Hi everyone, my name is Amy Rohrer. I am a yoga teacher, Ayurvedic wellness counselor, wellness & RA warrior, and first-time mama to becoming this December 2021!

My RA story started 7 years ago at the age of 27, although there were years of chronic back pain and injuries before that I believe all played a part in the disease progression.

So when I woke up one morning barely able to move my neck and feeling the stiffness move to my hands and feet, it forced me to start asking new questions, to learn how to be with the uncomfortable, and to switch gears from my outward achieving to inwards inquiring.  I vividly remember asking myself these kinds of questions… 

Why did this happen? Who am I if I can’t do my job, my usual activities, and things that defined me as me? What is this new chapter trying to teach me? 

One thing I should also mention is that I had grown up seeing my mom live with RA my whole life. Just a few months after she gave birth to me, she went into a big flare, and unfortunately with this being almost 35 years ago, there were not a lot of medication options, and her disease continued to progress severely over the years.

There are many memories I have of my mom being in bed, struggling to get dressed, needing help to get off the toilet, seeing the pain on her face but never really understanding what she was going through. Over the years she has had a lot of joint deformity in her hands and feet, had 6 inches of her bowel removed due to a medication complication, followed by a hip and two knee replacements.

She is the ultimate RA Warrior for so many reasons, and I could write a whole post just on her story…but I’m sticking with my experience, I won’t lie and say I wasn’t terrified in the beginning learning that I now had this same disease I had watched my mom struggle with my whole life. Upon diagnosis, I cried, I was shocked, I was angry…but eventually started to realize that I couldn’t let her journey define mine.

I knew I needed to take some time to honor my healing, to process, to push pause on what life looked like then so I could implement some positive new ways of managing this disease in my life. And at that point in time yoga had been my saving grace and was the one solid thing that brought me a sense of peace, connection, more ease on the hard days, community, and feeling safer in my body.  I had this feeling, that if yoga was helping me feel better in just 1 hour x day, what would be the effect of diving deeper into the philosophy behind the practice? Becoming a yoga teacher seemed like a bucket list dream for many years, but my sudden illness with RA lit a fire inside of me that pushed me to take the leap of faith. At this point, I had nothing to lose!

So, I quit my job and left for a 3-month trip to an ashram in the Bahamas to devote time and space for my healing through a 200 hr. Hatha Yoga Teacher Training. There are many synchronicities that led up to this opportunity seamlessly manifesting… long story short…when I put this intention out there, the universe was there to provide in surprising ways and the money I didn’t have, seemed to all line up to pay for the course. 

Looking back, this experience at my yoga training was one of the hardest things, yet best decisions of my life. Going through this process, it was as though my lens of life flipped without the distractions of being back home in my normal routine and environment.

I realized that I had burned myself out with my ‘do do do’ mentality and the stress of university, had a lot of unprocessed trauma from the past, and also had a lot of fear with letting love into my life from past relationships, which was actually a reflection of the love I was giving myself and the ways I would cope before my diagnosis. So, I began the process of unlearning these patterns, these ways of thinking, the limiting beliefs, and started to let love back in, starting most importantly with loving myself.

Now 7 years later, life looks very different than it did upon that scary diagnosis at the time. But I never forget the journey from there to here and I am thankful in many ways for it. While there have still been many challenges on the path since then, including changes in medication, flares, a car accident, quitting my corporate job to start my own yoga studio- my ability to ride the wave of the ebbs and flows is what supports me through life’s challenges.

Yoga is not a work-out, it is a work-in, and this is the point of spiritual practice- to open our hearts and focus our awareness so that we can come back to the truth of who we really are, to remember what we already know and be our unique self! Being our authentic selves is the biggest competitive advantage we have in this life. And now as I write this… I am happy to report I have conquered another fear, which was coming off of methotrexate so that my husband and I could start our family.

This was a big fear for me to face, even with all the self-growth I had done, I know many of you can relate to the fear of regressing back into a flare after you finally start to feel better. I was scared to come off MTX, to switch to a medication that would be safe during pregnancy, and the unknown of that journey. And while I did flare coming off MTX, I’m happy to report that it was ALL worth it. I was able to get back on track and successfully become pregnant naturally! My other fears were how my body would handle pregnancy, and of course the potential to flare and physically manage the stress of caring for a newborn post-partum.

I am now 7 months pregnant so I can’t share yet what my delivery or post-partum is like – but I’m SO in awe and amazed at how my body has been able to handle this pregnancy… 1st trimester was the toughest, but 2nd trimester I felt amazing… and hoping that continues now that I am in the 3rd trimester and have a few months left to go until we meet our baby BOY All the work to get here was worth it, and I know that the major lessons that RA has taught me of resilience, compassion for myself and others, courage, and grit will be the absolute best gifts I can give my son.

While I wouldn’t wish this disease upon my worst enemy, I am proud of the person it has shaped me to come. I’m also so grateful for the community of other warriors that inspire me to get out of bed on the hard days and give myself grace along the way. To chat, learn more about adaptive yoga & Ayurveda, or just connect and cheer each other on please feel free to reach out to me to connect over at:

IG: https://www.instagram.com/yoga_with_amy/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/yoga.w.amy