If you need/love physical poses (asana)– great, me too! In fact I only came to Yoga through my own journey with physical pain and scoliosis. But I’ve stayed for the glimmers of deep healing I’ve witnessed in myself and others– healing of the physical body but also of mental, emotional, spiritual burdens. It’s confounding to get a real grasp of Yoga when in the West we’ve come to know it only as the physical part. But Yoga is actually an ancient system in which asana is only 1 of 8 “limbs”. Other limbs include things you might be familiar with like meditation and breathwork, but also more abstract quantities like truth, moderation, contentment and surrender.

The word Yoga actually translates as “to yoke” or to find unity in the diversity. There’s a saying “it’s not the union of the head to the knee, it’s the union of the individual with the Self”.  Yoga is about getting to know yourself, and then finding those core aspects of yourself reflected in everybody and in everything. It’s challenging work but it also makes an incredible balm to modern life when we’re all caught up in our stress and feeling lost and lonely. Yoga to me is a way of knowing balance, ease and joy are all possible. And not just possible, but the core facets of who I am.