Yoga Found Me

What I remember about my mid-twenties is that I needed and spent a lot of time in therapy. I was clinically depressed, and there were days I'd come home from work, sit down on the couch and cry. Simply put, life was not what I'd imagined it would be, after all those years of preparation and dreaming and just doing what I thought I was supposed to do--and it didn't feel good.

My therapist at the time was herself a yoga practitioner, and my sister had been taking yoga in Austin. They'd both been encouraging me to try a class when the flyer of my now long-time teacher and employer, Julie Rosier, landed in my mailbox.

I recall my first time on the mat like it was yesterday. My body took to it in the same way it had taken to dance as a child. I had forgotten how much movement had always spoken to me, deep within my flesh and bones--but my body remembered, especially my heart.

At the end of class while I rested on my back with permission to just be still and breathe, tears filled my eyes. I knew I'd found something that would help save me. It wasn't the answer to everything, but it was an answer. Yoga got me out of my head, where I'd primarily been residing for a number of years, and back into the fullness of my body. It helped me feel alive again, opened my heart and restored my soul.

I was lost then, and there are days even now in my forties when I still feel lost. But each time I take out my mat, yoga brings me home again.