Hongkonger treats tinnitus with yoga and turns her life around
Journalist Vivian Tam Wai-wan was almost overwhelmed by ringing in her ears, but managed to overcome the debilitating condition with yoga and the help of her teacher/mentor
One morning, in the early summer of 2008, Vivian Tam Wai-wan woke with the feeling of having water caught in her ear. She thought little of it. But soon, the muffling developed into a constant, torturous ringing. “It was like the sound of an old, broken AM radio. You know that “ee-err” sound it makes when switching channels?”
In a matter of days, her tinnitus, as the condition is known, overwhelmed her. She could barely sleep and struggled to hold a conversation. Seemingly overnight, Tam went from being a hard-working, award-winning journalist for Ming Pao and CableNews at the height of her career, to being jobless and unwell.
“Hearing gives you that extra dimension, you don’t realise it until it’s gone,” she explains. “Even crossing the road became difficult.”
As her world came apart, she fell into a spiral of depression. Exercise, she says, “seemed the rational thing to do to pass the time and get better”. Feeling weak, she found herself drawn to yoga which “seemed gentle and emotionally healing”.
As she struggled through various poses in her first class at Pure Yoga, discovering tight muscles and stiff joints, she was struck by the caring attitude of her teacher, Connie Yan. “Connie really inspired me. I remember the way she looked me in the eye with a caring expression. She was the coach I needed.”
