Even before she lost her left leg, Vickie Miles was never very comfortable with her body. “I was a chubby girl and overweight after having children,” she says. “Now, with a missing leg, I thought I would never feel comfortable doing anything physical.”
Then she heard about a support group meeting where a yoga instructor was teaching an introductory class for amputees. “I had always wanted to try yoga but never took the time,” Miles says. “Now I had plenty of time. I was nervous, but excited about trying something new with other amputees.”
Little did she know that her instructor had been trained by the godmother of amputee yoga, Marsha Danzig.
One of the first adaptive yoga instructors in the world, Danzig (who lost her right leg at age 13) introduced the discipline to thousands of amputees just like Miles. She established a specialty practice, Yoga for Amputees (Y4A), that catered exclusively to people with limb loss. Her 2018 book, Yoga for Amputees: The Essential Guide to Finding Wholeness After Limb Loss, became an indispensable resource not only for students, but also for yoga instructors who sought to work with clients who have disabilities.
Danzig’s approach went beyond health and wellness. She taught yoga as a way for amputees to build and maintain healthy identities. Writing in Amplitude’s second-ever issue (May/June 2015), she observed: “When a person experiences limb loss, so many other losses come along for the ride: loss of freedom of movement, independence, anonymity, and normalcy. Yoga is a powerful antidote to all those losses. It offers the best of what amputees want: physical freedom, a relaxed psyche, and a feeling of calm in the face of uncertainty.”
Danzig died from complications of COVID-19 in January 2022, leaving the amputee community without one of its most insightful voices. But, true to Danzig’s healing spirit, two of her followers stepped up to carry on her legacy. With permission from Danzig’s sister, adaptive yoga instructors Lucy Lomax and Heather Thamer are keeping Danzig’s practice alive under the Y4A banner. (Class info is available at yogaforamputees.com.)
“Marsha built this legacy,” Lomax says. “We would like for it not to go away.”
Lomax originally got interested in adaptive yoga after working with an amputee at Fort Meade, Maryland, where she spent five years teaching veterans and active-duty service members. That experience inspired her to connect with Danzig and learn more about yoga and limb loss. Lomax went to a couple of conferences with Danzig, assisting in the yoga clinic, and the pair became friends. “She was an amazing person,” Lomax remembers. “She had a low-key sense of humor, was smart as a whip, and just enjoyed life fully. It was contagious. She brought light into the room.”
Lomax and Thamer can’t replicate Danzig’s persona, and neither has experienced limb loss personally. But they can and do stay faithful to her techniques and mission. Both are committed to creating opportunities for amputees to reclaim a sense of wholeness through yoga, with variations for seated, standing, and chair yoga to make Y4A accessible to everyone who wants to try it. Their free weekly online classes emphasize muscle engagement, spinal movements, and breathwork specific to limb difference.
“We teach what’s termed alignment-based Hatha yoga,” Lomax explains. “Especially with amputees, the lower back or hips can be a big issue, so we want to teach them how to anchor through the ‘sit’ bones, so they’re able to sit upright and keep the support of the core and the spine. We’re teaching them how to be strong and flexible at the same time, increasing their overall range of motion. Our whole goal is making yoga accessible to everybody, everywhere.”
The goal, Thamer adds, is to “bring you into the moment, to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, to help steady the mind and settle the body. We’ll make a point in class to say, ‘If you want to put your prosthesis on now, you have time to do that. Or we’ll let them know when we’re going to be transitioning, in case somebody wants to go from a seated to standing position. It’s sequenced in a way so that there’s a natural flow to things, and people can feel challenged but also practice in a way that is best for their own body.”
“I always feel better after a Y4A yoga session,” says Bill Spitz, who met Thamer and Lomax at a recent Amputee Coalition conference. “The instructors provide a very welcoming environment. They help me with mindfulness, balance, strength, and flexibility. Y4A is also a very safe way to learn your own capabilities.”
“At first, I was apprehensive about things I thought I couldn’t do,” adds Miles. “ I soon realized that there were many things I could do. I have broken many bones due to severe osteoporosis, but I have been able to get back in motion due to the strength of the rest of my body. The flexibility has helped me to put on shoes while wearing a gigantic brace due to a broken knee. I am very grateful for Yoga for Amputees. I have met some wonderful, encouraging, and uplifting spirits.”
If you’re interested in Y4A’s free weekly session or other course offerings, visit them online at yogaforamputees.com. Lomax sums up the practice in one word: acceptance. “Accepting the reality of a situation doesn’t mean we have to like it,” she says. “But we get to decide what action to take. You can ask yourself: What am I going to do about it? How can you recapture the fullness of you, which is already there?”
As an amputee herself, Danzig understood the loneliness that can come with limb difference. “People look at you,” she said on the “Yoga for All Bodies” podcast shortly before her death. “You have a scar, or a series of scars, or you’re wearing a prosthetic, or you’re more visible than you want to be. Some people treat you differently. Sometimes your own family cannot come through for you, or you might be the one who’s difficult after your limb loss. Yoga can bring all these things to the surface. But if you can find a way to be good to yourself, and be kind to yourself, and forgive yourself, then you’ve gotten to the depth of what yoga can be for you.”
