Why Yoga? The Part of My healing I Didn't Know I Needed

I found yoga somewhere in the middle of my healing journey. For years I was trying to understand why my life seemed to circle back to the same painful situations. It seemed like the same unhealthy patterns I seen my family have growing up followed me throughout my life. By the time I was 40 I began a quest to understand why these patterns followed me. I knew something needed to change when I started noticing those same patterns showing up in my children's lives as well.

So, the quest began. I started diving deep into generational patterns, trauma, and the question of how healing works. I wanted to understand my brain, my thought life, and why change felt so hard even when the desire was there. that search led me into studying neural pathways, survival patterns, and the ways trauma gets stored in the body.

That curiosity turned into years of learning. I studied the brain and took courses that focused on rewiring the brain. I read everything I could on trauma, healing, and the nervous system. Eventually that path brought me into embodied processing, and somatic work. I eventually acquired several certifications in trauma-informed somatic work.

Over time, I learned a truth that reshaped everything: you don't heal the mind by only working with the mind! Healing happens through the body. But I still didn't fully understand that truth until I stepped into Jonnie Goodmanson's yoga class.

I went into her class expecting movement, stretching, breath, and maybe some grounding. What happened in that room touched a part of me I didn't even know I was still holding onto. Somewhere between the breath, poses, and the stillness, years of stored trauma released from my body. It came in uncontrollable tears-the kind that rises without warning and pour out before you even understand why it is happening. All I knew at that moment was that something deep inside me had finally been touched, witnessed, and allowed to move through me. The space Jonnie created was a space where my body finally felt safe enough to let go.

For the first time in my life, I felt safe in my own body.

That experience changed the trajectory of my life. It revealed that healing isn't just about the things that happened to me, it was about giving my body room to release what I was carrying for far too long. That single class is what led me to Live Free Training's Yoga Teacher Training.

Yoga, at its root, means to yoke-to unite. That's exactly what it offered me: a coming together of my mind, body, breath, spirit, and all the fragmented parts of my story. Yoga became a place where I learned to sit with myself. Not just the healed parts, but the hurting ones too. That unity, that yoking, became one of the most transformative parts of my healing journey. Yoga gave me a much deeper understanding of what it truly means to hold space for myself and for others. The impact has reached far beyond me. I see the ripple effect of my healing in my family, my relationships, and the way I live my life each day.

Yoga Teacher Training will give you so much more than tools to teach a class. If you feel a pull to this type of healing, if your body is asking for something deeper, if you're longing for connection, understanding, or a release, Yoga Teacher Training might be the doorway for you too.

You don't have to know where it will lead. You just have to be willing to take the first breath. Thursday December 18th at 4 pm CST join Jonnie, Jen, and me for a Q&A on the next YTT beginning in January 2026. Click the link to get registered. We can't wait to see you.

https://www.livefreetrainings.com/event-details-registration/yoga-teacher-training-q-a

With Love

Carrie Payne