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SYDNEY, N.S. — Seated at the front of the room, Robert Zwarun is about to start his chair yoga class at the YMCA in downtown Sydney and he and his students are catching up on each other’s lives since they last met.

“We have really good conversations here, too,” said Shirley Samson, one of the students in the mostly seniors’ group.

“Is this going to be in Playboy magazine?” jokes Gordon Sheriff of Sydney to a laughter as the camera shutter clicks away.

The banter underscores the complete ease in the room as Zwarun begins the day’s instruction.

Zwarun leads the 10 students through dozens of poses that take into account any mobility issues while offering suggested alternatives to each one that might pose difficulty.

“OK, then we’re gonna sit back upright and we’re gonna take one of our legs with us. Now, you can hold it on the outside. If you need, you can also hold it on your thigh,” Zwarun instructs during one of the poses.

“Now, you know, I have blocks on the side of my feet. If for some reason you can’t touch the floor and you don’t have to, you can definitely put blocks there to put your hands on,” he says during another pose.

His smooth, soothing tone and the relaxing background music leads the group through a class that seems to melt the stress and busyness of the outside world away, even if you’re just observing it.

“He’s doing a wonderful job,” Samson said before the class got started.

Afterwards, Sheriff said it was his fourth or fifth time there.

“It’s quite easy because he makes it so simple,” said the 79-year-old one-time hockey player and referee who was a newcomer to yoga.

“That’s important to me — to get exercise, to get moving and so on because I wasn’t doing any exercise.”

As he moves through the class, there are hints of Zwarun’s own journey to this point.

“I can’t do it that way anymore,” he said of one particular task of crossing the ankles. “It is what it is.”

Parked alongside him is his mobility scooter.

Tough diagnoses

After the class, Zwarun’s story ebbs and flows through the lowlights and highlights, starting with the turmoil of being diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome in the early 1990s and then an inherited degenerative condition called ataxia in 2010.

“That’s when my balance and my walking started to get really bad,” Zwarun said.

“So what it does is it affects my balance, it affects my motor control. It also affects my speech. So, in essence, it gives the experience of somebody who is drunk but they’re not.”

The Mayo Clinic website describes the condition this way: “Ataxia describes poor muscle control that causes clumsy voluntary movements. It may cause difficulty with walking and balance, hand co-ordination, speech and swallowing, and eye movements. Ataxia usually results from damage to the part of the brain that controls muscle co-ordination (cerebellum) or its connections.”

Zwarun was living in an area of Sydney where he felt isolated and had sunk into some despair. And then a friend mentioned going to the Y.

And so his journey of inspiration began.

“I was shy. Yeah, I mean, I was completely withdrawn. I was totally shelled up,” he said of life before the YMCA.

Through the Y, where he has now been a member for years, he started exercising, formed friendships, found a new apartment downtown with some help and started taking a class similar to the one he’s teaching now twice a week — at the YMCA on Charlotte Street and in Membertou.

“My self-esteem is going through the roof and not only that, (the Y has) also helped me in ways that I couldn’t have even calculated before,” he said.

“Everything that’s happened in the last 10 years is a direct result of my being here at the Y. The YMCA, for all intents and purposes, saved my life it really did.”

Zwarun began the yoga instructor course last fall and was able to find funding to take it online.

“It built up so quickly because all the time, from late September up to when I finished yoga teacher training … in February, I had people — as much as three months before I finished — they were all coming up to me and saying, ‘When are you starting your class?’ I’m going, ‘I’m not even certified yet. I’ll get there, I promise.’” Zwarun recounted.

His former instructor was his inspiration.

“It was actually through Jamie’s teaching — because when she teaches a class, she has a very calm and easygoing demeanour about her and … both of us have chronic illnesses. So we both understand each other’s struggles, you know? And I thought, ‘I’m gonna keep coming back’ and I did keep coming back and everything she taught I pretty much absorbed like a sponge.”

Yoga for everyone

Crane, who has multiple sclerosis, Lyme disease and was most recently diagnosed with congestive heart failure, plans on resuming teaching chair yoga in the fall.

“One of the problems we have in North America is we are inundated with these images of what we think yoga is and it’s not always handstands,” she said of any notion people might have that yoga requires full mobility.

The demand for alternative classes is acute, she said.

“We could use 10 more chair yoga classes,” she said over the phone from Leitches Creek.

Crane, when she is not on hiatus, teaches Chair Yoga with Jamie all over the Cape Breton Regional Municipality.

“I could teach honesty three times a day if I had the energy,” she said.

Because of her health struggles, she can only do a few classes a week, but Crane is eager to get back at as she rebuilds her strength.

“This is the thing — I was on bedrest for months. This is one of the worst things for me,” she said.

As much as she’s an inspiration to Zwarun, his enthusiasm also moves her.

It’s not that people without a mobility issue or health struggle can’t or shouldn’t teach the chair yoga classes.

But because instructors like Crane and Zwarun know their own bodies move differently, they can adapt the poses for their students, she said.

“Folks like Robert and I, for us, we can feel the difficulty (of students with physical struggles) as we are teaching it,” she said.
 

CHAIR YOGA
Gentle seated yoga practice for anyone new to exercise or with limited mobility. Focus is on increasing flexibility, strength and balance.
Level: Beginner
Duration: One hour
Website: capebreton.ymca.ca
For information: Frank Rudderham Family YMCA, 399 Charlotte St., Sydney; phone 902-562-9622 or email front.[email protected]

Marcie Shwery-Stanley, an advocate for people with disabilities of nearly 40 years and a retired federal civil servant, learned about Zwarun through a friend from a Y aqua class he takes.

A few years ago, with others assisting, she helped him secure an accessible apartment.

In a phone interview, Shwery-Stanley said she admires his ability to move forward.

“He’s a role model for others who are about to give up,” she said.