11 images
What an inspiring and awesome model I recently had the honor of working with in my studio in Santa Monica, California. His name is Tom Valencia, and he was kind enough to share his story with my friend, the life coach and consultant Karen Mozes. Karen writes:
"In November of 2012, Tom was in a yoga class and he felt an unusual tightness on his chest followed by pain and numbness of his left leg. Rushed to a nearby hospital, Tom was subjected to multiple surgeries addressing the condition, an aortic type dissection, and its many rippled effects, which included partial kidney and lung failure, the left lower extremity ischemia, and the eventual amputation of his left leg."
All I could hear in my head when we were working together was, This is what a beautiful model looks like.
Tom recently completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training and says, "I did not survive all of this to go back to being who I was before, or doing what I did before."
