After being in the military for thirteen years, Ben Boyle didn’t imagine himself teaching yoga near Cygnet in southern Tasmania. Growing up in Deep Bay, Ben mentioned that he was a ‘young man with a huge desire for exploration’. That was quite possibly what got him into the military.
Despite him not having any regrets during his time in Brisbane and Townsville as an inventory captain with the army, Ben was still left with a number of mental scars. “Fantastic time, really enjoyed it, lots of experiences, lots of friends, lots of travel, lots of self growth and lots of development, but there was something missing. I was looking for something. I’d finished playing AFL footy, I’d got out of the army, I was sort of suffering post-traumatic stress and I was drinking a lot and nothing was working,” he stated.
After a neighbour in Brisbane suggested yoga to him and convinced him to try it, things started to change for Ben. “She said ‘you’ve got to try it’ and for three years I said ‘no I’m not doing yoga. Yoga is for poofs’. I just had a frown on the face all the time, and when I did my first yoga class I went ‘oh my god’. It was very challenging, extremely challenging but extremely rewarding, not during the class but after,” explained Ben.
After he was introduced to yoga, Ben went travelling around the world for four years. He has since returned back to Tasmania to establish his own yoga business. Initially when he presented the idea of yoga to the males in the community, they were reluctant just like when he was when first suggested to. As of now, his yoga school has the highest number of male participants in the whole of Australia. “It’s very intense and on numerous levels. Some people physically, some people mentally, other people emotionally, some people all three. The biggest thing at training is just to let go, let go of your ideas of how things should be,” he advised.
Even before he started his teacher training, Ben was already using techniques to assist him in coping with post traumatic stress disorder. “I had a tight body, a stiff body. Carrying packs in the infantry for 13 years, everything was just tight and sore and a lot of friction and emotion that was stored inside the body,” he recalled. However, through yoga, he was able to heal without the help of any traditional medication. For the full story, you can view it here.
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