Roslyn Car­ring­ton

Step­ping in­to Bliss Yo­ga is like slip­ping through a por­tal in space and time in­to a bil­lowy desert tent in some far-off east­ern land. Silk cur­tains flow to the straw-mat­ted floor, in­ter­spersed with paint­ings of moons and stars that give me the eerie feel­ing of look­ing through win­dows at an alien night sky.As I lie on a nar­row, com­fort­able bed, Yo­gacharya Karen Stollmey­er cov­ers me with a large silk scarf, gen­tly places a small, laven­der-in­fused pil­low over my eyes and be­gins lead­ing me through a sim­ple med­i­ta­tion for re­lax­ation. A chron­ic in­som­ni­ac, I'd ar­rived just min­utes be­fore with a two-night sleep deficit un­der my belt, crotch­ety af­ter hav­ing nav­i­gat­ed from the East to chaot­ic Port of Spain. But as I cra­dle a large amethyst in my right hand for heal­ing, and a clear crys­tal in my left for en­er­gy, I lis­ten to her sooth­ing voice and feel the weight of my own body drop away. I think, "I could doze here for­ev­er, and dream, dream, dream..." Stollmey­er is a cer­ti­fied Yo­ga in­struc­tor and ther­a­pist, who takes a holis­tic ap­proach to help­ing her clients find peace and well-be­ing through yo­ga and med­i­ta­tion. While she her­self has been prac­tic­ing yo­ga for sev­er­al years, her pro­fes­sion­al life was far re­moved from what it is to­day. For sev­er­al years, she was a neu­ro­log­i­cal speech ther­a­pist in Mi­a­mi, work­ing in hos­pi­tals and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion clin­ics. There she saw the worst of hu­man suf­fer­ing, peo­ple who had sur­vived vi­o­lent ac­ci­dents and dev­as­tat­ing ill­ness­es.

She soon be­came frus­trat­ed by the lim­i­ta­tions of a one-pronged ap­proach to treat­ing her pa­tients, con­vinced that a com­bi­na­tion of tra­di­tion­al clin­i­cal and non-tra­di­tion­al al­ter­na­tive ther­a­pies would be more ef­fec­tive. Con­stant­ly be­ing ex­posed to such hu­man suf­fer­ing al­so be­gan to take its toll. "It's emo­tion­al­ly and men­tal­ly tax­ing on the ther­a­pist. Peo­ple burn out very quick­ly." She be­gan look­ing for an­oth­er way to help peo­ple.But teach­ing yo­ga had nev­er been on her per­son­al agen­da. "It was re­vealed to me. Dur­ing a med­i­ta­tion, I heard a voice clear­ly say­ing, 'You're go­ing to teach yo­ga'. I was ter­ri­fied; I was a stu­dent...how could I teach?" But she didn't shy away from her call­ing. She at­tained her cer­ti­fi­ca­tion un­der a yo­ga mas­ter from In­dia, H.H. Sri Swa­mi Brah­mavidyanan­da Saraswati, re­turned to Trinidad and set up her small yo­ga cen­ter on De Ver­teuil Street.Af­ter an ab­sence of 14 years, the Trinidad she met was vast­ly dif­fer­ent from the one she'd left. Peo­ple were rushed, up­tight, and suf­fer­ing from stress-based ill­ness­es that were un­der­min­ing their qual­i­ty of life. In oth­er words, they were cry­ing out for the types of ser­vices she pro­vides. One of the more in­trigu­ing as­pects of her ther­a­py is the use of Ti­betan singing bowls, which are an ar­ray of bowls, hand-made from sev­en met­als, which, when struck with a mal­let, ring out with a beau­ti­ful hum that res­onates with the body's own fre­quen­cies. Each bowl is at­tuned to one of the body's sev­en chakras, or en­er­gy cen­tres. Her most pre­cious bowl is 200 years old, a pur­chase from a Nepalese prac­ti­tion­er.

As I lie there, warmed by Stollmey­er's hands and lulled by her words, my world is sud­den­ly alive with sound; it's like be­ing un­der an an­cient bell tow­er as the bells be­gin to ring. She places the bowls on my ab­domen and thighs, and as they ring the sound flows through me in waves, like an­gels flut­ter­ing in my tum­my. It's an ex­pe­ri­ence that has to be felt to be be­lieved.She al­so us­es crys­tals of a va­ri­ety of sizes, colours, cuts and min­er­als, which are placed on or around the body, as well as Ko­re­an Hand Acupunc­ture. She's in­ter­est­ed in ex­plor­ing the po­ten­tial of light ther­a­py and, an avid eques­tri­an for many years, she will soon be­gin of­fer­ing hip­pother­a­py, or re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive horse rid­ing for chil­dren with autism and spe­cial needs, to Trinidad. Sound ther­a­py? Crys­tals? Acupunc­ture? Sure­ly for each be­liev­er she works with, she has en­coun­tered an equiv­a­lent num­ber of doubters and naysay­ers. She has, but Stollmey­er is un­per­turbed, grant­i­ng that every­one has the right to ac­cept or re­ject it. But she hates the idea of peo­ple dis­miss­ing new ideas out of hand. "I'm a firm be­liev­er in ed­u­ca­tion. Ed­u­cate your­self, have the ex­pe­ri­ence first, rather than mak­ing a blind as­sump­tion."Ul­ti­mate­ly, Stollmey­er sees yo­ga and re­lax­ation ther­a­py as the an­swer to what ails many peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly the many demons that dog us be­cause of the ever-present cli­mate of con­flict and stress. "If stress is the source of your prob­lem, this is a won­der­ful way to ad­dress stress man­age­ment," she ex­plains. "It doesn't mat­ter what your ill­ness or men­tal con­di­tion. What mat­ters is you find a way to deal with it. If peo­ple learn how to deal with stress, they would be more healthy and hap­py."