What can yoga do for you?

If you’ve never stepped foot on a yoga mat, tiptoe over to one and give it a try. And while you’re at it, bend over and try to touch your toes. Go ahead, go for it. Before you know it, you’ll be doing things with your body you never thought possible. If you keep thinking about trying yoga but never get around to doing it, stop procrastinating and get going! Yoga can do so much for you, no matter what age or physical condition you’re in. In fact, once you start doing yoga it’ll make you feel better all over, whether you’re 18 or 80.

According to The Everything Yoga Book, by Cynthia Worby (Adams Media Corporation 2002), yoga:

• Gives you lots of energy.
• Helps you to age gracefully by keeping your spine healthy.
• Helps you stay fit.
• Improves your circulation.
• Eases menstrual, perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms.
• Helps keep your reproductive organs healthy.
• Relieves chronic ailments.
• Relieves stress.
• Helps you relax.
• Creates a sense of inner fulfillment.
• Develops self-esteem and positive body image.
• Improves your posture.
• Increases your bone density.
• Has a profound impact on your emotional health.
• Improves your sex life.
• Focuses the mind.

Want to learn more about yoga? Get a copy of The Everything Yoga Book.  In this easy-to-read book about yoga, you’ll learn what yoga is, what it can do for you, the many styles of yoga, how you can get started, and breathing basics. This helpful book also includes lots of photos of warm-up poses, standing poses, seated poses, twists, supine and prose poses, inverted and balance poses, back bends, and sample practice sequences. Toward the end of the book you’ll find special sections about how to practice the sun salutation, relaxation poses, pranayama, meditation, and special applications (such as poses for pregnancy or cancer, for example). My copy is dog-eared, with little tabs scattered about, because I refer to it again and again. It’s one of the most important books in my yoga library.

I wish you the best in your yoga journey. Namaste.

Feel sad during Winter? Try restorative yoga

Do you feel depressed in winter because you’re not getting enough sun to brighten your days?  Do you want to curl up under a blanket and not come out until Spring? The dark, cold days of winter affect about one in 10 people, according to Dr. Phillip Keller, a family medicine physician with Clarian Arnett Health, quoted in an article entitled Seasonal affective disorder affects some people during the cold, wintry months  (jconline.com, 1/12/10). Dr. Keller says that seasonal affective disorder, or “SAD” can have different symptoms than depression, such as “increased appetite, an increase in sleep, irritability and interpersonal difficulties.” If you’re suffering from any of these symptoms, chances are you’re not getting enough sunlight. You’re hybernating indoors and feeling the effects of cabin fever. Most people don’t seek help but just wait for their feeling to pass.

Don’t want to wait for blue skies and the bright, warm sun to feel better?  Sink into restorative yoga poses to rebalance and restore your central nervous system. In an article entitled Beat the Blues by Carol Krucoff (Yoga Journal, February 2010), Carol describes her journey from winter blues to a form of emotional salvation after she trained with clinical psychologist and Integrative Yoga therapist Bo Forbes. Forbes recommended a regular yoga practice, pranayama and meditating in front of a lightbox to ease her SAD symptoms. 

Forbes highly recommends doing restorative yoga poses to treat SAD. “Restorative yoga may look passive from the outside, but it’s very active internally on both subtle and dramatic levels.” She further says that “Many people don’t realize that SAD has three distinct phases. In the dead of winter [December through February], it looks like depression, with symptoms such as lethargy and carbohydrate craving.” Forbes advises her students to follow a series of restorative poses, such as supported corpse pose, reclining bound angle pose, and supported legs-up-the-wall pose. You may want to do a few active poses first, especially if you’re feeling anxious or restless.  Deepening into restorative poses all year long, and not just during the cold, dark days of winter, will strengthen your emotional health and help you rise above those gray skies with a new spring in your step.

Taking Time to Relax

By: Lester Best

Stress is the curse of living in modern times. Everyone suffers from stress. And the stress we suffer takes a heavy toll on our bodies, emotions and minds.

Feeling stressed out, worn out by fatigue or just simply having a miserable day, the best thing to do is relax.

