The Villages - June 2018 - 36

Yoga
For Veterans
LocaL Teacher TargeTs
UnexpecTed aUdience
STORY BY RICA LEWIS | PHOTOS BY ROB WILKERSON
It was a catalyst moment, the kind that would thrust her life into an
unimaginable direction. It happened in Italy several decades ago when
Gianna Ragona Suarez was visiting her dad. When a car barreled into
theirs, something snapped and everything changed. Chronic migraines
and a stiff neck kept her in a brace for two years.
"I walked around like Quasimodo," she said.
When a friend suggested they try yoga, she didn't object.
"My friend was going through a divorce, so we both needed yoga for
different reasons," Suarez said. "I was physically crippled and she was
emotionally crippled."
After three classes, Suarez began to see her body differently.
"It was life changing, healing," she said. "I regained my full
range of motion, tossed out my neck brace and got rid of my
medications. I said, 'I don't know what this is, but I want to
learn it and teach it to the world.'"
Suarez enrolled in teacher training and studied in India,
Turkey and South America. She practiced yoga on every continent,
learning philosophy, methodology, and the history and principles of
the 4,000-year-old discipline.
"I discovered this endless journey," she said. "It was like swimming
in a beautiful lagoon. I just kept going deeper, realizing the more I
knew, the more I had to learn."
Suarez continued to educate herself on the therapeutic nature of
yoga and the wonders of the human body - a self-healing organism.
"Our bodies want to heal," she said. "They want to be whole. If
bacteria invade, our bodies give us a fever to burn it out. We have all
these healing properties, and with yoga, we can ignite them. We do
inversions to move energy around, help the lymphatic system flush
out toxins, increase circulation and send fresh energy to the brain to
awaken our consciousness."
36

JUNE 2018



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Villages - June 2018

Contents
The Villages - June 2018 - Cover1
The Villages - June 2018 - Contents
The Villages - June 2018 - 1
The Villages - June 2018 - 2
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