Matthew Sanford describes the first years of his life within his paralyzed body this way: "I was a floating upper torso." Paralyzed from the chest down in a 1978 car crash when he was just 13, Sanford says the advice he got from doctors and others who cared for him amounted to a three-fold strategy. He should concentrate on building strength in his arms, forget about his lower body and legs, and, he says, "try to get through life."It was the practice of yoga, he says, which he discovered in 1991, 12 years after he was paralyzed, that has allowed him to feel connected to his lower body again. It's not that yoga has brought his limbs back to life - it hasn't and it won't. It has enabled him, he says, to be aware of subtle surges of energy - something he has described as akin to a hum or a buzz - flowing between his upper and lower body.
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