Anna Kerry went from yoga fan and enthusiast to Yoga teacher. Then the pandemic hit. A   year later, at age 35, she had a stroke due to as PFO. In this episode she shares her story. She tells us how yoga got her through stroke recovery and how it informs her work today. Anna talks about the relationship between trauma and yoga, and she talks about the impact stroke has had on her life with her husband. As Anna has gone through this journey and continued both her studies and her teaching, she developed a yoga program specifically for stroke survivors. And Anna explores the power and near sacredness of her own yoga mat. If you don't see the audio player below, visit http://Strokecast.com/Anna to listen to the conversation.   Click here for a machine-generated transcript Who is Anna Kerry? In Anna's own words: I had a stroke aged 35 in March 2021. I've had a regular yoga practice for about 10 years and decided I loved the practice so much that I wanted to learn how to teach and share my love of yoga. I qualified in Aug 2020 and had only been teaching for around 7 months when I had a stroke. As the stroke came out of the blue I had to dig deep into my yoga practice to help me through and believe that my yoga practice has helped my mindset and my mental health during this traumatic time. I'm now in a position where I want to help other stroke survivors through their recovery so I designed The Life After Stroke Programme -- a 6 week programme designed to help stroke survivors regain their life and confidence through a holistic and embodied approach to recovery. What is a PFO? Anna's stroke was caused by a PFO. She found that out a month after her stroke, and she will likely get it fixed eventually. A PFO is a hole in the heart. Roughly 25% of the population has one. I have one. Guests Misha Montana and Christine Lee both had PFOs that led to their strokes. After we are born, our blood follows a path through the heart. It comes in the right side. When the heart beats, the blood on the right side heads out of the heart to the lungs. There, it drops of CO2, picks up oxygen, filters out clots, and heads to the left side of the heart. It will pour into the left side and when the heart beats, it sends that oxygen-rich blood on to the brain and other parts of the body. Then that blood drops off its oxygen, picks up CO2, and heads back to the right side of the heart to start the whole cycle over. Before we are born, though, the process is different. While we are developing in our mothers’ uteruses, we don’t breath air. All the oxygen and nutrients we need to build fingers and toes and kidneys and hearts and brains comes from the umbilical cord. Since we’re not breathing air, there’s no point in sending blood to the lungs. Instead, in utero it goes straight from the right side of the heart to the left side of the heart through a hole in the middle. That hole is called a Patent Foramen Ovale, or a PFO. It normally closes on its own shortly after we are born. A quarter of the time it doesn’t close after birth, and that allows unoxygenated, unfiltered blood to sneak across the heart, skip the lungs and drag a blood clot to the brain. So, if you’ve had a stroke, and you have a PFO, should you have surgery to close that hole? Maybe. Christine and Misha had their PFOs closed. I did not. Anna is waiting to get her PFO closed. I talked about this issue in a lot more detail with Dr. David Thaler. You can listen to that conversation at http://Strokecast.com/pfo. A Place of Her Own Anna Kerry has a special place in this world -- it's her yoga mat. At first glance, it's just a piece of material, but once she is on her mat it becomes a portal to take her to another special place. The mat allows her to center herself. It's a place she can experience joy and agony; happiness and ange