Seeing Within — Episode 3: Between Two Worlds

Seeing Within is a podcast hosted by Dawn Blezard, a Jivamukti-trained yoga teacher living with Stargardt’s disease — a progressive condition that is gradually taking her sight. Each episode, Dawn talks with guests who are navigating life, movement, and identity at the edges of what they can see.Aly Slaughter is a yoga teacher based in St Louis, Missouri, who has been visually impaired since birth. Diagnosed in adulthood with achromatopsia — a rare inherited retinal condition — Aly lives with severely reduced distance vision, nystagmus, and extreme light sensitivity. She also has ADHD, anxiety, and a seizure disorder, and has built a teaching life that spans senior centres, CrossFit gyms, and online classes across multiple time zones.In this conversation, Aly and Dawn explore what it means to navigate the world when you exist somewhere between the blind and sighted worlds — and why that in-between space is both the hardest and the most interesting place to be.They talk about how Aly came to yoga through weightlifting and why she used to dread Shavasana; the practical and psychological reality of solo travel with a visual impairment; why she uses a white cane primarily for other people’s benefit — and the complicated feelings that come with putting it away; the “you don’t look blind” experience and what it costs to keep explaining yourself; how achromatopsia progresses differently from conditions like Stargardt’s; and why asking for help is a form of advocacy, not weakness.“Imagine if I didn’t practice yoga — how much worse this would be.”To contact Aly about classes, email [email protected] or find her on Instagram at @alyslaughteryoga.This is not a podcast to rush through. There is no right way to listen. Produced by Anne Gould. Music via Epidemic Sound. With thanks to Sarah Place Accountants, Bury St Edmunds, for supporting the production. To hear more, visit pathwayyoga.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pathwayyoga.substack.com/subscribe