Watching television may be a form of relaxation for some, but is not a recommended method by experts. When we watch TV we are bombarded with commercials, ads, sounds and images. So how do we achieve relaxation? If there are thousands of ways we can get stressed, one of them is not meeting deadlines, there are also many ways we can relax.

In recent studies, experts have determined that heart disease is linked to anger and irritability is linked to mental stress. Too much stress brings about ischemia that can lead to or cause a heart attack. Relaxation takes on added importance in light of this matter. Managing your anger and attitude is significant to heart health, and relaxation can help you manage stress.

One way of relaxation is transcendental meditation. Recent studies have also shown that this method might reduce artery blockage, which is a major cause for heart attack and stroke. People practice transcendental meditation by repeating uttering soothing sounds while meditating, this is to achieve total relaxation. The researchers found that practitioners of transcendental meditation significantly reduced the thickness of their arterial wall compared with those who didn’t practice transcendental meditation.

Another study on another method of relaxation, acupuncture, seems to reduce high blood pressure by initiating several body functions for the brain to release chemical compounds known as endorphins. Endorphin helps to relax muscles, ease panic, decrease pain, and reduce anxiety.

Yoga is also another method for relaxation and may also have similar effects like acupuncture. In another study, participants were subjected to several minutes of mental stress. Then they were subjected to various relaxation techniques, such as listening to nature sounds or classical music. Only those who did Yoga significantly reduced the time it took for their blood pressures to go back to normal. Yoga is a form of progressive relaxation.

Breathing is one of the easiest methods to relax. Breathing influences almost all aspects of us, it affects our mind, our moods and our body. Simply focus on your breathing, after some time you can feel its effects right away.

There are several breathing techniques that can help you reduce stress.

Another easy way to achieve relaxation is exercise. If you feel irritated a simple half-hour of exercise will often settle things down. Although exercise is a great way to lose weight, it does not show you how to manage stress appropriately. Exercise should also be used in conjunction with other exercise method.

One great way of relaxation is getting a massage. To gain full relaxation, you need to totally surrender to the handling and touch of a professional therapist.

There are several types of massages that also give different levels of relaxation.

Another method of relaxation is Biofeedback. The usual biofeedback-training program includes a 10-hour sessions that is often spaced one week apart.

Hypnosis is one controversial relaxation technique. It is a good alternative for people who think that they have no idea what it feels like to be relaxed. It is also a good alternative for people with stress related health problems.

Drugs are extreme alternatives to relaxation. They are sometimes not safe and are not effective like the other relaxation methods. This method is only used by trained medical professionals on their patients.

These relaxation techniques are just some of the ways you can achieve relaxation. Another reason why we need to relax, aside from lowering blood pressure in people and decreasing the chances of a stroke or a heart attack, is because stress produces hormones that suppress the immune system, relaxation gives the immune system time to recover and in doing so function more efficiently.

Relaxation lowers the activities within the brains’ limbic system; this is the emotional center of our brain.

Furthermore, the brain has a periodic need for a more pronounced activity on the right-hemisphere. Relaxation is one way of achieving this.

Relaxation can really be of good use once a relaxation technique is regularly built into your lifestyle. Choose a technique that you believe you can do regularly.

Yoga for Pregnant Women

Yoga For Pregnant Women…Author: aiman

Yoga, Natural Healing and Daily Treasures

By Paul Jerard, E-RYT 500

We might hear: Hatha Yoga can be applied toward healing, without a mat or a visit to the local ashram, but how can this be? What daily treasures are we missing out on, and how can Yoga be applied toward healing outside of our practice time?

The time we spend practicing Yoga is “practice time for life.” We should enjoy every minute of it. Too many people do not take the time to enjoy what they are doing, when they are doing it. This is why the benefits of Yoga take a little time before they become obvious.

However, the practice of Yoga is only part of the “big picture.” The application of Yogic principles, to our lifestyle, is a major key to better health. The following are events in our daily lives, for which we should make time:

1. Make the most of your time at work. Many people dread work, because the tasks have become mundane, or they feel the work is beneath them. This can happen when a person has more potential than their job allows. Some employers would prefer employees to refrain from making suggestions.

