Karen Lord

In 2006, I was running yoga studios in Cambridge and Kitchener/Waterloo and a friend Tanya William contacted me about a young woman that she was working with as personal support worker. Her client, Karen Lord, was interested in becoming a yoga teacher.  She shared that Karen had Down Syndrome and wondered what might be possible.  My initial reaction was surprise and a little excitement. We made an appointment to have a chat together. 

A few days later, Karen and Tanya stopped by the Kitchener yoga Studio and we sat down to have a chat. Tanya encouraged Karen to speak up and Karen said, “I want to be a yoga teacher.” I said, “That is great. What makes you want to be a yoga teacher?” Karen told me how much she loved yoga and how she felt very strongly about sharing yoga with other people.  Taking one look at her face and Tanya’s face, I knew what my answer would be.  How could we not, at least try to make this happen. 

I said, “ok, but we are going to have to do some research, find out what your learning style is and create an independent learning plan to work around any challenges that come up.”  We went through the investment part of doing teacher training, got to know Karen’s family who were very supportive and set about creating a plan to help Karen realize her dream to become a Certified 200hr Yoga Teacher.  Everyone was aware that if we could not confirm that Karen understood how to teach safety and to the standards of our program that she may not graduate with her class or at all. We were all invested in making sure that did not happen.

I researched, organized and met with Karen’s family and Tanya about getting the right learning tools to help her through the program.  We used audio books, videos for anatomy – back at that time they were not on YouTube, we had to rent or buy the videos and audio tools.  We embarked on this journey well equipped into unknown territory.  Karen started yoga teacher training, so very excited and full of intention and motivation. 

Very quickly we discovered that Karen’s attention span was pretty short for lectures but she shinned in yoga practice. We talked about strategies to over-come the attention span.  I remembered a friend of mine, Jackie McMillian, who described herself as a very high functioning autistic. We had many conversations about how certain food and environmental toxins could cripple her mentally and physically.  I talked to Jackie about Karen’s challenges and we met to see if we could come up with a strategy to help Karen.  We didn’t have the budget to hire Jackie, but we offered her a place in Yoga Teacher Training if she would try to help and coach Karen through her training.  We all agreed that this was a great opportunity to work together to see what we could accomplish. 

Jackie spent and enormous amount of time with Karen helping her discover her learning style, they worked through an elimination process with foods where Karen learned what she was “allergic” too.  Karen hosted healthy eating parties as she learned to prepare food that would help her to stay clear minded.  Karen and Jackie cleaned up her living environment of toxic cleaners, objects and clothing.  Karen and Jackie attended class together and did homework together.  It ended up taking three years to get through the material that most get through in a year but we did it together. 

Some of the highlights that I still remember clearly was Karen presenting on the digestive system.  She did a play. She set up as parts of the digestive system and she went through the set up as the bolus (ball of food), getting massaged as she went along and out the poop shoot which made her and all of us laugh hysterically.  Another transformation that I got to witness was Karen’s resistance to life drawing, any kind of drawing to confidence in participating and understanding everyone’s fear and seeing her work up on the wall and when she realized that she could see the body with her paper and conté, well, the look on her face was worth all of the effort, something I will never forget. 

In her final demo class, Karen was teaching an ashtanga style class and walking around helping student (not yoga students all yoga teachers) and she said to one man, “roll your shoulders back and down and draw your rhomboids together.” I knew we were there. Karen was a yoga teacher.  

That year’s yoga teacher training graduation, was one of the most poignant of my career.  Her parents came and the families of the other students also joined us. We all celebrated together! I recommended Karen for a job with the city of Waterloo teaching an outdoor class at the newly renovated town centre.  He rocked this job and impressed everyone.  Karen still teaches yoga in the Kitchener/Waterloo region and presents internationally, with her parents, on Independent Living and Ability.  So very proud and grateful for getting to work with this great woman, I am fortunate to call my friend.