East Hampton Yogi Offers Free Injury Clinic

When East Hampton resident and artist Lois Nesbitt first began to teach yoga 22 years ago, she soon discovered that many of her students faced limitations participating in the classes she offered, due to injuries.Whether from a car or a bicycle accident or an RSI—a repetitive stress injury caused by a daily activity, such as driving, golfing or even sitting—she said the injuries made practicing yoga difficult.

“That was frustrating me, because I want yoga to be something that helps people,” she said.

With a combination of training from various schools, Ms. Nesbitt decided to create an environment to help students through their injuries by applying the principles of body alignment, massage therapy, physical therapy and, of course, yoga.

Each Monday at KamaDeva Yoga on Lumber Lane in East Hampton Village, she hosts a free, drop-in body injury clinic. She said no yoga experience is necessary—in fact, a majority of her students have none.

“There is a widening net of people realizing they can get help that is not pharmaceutical and not surgical,” Ms. Nesbitt said. “Some people come here every week and many people only come once or twice. My greatest hope is to empower them to heal themselves.”

Equipped with a laptop and a camera, she works with each student intimately to narrow down their ailments, their history and their daily movements.

On her computer, she runs a program that allows her to input students’ anatomical information. It then provides a visual rendering that she uses to explain what is happening to their bodies.

Then, she creates a routine they can complete at home to aid their injury with simple tools such as stretchy bands and lacrosse balls. With her camera, she shoots video or takes photos of her students doing the routines so they have a reference when they practice at home.

During her latest clinic on Monday she worked on a handful of different students—a young athlete with elbow pain, a middle-aged man with arthritis in his knees and an elderly woman with Lyme disease.

“My elbow up to my tendon here has been bothering me for a while from overexercise,” Kyle Sturmann, 20, told Ms. Nesbitt during their session.

He said the pain began while weightlifting, specifically doing bicep curls and pull-ups. Since then, he has avoided straining the area.

By the end of the session, filled with a variety of simple routines and exercises, he said he feels improvement.

Ms. Nesbitt said her success rate is typically 80 to 85 percent. For some students, she’s had to do more research, while with others she’s had to refer them to specialists if she feel like she can’t help.

The help she provides her students with goes far beyond professional fulfillment. “Helping people is whole different level of gratification,” she said.

She can strongly relate to her students and the challenges they face because she was in their shoes not too long ago, she explained. In 2014, she hit rock bottom on a physical level with a debilitating hip injury, which led to a total hip replacement soon after diagnosis.

“That was a real eye opener,” she said. “Until you have something really wrong like that, you don’t see people in the same way.”

A part-time resident of New York City, Ms. Nesbitt said she began to notice how many people were limited in some way, whether they used a wheelchair, a cane or even walked with a limp. With her surgery a complete success, she said she is “one of the lucky ones.”

“I will never forget that period of helplessness ... how many people stopped and said, ‘Can I help you?’ I got so much support from total strangers,” she said. “Now when I see people struggling I stop and I help them. I think it’s given my clinic work an authenticity.”

With the summer months approaching, Ms. Nesbitt has plans to bring her clinic to the next level. On Saturdays during the month of June, she will host four different full-day healing intensives. The first class, on June 4, focuses on feet, ankles, shins, calves and knees. The second, June 11, focuses on thighs, hamstrings, hips and lower back. The third, June 18, is for the torso, upper back, neck and shoulders, and the fourth, June 25, is for shoulders, elbows, wrists and hands. Classes are $85 per workshop or $280 for the full series.

Meanwhile, she will continue to offer the free injury clinic during the summer as well.