Friends may advise you to leave a job you dislike, but what about your paycheck, and what about your family? The solution is to realize what work is. Work is the cost of success. Work is not your identity – it is a combination of tasks we perform to get from one point to the next.

We could compare work to traveling, because we are trying to get somewhere by working. However, we can control the quality of the journey by doing our personal best with each task. If your work is having a negative effect on your health, the logical solution is to find another job.

2. Make time for laughter. Laughing stimulates the immune system. Adults tend to neglect laughing, but it is vital because of the health benefits. Laughing activates T-cells (antibiotics that are naturally produced within your body). Laughter also decreases pain by releasing endorphins.

3. Make time for playing. While it is important to work and study – it is also important to let your inner child be entertained. Any sport or game, that releases the mind from the daily burdens of worrying and taking life so serious, is worth your time. Life is too short to forget about playing.

4. Make time for prayer. It is easy to have a distorted view of life when so much bad news is easily accessible. Yet, worship allows each of us to clarify our vision. The path of reverence allows us to see.

© Copyright 2009 – Paul Jerard / Aura Publications

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Yoga for Digestive Health

No matter what age we are, we need to take care of our digestive health, and that includes practicing yoga everyday to keep our abdomens soft and encourage deep breathing into our core body.  Digestive problems usually plague women as they get older, and we really can’t ignore them. Face it, poor digestion can lead to other illnesses and diseases, such as chronic indigestion, constipation, diarrhea, or irritable bowel syndrome, for example. None of these conditions are pleasant, but we can avoid them if we recognize the symptoms and do something about them before they get worse.

Take me, for example. Over the last couple of years I started experiencing heartburn and was recently diagnosed with Acid Reflux Disease and Esophagitis. My condition affects my digestive health, as I also experience bloating and, um, gas bubbles from time to time. I can’t eat the same foods I used to eat, and I really have to take care not to overindulge or else I’ll suffer the consequences. But there are yoga poses that I do to settle my digestive system and relieve my symptoms.

One pose I really like to do when I’m feeling a little full is Reclining Hero. As I lie back on the floor or supported by a bolster, reclining hero pose not only stimulates my thyroid and parathyroid productivity, normalizes my blood pressure, and calms my nervous system, for example, but it softens my abdomen and eases my digestive upset. This is one of the few poses you can do after you’ve eaten a heavy meal.

So what else can you do to help with digestive disorders?

• Stop being anxious! Those who experience frequent anxiety also experience frequent diarrhea, which is a sign of a viral infection and that your body needs to get rid of toxins. Don’t use over-the-counter remedies as they won’t help you to eliminate toxins. Instead, drink water, and herbal tea laced with chamomile, nettle or alfalfa.
• Don’t hold in your belly! Lots of women think they have to have a flat belly to be happy or beautiful. Hiding your rolls under tight panty hose or jeans will only keep the blood from flowing to your digestive tract and reproductive organs and will cause all kinds of unpleasant digestive disorders.  I never wear tight clothes, mostly because they’re so darn uncomfortable!  Do yourself and your digestive health a favor, and wear loose clothing and enjoy the freedom!
• Exercise regularly, as it will feed energy to an otherwise lethargic digestive system. If you don’t exercise, you’ll compromise your body’s natural ability to cleanse itself, and your body will hold all kinds of bad toxins day in and day out which can lead to disease. Practicing yoga, for example, will stimulate your gastrointestinal system, balance your thyroid gland, make you feel calm, and inspire healing breath, all contributors to a healthy digestive system.

So what else can yoga do for your digestive health?

• Certain poses such as revolved triangle or plough pose, squeeze blood out of your organs and then soak them with new, oxygenated blood, sort of like a “squeeze-and-soak” effect. This helps to freshen and revitalize cells and tissues and enhances your overall physiological makeup.
• If you suffer from digestive problems related to perimenopause or menopause, certain poses can help revitalize your adrenals, thyroid, and liver, soften your abdomen and ease intestinal disorders. Indigestion, acid reflux, or heartburn, common conditions as you get older, can be eased by practicing supported backbends, a kind of cooling pose which will lift your diaphragm and take pressure off your stomach.

