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[Kelly Boys, Mindfulness Trainer] I grew up in an Evangelical Christian Church. And when I was a teenager, I was pretty happy. I felt well connected to God. I felt well connected to my peers. I was in the youth group. It was a really important part of my life. It was central. So, I got married at a really young age. And the marriage started out really beautifully. And I was married to someone who was a pastor at a church, and who I'd met at Bible college. And then it got really challenging and became abusive, both emotionally and physically. And the remaining couple years of it were basically me kind of surviving the situation. And then finally leaving. Six months in, I realized it was, it wasn't good. It was physical, like getting thrown down stairs or thrown into the kitchen to make him food. My head bashed into the floor once. Some more serious moments where I wasn't, you know, sure about how things were gonna go for me. There was a piece of paper on the floor and I picked it up and read it. And it was a letter that told me that he had been in another relationship. And it was that moment that just crumbled for me. I think I had such a beautifully innocent relationship formed with God, that it withstood that experience. There was some way that I just innately knew this isn't to be blamed on God here. You know, it wasn't God, it was my ex-husband and his brother and other people behaving in such a way that are hurting other people. I had had PTSD a couple years after my divorce. And that's when you get all the flashbacks and go into a depression and kind of reliving through things. And if you catch it and move through it, you know, you can move through it. I had no idea how much I was suffering. I would just feel bad a lot and not even see a way out. So I found a therapist and started moving through it. In a sense for me, the relationship with God had felt outside myself. The relationship with a being outside of me. Through mindfulness in yoga, I reconnected with myself. I was probably drawn to yoga, partly just for the movement. But I felt like I was reconnecting with my body in some way. And coming to this yoga nidra class, which was just a lying down class. Where you're, you know, accessing your breath, your body and connecting with spirit. It was so powerful. I don't know what it was about that class, but I left the class feeling completely transformed. Like I contacted my own wholeness, almost for the first time. And I just knew I had to explore it. As soon as I started experiencing the transformation, I immediately wanted to share it with others. 24/7 that's all I did for the next decade. Allow this sense of gratefulness in your heart. You may be thinking about where you've just been, or what's next. Draw attention to the space around that. How I had grown up was so much just kind of offloading to, you know, prayers or requests. Mindfulness and yoga brought me more in contact with myself. Not in this selfish way, but actually making contact with who I am and the wholeness that's here as an embodied felt sense. And that deepened what I understood, and now understand to be kind of who God is, or what my relationship with God is. I grew up really being taught like Jesus saves you and makes you whole. You know, that was what I was taught. But the process with mindfulness and yoga was it's almost like walking through the steps of the truth of that, to an embodied place. And knowing it as a lived experience, rather than an idea in my head that will for a minute make me temporarily feel better. I now feel more interconnected with everything. And it sounds so cheesy to say, but I really do feel that. I'm grateful for every single thing that's ever happened to me. Maybe because it's served who I am. And I am grateful for God.
Watching Now
View Transcript
[Kelly Boys, Mindfulness Trainer] I grew up in an Evangelical Christian Church. And when I was a teenager, I was pretty happy. I felt well connected to God. I felt well connected to my peers. I was in the youth group. It was a really important part of my life. It was central. So, I got married at a really young age. And the marriage started out really beautifully. And I was married to someone who was a pastor at a church, and who I'd met at Bible college. And then it got really challenging and became abusive, both emotionally and physically. And the remaining couple years of it were basically me kind of surviving the situation. And then finally leaving. Six months in, I realized it was, it wasn't good. It was physical, like getting thrown down stairs or thrown into the kitchen to make him food. My head bashed into the floor once. Some more serious moments where I wasn't, you know, sure about how things were gonna go for me. There was a piece of paper on the floor and I picked it up and read it. And it was a letter that told me that he had been in another relationship. And it was that moment that just crumbled for me. I think I had such a beautifully innocent relationship formed with God, that it withstood that experience. There was some way that I just innately knew this isn't to be blamed on God here. You know, it wasn't God, it was my ex-husband and his brother and other people behaving in such a way that are hurting other people. I had had PTSD a couple years after my divorce. And that's when you get all the flashbacks and go into a depression and kind of reliving through things. And if you catch it and move through it, you know, you can move through it. I had no idea how much I was suffering. I would just feel bad a lot and not even see a way out. So I found a therapist and started moving through it. In a sense for me, the relationship with God had felt outside myself. The relationship with a being outside of me. Through mindfulness in yoga, I reconnected with myself. I was probably drawn to yoga, partly just for the movement. But I felt like I was reconnecting with my body in some way. And coming to this yoga nidra class, which was just a lying down class. Where you're, you know, accessing your breath, your body and connecting with spirit. It was so powerful. I don't know what it was about that class, but I left the class feeling completely transformed. Like I contacted my own wholeness, almost for the first time. And I just knew I had to explore it. As soon as I started experiencing the transformation, I immediately wanted to share it with others. 24/7 that's all I did for the next decade. Allow this sense of gratefulness in your heart. You may be thinking about where you've just been, or what's next. Draw attention to the space around that. How I had grown up was so much just kind of offloading to, you know, prayers or requests. Mindfulness and yoga brought me more in contact with myself. Not in this selfish way, but actually making contact with who I am and the wholeness that's here as an embodied felt sense. And that deepened what I understood, and now understand to be kind of who God is, or what my relationship with God is. I grew up really being taught like Jesus saves you and makes you whole. You know, that was what I was taught. But the process with mindfulness and yoga was it's almost like walking through the steps of the truth of that, to an embodied place. And knowing it as a lived experience, rather than an idea in my head that will for a minute make me temporarily feel better. I now feel more interconnected with everything. And it sounds so cheesy to say, but I really do feel that. I'm grateful for every single thing that's ever happened to me. Maybe because it's served who I am. And I am grateful for God.
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