

And that’s what I did.

So I was obsessive about it every single day. I was eating fat-free everything and I was weighing myself all the time.

And on days when I was losing weight, I felt good about myself.

If I wasn’t losing weight, or if I looked in the mirror and I felt like I looked fat, then I didn’t feel good about myself.

It started to control me and define me.

And I was trying to control it, trying to control my body weight and having just these obsessive thoughts about needing to be in shape and needing to, exercise and needing to eat well.

And so it gave me focus and something to really hone in on.

But I was smart about it!

I didn’t want to have an eating disorder. I knew I was obsessive about it. And I would talk to my therapist about that, but I didn’t want to have an eating disorder.

So I made sure that when I was losing weight, that my weight stayed within the healthy range for my height.

I remember one time being a at my doctor’s office and sitting on the table, waiting for the doctor to come in, wearing the little gown. And on the wall, they had a chart that said, if you’re 5’ 6”, which I am, this is the healthy weight range for you.

And I was within the healthy weight range. I was at the bottom of it once I had lost weight, but I was within it.

So, you know, in my mind, I was healthy! 

It was later when I really realized how unhealthy I was around my body image and my weight because of the unhealthy obsessive thinking and the emotions and my self worth being so wrapped up in that.

So it was a really dark time, and all I wanted was to feel okay and to feel like everything was going to be okay.

And in the depths of my soul, I wanted to feel peaceful and feel grounded and feel whole and healed on every level.

I wanted to not care about what my body looked like, or how fat I was or wasn’t or what the scale said. I wanted to not care about any of that.

I just wanted to feel free and peaceful and happy, but I was really, I was really depressed.

I was I was deeply unhappy and while I wouldn’t say that I hated myself, I definitely did not like myself.

I definitely did not wake up each day feeling good about myself. I was being extremely hard on myself and really just of trudging through.

Then one day I realized that I had two college credits that I wasn’t using.

My parents were paying for them, and I was taking all of my required courses for my degree and my major and minors that I had. But I had these two credits that I could use if I wanted to for elective classes.

So I decided to take a look and see what was available. And I saw that there was a Hatha yoga class available to take. And I had always been curious about yoga. I had always wanted to try yoga because I was so drawn to the holistic approach it took.

The talk therapy I was doing was really helpful, and it really had gotten me somewhere, but I just had this feeling like a more holistic modality would help me so much more. It was something I would love to try.

So I signed up for Hatha Yoga using my two credits.

And from that very first class, at some point in the class, my eyes were closed and I just felt myself there.

I was just present. I was in my body and there were no judgments. There were no worries. There was no obsessive thinking. There was no fear. I was just feeling my body, feeling my breath, feeling Supreme presence.

I remember resting so deeply in the relaxation and the Shavasana at the end of the class.

It was at that moment when I knew that this practice had to become a regular part of my life.

And that’s what happened. I continued taking my Hatha yoga classes two times a week for the next three years of college.

I stayed committed.

The one challenge that I faced with it was that I know I would’ve benefited from doing yoga every single day, but I didn’t have the tools or the discipline to do it at home by myself. And I didn’t have practices to follow at home to be guided.

And when I tried doing some yoga at home, I just would get in my head and get kind of pulled into my worries and fears and I couldn’t really do it.

So that was the one challenges I faced with it along the way, but it really changed my life because I felt whole, and I felt comfortable in my body in a way that I don’t know that I ever had.

I felt present and I felt grounded. I felt peaceful and free.

So that is where it all began. Yoga helped me so much through those dark times.

And it’s something that has become such a part of who I am and a part of my life that it’s actually a way of life now.

I’ve gathered up lots of other related tools along the way that I’ve integrated and that have completely changed the way that I am with myself and the way that I am with the world.

These tools have helped me continue healing and enlivening and living the life that I truly want live with all of its messiness and the fumbles and falling down and rising up again.

So I can’t wait to keep sharing with you.

Thank you for being here. You matter so much. Thank you.