I dove into yoga at a time when I felt lost, directionless, and neglectful toward myself physically and emotionally. I was too poor and stubborn to attend psychotherapy -- even though I sensed it could have helped a great deal. So in my hard-headed way, I bought a yoga CD and started practicing at home.

Yoga had always made sense to me. I had been meaning to try it for years, but I didn't know any yoga practitioners. I studied cultural anthropology and Eastern philosophies and religions at UC Santa Barbara, and I have always been ponderous of what it is to be human, to think, to have a body, to die.

I have also always been athletic. Growing up I loved baseball, basketball, swimming, and strength training. Yoga seemed to integrate philosophy with physicality into a more complete transformative practice. Through the study and practice of yoga (and later, meditation), I could work on more levels and layers of what constitutes my Self than I could by only working out or seeing a psychotherapist.

All alone, I read Iyengar's Light on Yoga while I practiced my yoga CD until I could not stand it anymore. So I dragged myself to my first yoga class, which was awkward, challenging, and somehow ... blissful. I knew right away that I would be a yoga teacher. It felt like home. Within a year I was enrolled in Center for Yoga's teacher training, and immediately after that I began teaching a class for seniors.

All the while I had been studying psychology, again on my own. I had yet to actually experience therapy, but the more I practiced yoga and meditation, becoming more aware of myself, I started to feel more acutely that yoga and meditation were not enough. While I was generally happier than I was before I found yoga, certain issues that plagued me then were still manifesting, only now more powerfully. Thanks to yoga and meditation, something wonderful happened: I opened.

I opened up to deeper and subtler feeling, which was both exhilarating and nearly overwhelming. I needed another person, the guru that I never had, someone neutral who could help contain me and support me as I processed these feelings that I had previously been afraid of acknowledging. My newfound vulnerability could not just sit silently anymore -- it needed therapeutic dialogue.

What a relief it was, to finally take that step. I felt stronger by asking for help, and not surprisingly my yoga and meditation practices got juicier soon after I started working with a therapist. As with anything, it seems, some sessions feel more productive than others. And so it is with yoga and meditation: some days I have to drag myself to the mat, other days I can't wait to practice.

Along the way, I studied bodywork at the Institute for Psycho-Structural Balancing, and attended another teacher training at Yoga Works. In 2007, I received an MA in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University, and I have been interning in private practice and working part-time in mental health clinics. I am on a path toward an approach to healing and transformation which includes yoga, meditation, and psychotherapy, and I want to continue to discover how each can inform the other, and spread it!

Thanks for reading,
See you downstream!