It’s sometimes hard, as a neurodivergent person, to negotiate the world in a body you’re not always connected with.
It’s different for everyone, but some can experience this phenomenon in ways such as ADHD hyperfocus, taking you so deep into the moment that you forget you have to eat, hydrate, or even answer nature’s call.
Or in the case of autism and dyspraxia, a difference in bodily and situational awareness often dismissed as ‘clumsiness’, with all the mystery bumps and bruises that can sometimes occur.
The wonders, limitations, and possibilities of the body have long fascinated Aileen Ferris, a yoga instructor based in Cork with a background in dance, acrobatics, aerial silks, and weightlifting — especially after recovery from a spinal injury prompted her to re-evaluate her relationship with her own.
“If you’re training as much as I was training in aerial and teaching classes, you think of yourself as an athlete, and I was extremely fit and strong,” she says.
“But when you get an injury as bad as the one I got, and you suddenly can’t exercise at all, it completely destroys your sense of who you are.
“I think that’s common among athletes who get serious injuries, but at the time, I didn’t realise how common that was.”
She didn’t exercise much for about a year, during which time she discovered the now-closed Aclaí gym in Cork, which specialised in working with people with limitations.
It “completely turned my life around”, she says. “All through that time, I had been doing bits of yoga, and then around the pandemic, I started doing it every day at home.”
Regaining physical agency after injury and negative experiences came hand-in-hand with another pandemic-era revelation — one that spurred her on to consider the axis between body and mind.
“I always knew there was something different [about me]. I didn’t understand why I found certain things so much harder than other people, and I used to be very hard on myself about that, [asking] ‘why am I useless at this?’.
“I also didn’t have very good boundaries around saying no when I couldn’t do things. I had really severe anxiety, for the vast majority of my life, from living in a neurotypical-geared world that is not designed to accommodate others.”
A friend of her husband was diagnosed autistic and with ADHD, and when she described her experience, it resonated.
“It was a slow, gradual realisation. Eventually, I went and got assessed for autism, which was a long process because there was a long waitlist, and then I was diagnosed autistic nearly two years ago. I was 37 — which is ‘old’ to realise something like that.”
Contemplating recovery and realisation alike led Ferris to realise the importance of yoga in processing it all — and the role it had played in her life suddenly came into sharp focus.
“I originally signed up for yoga teacher training, not to teach, but to deepen my understanding of why it’s benefited me so much, but about halfway through my training, I said, ‘I have to share this’.
“Teaching in a neuroaffirmative way looks like a number of different things for me. The most important thing, probably, is using invitational language rather than directive language so students never feel forced to do anything within the class setting.
“I never, ever offer a hands-on assist. Many people find hands-on assistance helpful in yoga, where a teacher will physically help a student into a pose.
“I would never do that for two reasons — a lot of autistic people don’t like people in their space, so I won’t enter somebody else’s space unless I absolutely have to, but the other reason is that my classes aren’t really about getting the poses right.
I sheepishly attended a class early on a Saturday morning in Cork city centre. Aside from the odd lockdown-era stretch with my partner, it was all relatively new, so settling into a routine in the environment Ferris cultivates was at once a point of curiosity and a process of learning.
Ferris is drawing a regular custom among neurodiverse adults in the city, a handful of whom arrive in time.
She begins with a relaxed, beginner-friendly routine, soundtracked with modern traditional music, ambient electronics and contemporary classical — another layer of gentle exercise for brains inclined toward parallel stimulation.
Using pranayama breathing as a centring technique and regularly returning to rest positions to take stock of the experience while allowing for instinctual, stim-friendly movement throughout, Ferris’ explorations of the medium provide a rare point of focus for neurodivergent brains to tune slowly in with the rest of the body.
It’s liberating, especially for those of us whose bodies sometimes feel more like a corporeal boundary than a home.
“It’s about helping people feel more like they live in their bodies, because there’s this misunderstanding, in my opinion, of the body and the mind being two separate things, or two parts of the same thing,” Ferris says. “I think they are actually the same thing.
“I have lots of neurodivergent friends who I’ve heard say things like, ‘Oh, this stupid body that I have to go around in’, which isn’t kind to yourself.
“One of the aspects of yoga that’s really important is , that means kindness or non-violence, and that should apply to yourself as well.”
