By Michael Novotny, M.H.

During my last duty assignment at Fort Carson in Colorado, I experienced the loss of a fellow soldier to suicide. I wish that I could say they were the only soldier I knew who chose to take their own life. But suicide has touched my colleagues and I many times.

The soldier suicide at Fort Carson shook me to my core and that’s when I knew I needed to step up and connect soldiers and veterans with self-empowering healing practices. 

My path to healing began about 2012, a little over halfway through my military career. I spent 20 years on active duty, eight with special ops. Serving in a high operational tempo for such a long period took its toll on me mentally, physically, and spiritually.  

In 2012, I realized that I was suffering, but I couldn’t put a name to it. I didn’t know why I was feeling anxious and nervous, or why everything felt like a life-threatening situation, even though it was not. I’d be submitting a report, or prepping for something super low threat, and yet it felt like lives were on the line.  

I felt like I was spiraling and didn’t have anything to pull me out. 

Fortunately, I had a warrant officer who asked a bunch of us to go to yoga one day. He might as well have been asking us to wear slippers to work. I was a soldier. I didn’t “do yoga.”  

But I went, and that yoga class changed my life.  

You see, soldiers are often known for going hard in the gym and not stretching. Our jobs ask a lot of our bodies – like carrying hundred-pound rucksacks for miles. And then all of a sudden, we have back injuries, we have tight muscles, and our bodies get out of alignment. A lot of us become mega-bundles of chronic pain. I knew a lot of people who felt their only options were prescription drugs, surgery, and other invasive treatments that cost a lot of money, put additional strain on the body, and require a lot of recovery time.  

When I walked into that yoga class with the warrant officer and my fellow soldiers, every one of us probably walked into the room with some form of stress, anxiety, depression, or PTSD. Mental health issues were running rampant in our unit at the time, and it all boiled beneath our skin.  

When we walked out of that yoga class, we left with the knowledge that there were alternative ways to deal with the intense physical and psychological pain many of us were carrying. I left with the knowledge that we can use our breath as a tool to connect to the body, to flip our own switch, so we could get from a “fight-or-flight” state to a “breathe-and-let-go” state.  

Yoga helped me from that very first class and I was hooked after that. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been a yoga practitioner for over a decade. And now, in my work with Endeavors, I see it helping other veterans the same way. 

As I furthered my yoga practice and became a certified instructor in 2019, I learned that sometimes healing requires surgery, but some types of healing may only require us to develop a deeper relationship with our bodies. Yoga – an embodied practice – led me to breathwork, which is another great tool for releasing patterns of stress and tension. 

Over the past few years, breathwork has become a focus of my studies. As a breathwork practitioner and coach, I discovered how much research is out there showing that when we can connect with our breath in certain ways, we are directly influencing the function of vital organs like the brain, lungs, and heart. For so many veterans and veteran family members drowning in chronic pain from disabilities, mental disorders, or financial or housing stressors, being able to develop heart coherence and release tension in the body is often the first step to being able to break the cycle of anxiety, of depression, of suicidal thoughts. 

Today, I’m fortunate to work with El Paso’s veteran and border protection community at Endeavors, a humanitarian organization that has been serving El Paso’s defense community since 2017. As the health and wellness practitioner at Endeavors, I lead free yoga classes, breathwork meditation groups, and individual mind-body and light therapy sessions out of our Wellness Room. 

These tools can be the first step to a better life for veterans. I spent years watching my fellow soldiers suffer and feel as though they had no options. Now I’m honored to show my fellow veterans that there is help. That there is low-cost, accessible help. That you are not failing, you are not alone, and you can reclaim the wellness you deserve.  

It starts with a breath.