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COMING TO BARRE3—AND BACK TO MYSELF
In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re sharing stories from the barre3 community of people who have confronted the challenges of mental health. Today, barre3 Social Media and Content Coordinator, Isabelle Eyman, shares how taking that first step into the barre3 studio put her on the path of recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury, and how each class is a reminder of how far she’s come.
I wake up in a hospital in Paris, the intermittent beeping of machines providing a consistent calm amidst the flurry of voices. The words spoken around me hover in a cloud of foreign disarray. I’d been living in the city for eight months, only just beginning to feel a sense of comfort and a knowing confidence in navigating the metro lines, the language, and the life I was constructing for myself. In a matter of seconds, all of that was torn away.
What happened?
I mustered a weak, Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé? (What happened?) trying to grasp at any information I could, but a sudden pain in my left hip responded instead. The last moment I remembered was several hours prior: flying over the hood of a car, the driver hidden behind a mask of anonymity. I didn’t remember making contact with the ground.
Waking up in that hospital bed, I’d never been more aware of my isolation, never felt more alienated from my own body. I had been out running, a hobby I’d come to rely upon as a way of orienting myself to the city. Carrying only my keys, I had no identifier, and for those few hours, I had no context around which I resembled myself. Somehow, not even the barriers of my own body felt like protection. It was another person entirely that awoke, and whoever I had been earlier that evening had been completely wiped away.
I learned later that the car had driven off, caring so little about the person whose life they upended that they didn’t even slow down. After speaking with my host mother about this a little longer, I was confronted with a truth that had been hinted at, but was so horrible I couldn’t imagine it to be real: In a city of so many people, all of them moving through their lives in a hurried vacuum, most drivers who hit pedestrians were never caught.
That was three years ago, and since then, my recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury has been anything but linear. TBI manifests itself differently in different people, but for me, the condition brought with it Major Depressive Disorder, anxiety, and a resurfacing of my eating disorder that had laid dormant since my early teens. The up-and-down journey of treatment and progress has been discouraging at times, but it’s also given me perspective, opening me up to the wonders of happenstance—barre3 being perhaps the most significant one.
Enter: barre3
I’ve come to trust in the possibility that the universe always gives us what we need. I had been hit by the car my junior year of college, and I came across the country to Portland right after graduation. A year later, I moved in with my boyfriend a quick walk down the street from the barre3 studio on N. Williams.
I must look like a goon when I gawk and marvel at all that Portland has to offer. I’ve scoured the city by foot and bike, and am always amazed by the quiet beauty found in a hidden garden brimming with flora, a rainy afternoon, or the subtle kindness of the smiles strangers extend to me. Exploring my new neighborhood, I passed by the barre3 studio, curious about the outpouring of people into the street, emerging from what must have been a class just finishing up.
Outside the studio, everyone was beaming and excitedly caught in conversation. Snippets of their words fell around me, and I listened as people shared their favorite parts of class and commented upon the instructor’s insatiable energy. In what must have been no more than 30 seconds, I knew I needed to be a part of this.
I called the studio when I got home and immediately bought the new-client special: two weeks of unlimited classes for $49. In those first fourteen days, I went to twelve classes. Having been a collegiate tennis player, I had been exposed to the dangers of extreme exercise and exercise addiction. But at barre3, I was hooked not only to the amazing boost in energy after each class, but also the process of rediscovering what my body could do.
Before barre3, I had become a shell of my past self—but with each class, I felt my personhood returning. Along with my arms, legs, (and yes, booty) getting stronger, I could feel my understanding of self developing as well.
My boyfriend playfully mocks me, calling me a marketer’s dream. When I fall in love with something, I fall hard, and I have to tell everyone I know about what’s making me feel so good. I guarantee all of my girlfriends have heard my verbal love letter to barre3 a million times, and most of those women have joined me for a class or two (or three), experiencing the magic for themselves.
Discovering barre3—and rediscovering myself
Though I love to share barre3 with others, it’s my personal connection to the class, culture, and community that keeps me coming back again and again. Since the accident, there have been times when I’ve felt estranged from the environment of my life, but in every barre3 class, I’m deeply rooted. I’m connected in a way that’s so profound, so meaningful, that I feel this beautiful energy pulsing through my body, extending from my fingertips and communicated in the tears that often come partway through class, overwhelming me and leaving me in awe.
It’s this emotion and this energy that’s allowed me to forgive. In the past, I’ve tried to forget that year I lived in Paris and the car crash that so abruptly changed my life. I’ve tried to erase it, wiping the pain from my memory so that it could no longer permeate my present. But I see so clearly now how the events of my life have led me here. It’s been a long journey of re-establishing the connection between my personhood and the body that encases it, but I’m so grateful for the role barre3 has played in that transformation.
Whether I’m Step Tapping my heart out or breathing through the burn of Power Leg, it’s in those moments that I no longer just exist in my body. I’ve come to inhabit my body, and it’s this fact and that realization that’s allowed me to fully embrace my life—both the messy and beautiful. And barre3 has helped me realize that maybe both those things are the same.
Ready to experience the magic of barre3 yourself? Sign up for a studio class or try a 15-day free trial of barre3 online workouts.
