Paralyzed instructor links yoga's self-awareness and healing

DETROIT — Tickle the bottom of Matthew Sanford's foot, and he won't feel it.

He's been paralyzed from the chest down since a car accident more than 30 years ago.

But squeeze his ankles — really squeeze them — and he'll sense it. A subtle energy, a sort of hum, will rush from his bone and spark to life in his brain.

Help Sanford onto a yoga mat, and the 44-year-old who hasn't walked since he was 13 will achieve poses that trouble even the strongest able-bodied practitioners.

Not that that's the point.

His message is not about how he is able, despite being disabled. It's about how we all can live more fully in our bodies with a stronger mind-body connection. And don't you dare say he overcame anything, he says.

"We're always taught to 'overcome' disability," Sanford says. "But you can't overcome your body. I didn't become a yoga teacher because I overcame anything. That's exactly wrong. I'm a yoga teacher because I live an altered mind-body relationship.

"Your body is the best home your mind will ever have, and it's the only one you get. "

Sanford, a yoga instructor, is a speaker and author of "Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence" (Rodale, $14.95).

Life for Sanford changed forever on a late-night drive with his family from Kansas City to their home in Minnesota. The car hit an icy overpass and careened down the embankment. The accident killed his father and 20-year-old sister. His mother and brother escaped with no serious injuries. Sanford, who grew up playing sports, was paralyzed from his fourth vertebrae down.

Doctors at the Mayo Clinic were quick to point out that any "feelings" he had in his legs were phantom sensations. They thought it best for him to ignore them because the fact was he'd never walk again. Why get his hopes up?

For the next 12 years, Sanford lived that way, life as a "floating torso," he says, dragging his lower half around.

He focused any physical activity on strengthening his upper body. He finished school, earning a graduate degree in philosophy from the University of California, Santa Barbara. When he was 25, he met a yoga teacher named Jo Zukovich, who took him to a local martial arts studio and helped him get out of his wheelchair to sit on the floor.

And then something simple yet life-changing happened. With Zukovich's help, Sanford spread his legs wide.