Amputee Iraq War veteran heals wounds with yoga
HOUSTON (KTRK) -- They say yoga is for everyone, and nowhere is that more true than in the case of Staff Sgt. Dan Nevins.
The Iraqi War veteran's unexpected to journey to become a yoga teacher started while he was serving in the Battle of Fallujah. The date was Nov. 10, 2014.
"Boom! The silence was destroyed by the deafening blast that sent my 18,000 pound vehicle about six feet in the air in a ball of fire," Nevins said. "I could feel and hear the truck disintegrating around my body. When I opened my eyes, I realized that I was ejected from the vehicle, but my legs were caught around the twisted and burning metal that used to be the floorboard and undercarriage of the truck.
Nevins' partner was dead and his own legs were gone.
"What could a guy with no legs do? In my mind it was nothing," Nevins said. "I was a competitive runner and that was going to be gone. Running is what my wife and I did together, and the sad realization that how is she going to continue to love me?"
Although he couldn't continue running, he didn't need legs to be a yoga instructor. The fact that he has no legs might be the greatest lesson to his students.
"If I can tell the story well enough and connect to it emotionally and give that to them, that can be perspective for them as well. So they can learn what I learn without having to go through what I went through," Nevins said. "You don't change the world to change your life. You change your life to change the world."
Yoga students say they are stronger than they realized after experiencing one of Nevins' classes.
"[I have] uterine cancer, and it's my third reoccurrence," said student Marcy Kurtz. "It's about me giving up shame I have around being the healthiest person I know who's sick again."
If you'd like to see more on Dan Nevins, visit his Instagram and Twitter pages.