Suggested poses for improving digestion:

• Reclining Hero Pose
• Reclining Bound Angle Pose
• Downward-Facing Dog Pose
• Head-on-Knee Pose
• Seated Forward Bend
• Headstand
• Child’s Pose
• Shoulderstand
• Bridge Pose
• Corpse Pose

Restorative Yoga: Legs-up-the-Wall

This is the second in a series on restorative yoga poses that I offer as a gift to you so that you can learn about and explore these deeply relaxing poses that melt away stress and help you sleep better.  A few days ago I introduced you to Supported Bound Angle Pose.  Now I’ll show you Legs-up-the-Wall pose, or Viparita Karani in Sanskrit, a favorite of mine. Not a day goes by that I don’t find a little time to throw my legs up the wall and let it all go.

Whenever you’re feeling edgy, or not quite right, and your nerves are raw from the chaos of living, or you simply need a complete body relaxation fix, do legs-up-the-wall pose as your prescription to better health and well-being.  Not only will this pose offer complete relaxation if you stay in it for 15 or 20 minutes at a time, but it’ll balance your endocrine system, relieve fatigue, and increase the blood flow to your pelvic region.  As you lie in this delicious pose, the blood will travel down your legs and softly pool  just below your belly, sending your body life-affirming signals that it’s time to refresh itself, almost akin to a tune-up on a car.  This pose is especially beneficial right before bed to send you off for a blissful night’s sleep.

How to do the pose:

You can do this pose with or without a bolster or a blanket to raise the pelvis.  If you use a bolster or a blanket or two for lift, then place your prop about 3 inches from the wall.  Sit on the bolster or the blankets so that your right hip and side body are touching the wall.  Using your hands for support, gently roll your body around so that your right and then your left legs are up the wall.  It might take a little practice to get the right motion so that you don’t topple off the bolster.  Again, if you prefer not to have the bolster or the blankets under you, then you simply get up into the pose the same way, with your backside on the floor instead of the prop.  Keep your buttocks close to the wall but don’t feel like you need to make this an uncomfortable hamstring stretch.  That’s not what this is all about.  If you feel stiffness or discomfort in your legs, simply move a little bit away from the wall so that your legs are not quite straight, allowing for space.

Lie down so that your ribs and lower back are supported by the bolster, and your head and shoulders are on the floor. Drape your arms out to the side with elbows bent, palms up.  For extra dreamy comfort, place a lavender eye pillow over your eyes and rest in this post for five minutes or for as long as you like.

Neti pot a good remedy for sinus trouble

What does “neti” mean, anyway?  Well, its the practice of nasal cleansing, and it’s more than just using a tissue to blow away congestion. Recommended by alternative health practitioners, it’s been widely used by people everyday along with a saline solution to keep their nasal passages clean and their sinuses in tip top shape.  Once tried, a neti pot can be a soothing and pleasant experience that will prove invaluable. Using warm water with a little salt, a neti pot will gently irrigate the nasal passages, washing away the offended irritants. Used mostly for allergies, sinustitis, and upper respiratory infections, such as hay fever, a neti pot will become your best friend and to a whole new way of breathing.

If you’d like to try a neti pot, may I recommend Oprah’s favorite from Mother Nature.com. Click below for more details and to order your very own neti pot today!

Yoga can ease menopause symptoms

Women in midlife who are going through menopause, or even those in peri-menopause, would fair very well if they embraced a yoga practice, not only to feel better but to ward off increased bone loss and risk for cardiovascular disease and breast cancer.  In an article by Susan M. Lark, M.D. called “Yoga for Menopause,” (Health World Online), she outlines a series of yoga poses specifically geared to help women in menopause.  Dr. Lark stresses that “Practicing yoga stretches regularly in a slow, unhurried fashion will gradually loosen your muscles, ligaments and joints.  You may be surprised how supple you can become over time.” Dr. Lark also stresses that poses should be practiced slowly and deliberately with focus and attention.

Some of Dr. Lark’s recommended yoga poses include the Locust, Wide Angle Pose, Spinal Flex, Pelvic Arch, the Bow, Child’s Pose, The Sponge, Dollar Pose, Tree, and Chest Expander.  If you’d like to learn more from Dr. Lark, click below to get her free reports and other valuable information to help you feel young again.

