Yoga as Healing Portrait Series captures many faces of yoga

After cancer made a widow out of Cecilia Ferreyra, she turned to yoga as a way to channel her grief.

Ferreyra found the movement, controlled breathing and meditation a powerful way to calm the overwhelming sadness she felt after the death of her husband six years ago.

"I came to yoga through my own personal healing journey," Ferreyra said in an interview with Radio Active host Portia Clarke. "I went to yoga to find that inner peace and grounding as a way to deal with some very challenging circumstances."

I went to yoga to find that inner peace and grounding as a way to deal with some very challenging circumstances.- Cecilia Ferreyra

Now her story has served as the inspiration behind a new a photography project: the Yoga as Healing Portrait Series.

Featuring the work of Ferreyra's partner, Tyler Baker, the portraits speak to real experiences with yoga in the context of challenging circumstances, including addiction, emotional trauma, injury and illness.

"I'm meeting people who are approaching yoga in a different way. More to look for a way of healing, and a way to deal with difficult circumstances," Ferreyra said.

'It's about the mind and the heart, and finding inner peace'

The first photograph in the series features Drea Wonnacott, an Edmonton mother to two young children who used yoga as a way to cope with a breast cancer diagnosis and the months of treatment that followed.

Another portrait features Bruce Ganske, an Edmonton man in his fifties, who turned to yoga after a major accident left him struggling for years with psychological trauma.

"Yoga is really helping him in being able to process that and overcome emotional wounds, because yoga isn't just about the body, it's about the mind and the heart, and finding inner peace," Ferreyra said. 

Ferreyra said they began collaborating on the project as a way to challenge perceptions of yoga as an exercise fad, reserved for the young, fit and fashionable. They wanted to create images that didn't involve ex-dancers, gymnasts or cheerleaders, but real people with authentic stories.

"We really wanted to expand the frame of reference. Is there space for other images, or do all of them have to be beautiful young flexible people?" She said. 

For now, the series is available online, but they hope to to one day see the photographs featured in a hard-copy book. And they are still looking for subjects to participate.

"We've had a really positive response," Ferreyra said. "We're hoping that people that people are interested in telling their stories will get in contact with us."