I was asked to write a story for Fierce Calm on how yoga saved my life. I thought I was the only one, but looking at their instagram page, you’ll see many many people have been saved, healed, transformed, renewed, and freed through their yoga practice.

We come to our mats confused, alone, and afraid. We come to see what these poses are all about. We come to check out the hype and the trend. We leave lighter, and we wonder why. So we return, again and again, and pretty soon, we notice physical changes. Then, subtler, emotional changes. What is happening? We keep arriving on our mat. We keep up with the practice. And before we know it, yoga has seeped into the places that needed healing and growth, the places we hadn’t even considered or paid any attention. Yoga wakes up areas of our life we have long ago buried.

This is my Yoga Saved My Life story: my deepest gratitude to @fiercecalm for welcoming me to write it all down.

I’ve practiced yoga since I was 15. My mom taught me in our living room after I got home from school. By the time I was 18, I had my heart set on attending a certification program in order to become a yoga teacher. The poses exposed me and hid me at the same time. I opened my heart in Fish Pose and felt a tenderness behind my ribcage I hadn’t noticed before. I indulged in the secret space my mom and I created when we removed the coffee table and practiced on the shabby antique rug.

I am 40 now, and I just completed my 200 hour teaching training at Kripalu in Massachusetts. It took me 25 years and a lot of pain to finally go after my dream. A straight “A” student, I was encouraged (and expected) to go to college and choose a career. Yoga as a profession was dashed many times by my parents and friends, and despite my experience in Fish Pose, I listened to others rather than my own heart. After college I got a job, got married, had babies, and my yoga practice went to the bottom of the heap. 

One day, as I looked around at the toys on the floor and the empty wine bottles in the recycling bin, I thought, “Is this my life? Is this what I wanted?” My husband was away on yet another business trip and I suspected he was having an affair. Each night, after I tucked my young boys into bed, wandered around the house with a drink in hand, and obsessively searched for evidence that he was cheating. I wanted proof, so I could stop feeling crazy.

The thing is, I was never crazy. None of us are. I wasn’t crazy to want to become a yoga teacher 25 years ago and I wasn’t crazy when I thought my husband had a girlfriend - he did. I found the emails one year after I had picked up yoga again and 6 months after I had quit drinking. Thank God, Buddha, or the Universe that I was practicing yoga and sober when I found the emails from his lover. Anything that was already broken within me shattered wide open as I read her words to him, “I love you. I want you.” By now I had muscular arms - I could balance in Crow Pose without toppling forward onto my face and chin. I could stand balanced in Half Moon Pose, now that my core wrapped tightly around my front and back in order to hold me up. I had evidence of my strength and my resilience. I had muscles poking out of my body and I no longer needed a drink in my hand to deal with life. So even though it was terribly painful to see my marriage crumble into dust, I knew I was strong. I knew I was enough. I knew I was strong enough to stay sober, and get through my divorce. 

Yoga helped me see my strength, first in my body and then in my soul. Yoga helped me stay with the pain instead of reaching for an escape. Yoga taught me to stay and feel so I would eventually be able to let go. Yoga taught me to treat myself with compassion when I needed it most. Yoga taught me I am worth saving, and worth healing. No matter that it took me turning 40 to complete my teacher training - the timing was perfect, because yoga was with me in the living room when I was 15, and it was with me through my addiction and my divorce. Yoga is a continued practice, which means there is no end result, no finish line. There is only returning to the practice, again and again, and witnessing where it will take us.