Refuse the Program

Ask your yoga teacher how many fights they’ve been in. Then ask them what they know about cattle ranching.

In almost every case, you’ll probably get back a blank stare. They might even ask you if you’re ok. If you asked Kyle Henderson, owner of Canmore Hot Yoga, you’d get a much different answer.

Kyle’s family brought the first Angus bull from the United States to Canada. He grew up in rural Alberta, surrounded by hockey, farming, fist fights and the idea that being a “super masculine alpha male” was the only acceptable path for a young man.

Physical aggression was such a regular part of day-to-day life that there were boxing gloves in the basement to settle sibling disputes, and the kids were offered a $20 bounty on getting into fights in their league hockey games.

Despite excelling in this environment as an athlete and outwardly fitting the mold of the hyper-masculine rural Albertan, Kyle says he always felt like a “sheep in wolf’s clothing” – something just didn’t feel right to him about inhabiting the traditional male paradigm.

Other things nagged at him. Namely the lack of answers that came from clergy at the local church. Perfectly reasonable questions were invariably met with curt non-responses – and finally with a ban from the church –  for his whole family – for “asking too many questions.”

“I just always felt like ‘there’s all these rules in the world, but I never agreed to any of them…” says Kyle. “Why should I abide by these norms that are totally counter-intuitive to me, or just plain stupid?”

This thinking would take Kyle on a long and winding path, that would eventually find him somewhere he never would have imagined.

His journey would include trying on a slew of alternative identities – as many of us do in our youths. Though for Kyle, trying on an identity was never as simple as throwing on a different costume. Intent on authentically exploring himself and experiencing every moment to the fullest, his phases of self discovery tended to be more in-depth. Kyle also often found himself paying a heavy physical price for this depth of commitment to what were often sport-related identities.

Kyle the collegiate football athlete’s path was altered by hip dysplasia. His final year of hockey, he suffered a major knee injury. Committed to the idea of “being an athlete”, he found his sense of self shattered along with his body.

The theme of hitting his physical limits would repeat itself when he shifted his focus to snowboarding, breaking the top 100 in boarder cross while living in Banff. Riding every day, he had set his sight on being the best in that event, but was again forced to change his focus when he tore his ACL.

“Again I found myself wondering… how do I dress now? Who are my friends?” Kyle says. “When your identity is so closely linked to your activity and you have to abruptly stop that activity… you wind up thinking ‘who the hell am I?’”

Discouraged, Kyle shifted his focus to building a career in power engineering, which in Alberta at the time translated to big paycheques, but a deep immersion into an old-school, male-dominated industry, rife with the all the behaviours and attitudes that you might expect. It didn’t feel right. And to make matters worse, his body wasn’t getting better. It was deteriorating. He got to the point where he could barely function. He could hike, but he would be afraid that he wouldn’t be able to make it out of the back country. He was living with chronic pain.

For Kyle though, the obstacle became the path. A massage therapist that he was seeing for pain management suggested yoga.

“I thought ‘no way’. I was still stuck in the archetypal parameters of masculinity. In fact for me at the time, even massage was barely acceptable. It just didn’t seem worthwhile or doable.”

Finally Kyle worked up the will to try it. He decided on a Bikram hot yoga class. (Bikram has seen some serious controversy over the last few years, but not related to the efficacy of the yoga itself).

“I went to Bikram because it seemed like the most ‘alpha’ yoga I could do.At the time I was in so much pain I could barely sleep… but I did one class and got my ass kicked. Lying there afterwards, I had never felt better in my life.”

The sense of euphoria and challenge that Kyle had experienced through athletic achievement was THERE, as was the physical challenge – but there was more. He could feel himself standing at the edge of a personal exploration that went beyond anything else he had experienced.

“On some level I was intrigued by the spiritual aspect – always looking for insight – maybe the answer is in HERE… inside me?”

Kyle’s body started rapidly healing. He was sleeping at night, and he was no longer in constant pain. He started feeling more patient and centred. But fully committing to the idea and the yoga “persona” still felt untenable. It was too much of a leap. And things would again take a turn for the worse.

A backcountry ski trip injury to his ACL would once again see Kyle out of action, and in extreme pain.

“I came out of that trip in so much pain. I dropped 60 pounds – dropped down to 110, had a walker. I had to take drugs just to be able to get from the bed to the couch.”

Multiple doctors, layered pain killers, thoughts of suicide. Kyle had hit his lowest point.

“I thought – I’ve had great experiences but maybe I’ve lived enough, you know?”

But yoga provided a way to move forward. Only capable of minimal movement, Kyle delved into Yoga Nidra and Qi Gong, a Chinese medical practice that uses breath and smooth, slow movements to channel energy to heal the body. He learned about alternative treatment methods like craneosacral therapy. Hitting bottom meant all he could do was focus on getting better. In doing so he found that healing, and understanding how to heal, was his path. It became clear as day.