In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re sharing stories from the barre3 community of people who have confronted the challenges of mental health. Today, barre3 Social Media and Content Coordinator, Isabelle Eyman, shares how taking that first step into the barre3 studio put her on the path of recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury, and how each class is a reminder of how far she’s come.
I wake up in a hospital in Paris, the intermittent beeping of machines providing a consistent calm amidst the flurry of voices. The words spoken around me hover in a cloud of foreign disarray. I’d been living in the city for eight months, only just beginning to feel a sense of comfort and a knowing confidence in navigating the metro lines, the language, and the life I was constructing for myself. In a matter of seconds, all of that was torn away.
What happened?
I mustered a weak, Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé? (What happened?) trying to grasp at any information I could, but a sudden pain in my left hip responded instead. The last moment I remembered was several hours prior: flying over the hood of a car, the driver hidden behind a mask of anonymity. I didn’t remember making contact with the ground.
Waking up in that hospital bed, I’d never been more aware of my isolation, never felt more alienated from my own body. I had been out running, a hobby I’d come to rely upon as a way of orienting myself to the city. Carrying only my keys, I had no identifier, and for those few hours, I had no context around which I resembled myself. Somehow, not even the barriers of my own body felt like protection. It was another person entirely that awoke, and whoever I had been earlier that evening had been completely wiped away.
I learned later that the car had driven off, caring so little about the person whose life they upended that they didn’t even slow down. After speaking with my host mother about this a little longer, I was confronted with a truth that had been hinted at, but was so horrible I couldn’t imagine it to be real: In a city of so many people, all of them moving through their lives in a hurried vacuum, most drivers who hit pedestrians were never caught.
That was three years ago, and since then, my recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury has been anything but linear. TBI manifests itself differently in different people, but for me, the condition brought with it Major Depressive Disorder, anxiety, and a resurfacing of my eating disorder that had laid dormant since my early teens. The up-and-down journey of treatment and progress has been discouraging at times, but it’s also given me perspective, opening me up to the wonders of happenstance—barre3 being perhaps the most significant one.
Enter: barre3
I’ve come to trust in the possibility that the universe always gives us what we need. I had been hit by the car my junior year of college, and I came across the country to Portland right after graduation. A year later, I moved in with my boyfriend a quick walk down the street from the barre3 studio on N. Williams.
I must look like a goon when I gawk and marvel at all that Portland has to offer. I’ve scoured the city by foot and bike, and am always amazed by the quiet beauty found in a hidden garden brimming with flora, a rainy afternoon, or the subtle kindness of the smiles strangers extend to me. Exploring my new neighborhood, I passed by the barre3 studio, curious about the outpouring of people into the street, emerging from what must have been a class just finishing up.
Outside the studio, everyone was beaming and excitedly caught in conversation. Snippets of their words fell around me, and I listened as people shared their favorite parts of class and commented upon the instructor’s insatiable energy. In what must have been no more than 30 seconds, I knew I needed to be a part of this.
I called the studio when I got home and immediately bought the new-client special: two weeks of unlimited classes for $49. In those first fourteen days, I went to twelve classes. Having been a collegiate tennis player, I had been exposed to the dangers of extreme exercise and exercise addiction. But at barre3, I was hooked not only to the amazing boost in energy after each class, but also the process of rediscovering what my body could do.
Before barre3, I had become a shell of my past self—but with each class, I felt my personhood returning. Along with my arms, legs, (and yes, booty) getting stronger, I could feel my understanding of self developing as well.
My boyfriend playfully mocks me, calling me a marketer’s dream. When I fall in love with something, I fall hard, and I have to tell everyone I know about what’s making me feel so good. I guarantee all of my girlfriends have heard my verbal love letter to barre3 a million times, and most of those women have joined me for a class or two (or three), experiencing the magic for themselves.
Discovering barre3—and rediscovering myself
Though I love to share barre3 with others, it’s my personal connection to the class, culture, and community that keeps me coming back again and again. Since the accident, there have been times when I’ve felt estranged from the environment of my life, but in every barre3 class, I’m deeply rooted. I’m connected in a way that’s so profound, so meaningful, that I feel this beautiful energy pulsing through my body, extending from my fingertips and communicated in the tears that often come partway through class, overwhelming me and leaving me in awe.
It’s this emotion and this energy that’s allowed me to forgive. In the past, I’ve tried to forget that year I lived in Paris and the car crash that so abruptly changed my life. I’ve tried to erase it, wiping the pain from my memory so that it could no longer permeate my present. But I see so clearly now how the events of my life have led me here. It’s been a long journey of re-establishing the connection between my personhood and the body that encases it, but I’m so grateful for the role barre3 has played in that transformation.
Whether I’m Step Tapping my heart out or breathing through the burn of Power Leg, it’s in those moments that I no longer just exist in my body. I’ve come to inhabit my body, and it’s this fact and that realization that’s allowed me to fully embrace my life—both the messy and beautiful. And barre3 has helped me realize that maybe both those things are the same.
Ready to experience the magic of barre3 yourself? Sign up for a studio class or try a 15-day free trial of barre3 online workouts.
