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Waking to a new World
BY KENDRA RICHARDS
STATESMAN STAFF WRITER
iISSUE: 78/26
ALEXANDER SUSUKI / STATESMAN
Matthew Sanford teaches a yoga class at UMD
Tuesday afternoon. He stressed the
importance of the mind-body relationship
when doing any sort of activity.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MATTHEW SANFORD
When Duluth native Matthew Sanford was just 13 years old, his family’s car skidded off an icy overpass in Iowa on their way back to Duluth after a Thanksgiving celebration. His father and oldest sister were killed, and Sanford barely survived. Although Sanford’s mother and younger sister escaped the accident with minor injuries, Sanford was “put through the shredder.” He spoke Tuesday night in the ballroom about his healing, and his journey of becoming an award-winning author, yoga instructor and founder of a nonprofit organization.
“I broke my neck, ripped my spine, broke both wrists, injured my pancreas and had fluid in my lungs,” said Sanford. “I was in a coma for three days, and when I woke up, I literally opened my eyes to a new world.” Sanford said that this “waking” to a new world is where he got the title for his book, “Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence,” which tells his story and journey toward understanding the mind-body relationship.
“It took a devastating car accident, paralysis from the chest down and dependence on a wheelchair before I truly realized the importance of my body,” said Sanford.
Sanford began to describe this mind-body relationship on Tuesday by reading an excerpt from his book that described experience in the hospital after the accident. “I was in so much pain that I literally escaped from my body,” said Sanford. “It was an out-of-body experience, and it was the first connection I had with the mind-body relationship.” Sanford said that, at first, he tried to overcome his trauma, but it only made his experience in his body worse. “I had to transform my experience of trauma and loss,” said Sanford. “Trauma and loss can be a mind-body sensation—that’s the transformation.
I needed to embody my trauma, and that’s how I started yoga.”
When Sanford did yoga for the first time, he immediately felt the impact it had on him. “I was told to do the simple act of taking my legs wide,” said Sanford. “Just making a ‘V’ with my legs was amazing—I realized I hadn’t taken my legs wide in 12 years, and it was a very emotional experience.” It was here that Sanford realized what rehabilitation was doing wrong. “In rehabilitation, they told me to focus on my upper-body strength and rely on that, since that was all I had left to use,” said Sanford. “This was all wrong.”
Sanford demonstrated what he meant by moving himself from his wheelchair to a chair on the stage. First, he put all of his weight on his arms and slid, or dragged himself, onto the chair. Clearly seeing the effort needed for this, he then demonstrated
the same act using his mind-body approach. “I can be a whole body even though I can’t feel two-thirds of it,” said Sanford as he demonstrated. “If I straighten my spine and push my feet down, I can swing my tail bone right into the chair.” And Sanford did just that. He smoothly and quickly shifted from one chair to the next, and looked as if he had control over his whole body, though he couldn’t feel most of it. “The fact that I can move and control my tail bone makes me really happy,” said Sanford.
And this, said Sanford, is what makes his therapy different and more effective than rehabilitation. “It’s not about wallowing in your trauma, but learning from it,” said Sanford. Sanford put his method into practice to help others. In 2001, he founded Mind Body Solutions, “a charitable organization dedicated to the simple and practical notion that minds and bodies work better together,” according to matthewsanford.com. “The mission of Mind Body Solutions,” Sanford said on his Web site, “is to transform trauma and loss into hope and potential by awakening the connection between mind and body.”
Sanford didn’t stop there in his presentation Tuesday. He made it clear that being disconnected from the body is “everyone’s disability,” the title of his presentation. Sanford stressed that this mind-body connection is important not just for people with disabilities or for health reasons, but to simply live well. “Whether it’s breathing through your nose more, sitting up straighter or realizing the sunshine on your skin, it is important to not be disconnected from your body,” said Sanford Sanford’s book, “Waking,” will be released in paperback in May. For more information, visit his Web site: www.matthewsanford.com.