Yoga can help women recover from mastectomies

Women suffering from breast cancer may have to accept the painful news that they will lose one or more of their breasts, and that’s not something that’s easily digestible. Although there are many types of mastectomies, it is, no doubt, a life-changing experience, both physically and emotionally, so it’s important to take good care of yourself.  

If you already practice yoga regularly, you know it can offer calmness and clarity during difficult situations, and you’ll probably be eager to get back on the mat to start the healing process.  But engaging in a vigorous practice after undergoing a mastectomy may not be in your best interests.  First, you must be careful not to put pressure on your arms and upper body area too soon, as your range of motion will be compromised and you’ll experience weakness in one or more muscles near the affected tissue.  You may also experience a condition called “lymphadema” which occurs because the body isn’t draining fluids normally like it did before surgery, so you’ll need to stay away from arm balances and other strengthening poses that affect the upper body until you feel better.

So, take it slow and easy, and if you can, find a teacher who is trained in yoga therapy for breast cancer patients and who can sensitively and knowledgeably ease you along your path to recovery.  Another way to help your recovery is to practice some restorative yoga poses, such as reclining bound angle pose, corpse pose, and legs-up-the-wall pose, which promote deep breathing and relaxation to guide you back to emotional health.

“The first thing postoperative patients should do before trying yoga is to ask their surgeon what he or she recommends,” says Dr. Vivien D’Andrea of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, quoted in an article “Gentle yoga may speed recovery after surgery,” (Las Altos Town Crier, by Pam Walatka (June 17, 2009).  “Starting yoga right after surgery, if you have not done yoga before, would be a terrible idea. Yoga students learn to listen to their bodies and know when to stop. If you were to jump into postoperative yoga without experience, you could hurt yourself,” notes Pam.

Having any type of cancer is not an easy thing to accept, but yoga can help you manage it more effectively. Although it’s not a quick fix, an ongoing practice will reward you with a more meaningful and radiant life, regardless of the challenges we face.

Yoga is for older people, too

Yoga better be for older people, too, because I’m not going to stop practicing anytime soon.  Even though I haven’t even reached my 50th birthday yet, it’ll come soon enough and I don’t want to dig myself into a grave just because I’m hitting the big five-O.  It’s my belief that hitting midlife is not a time to think about the things we should have done, it’s a time to embrace life to the fullest, and begin a life with new meaning and vitality. 

I hope to be doing yoga well into my golden years, and I look forward to always living my life as a yogi and empowering others of advanced age to embrace yoga as a part of their lifestyle, too, so that they may live long and happy lives.  I may not be able to do everything that I can do now, but what I want to be is alert, flexible, and healthy, and be able to balance myself on my own two feet without falling.

According to a 2008 study —  ”Yoga in America” – by Yoga Journal, featured in an article called “Older Adults Increasingly Turn to Yoga for Health,” by John Hanc, (AARP Bulletin Today, June 9, 2009), “49 percent of those who practice say they are doing it to improve their overall health.  Most of these people tend to be younger: The study also found that among the estimated 15.8 million Americans who currently practice yoga, 40.6 percent are ages 18 to 34.  But more older adults are now taking their place on the mats alongside them.  According to the study, 18.4 percent of practitioners are now over 55.” 

It’s never too late for women in midlife to start a yoga practice. And you don’t have to step into — and you shouldn’t step right into — a power yoga class meant for 20-somethings.  There are many gentle yoga and restorative classes meant for older people just starting out.  “Whether you’re already active or sedentary, you need to be extremely careful in choosing the type of yoga you become involved in,” says Dixie Stanforth, a lecturer in exercise science at the University of Texas at Austin.  Most times, women find themselves suffering from chronic illnesses or stress-related conditions that prompt them to seek medical attention, and a means to make themselves feel better overall.   “One reason that a great number of older adults are showing up at yoga studios is because their doctors have recommended it,” says John Hanc. Most older people seek yoga as a means to maintain chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, depression, scoliosis, and heart disease, to name a few. The benefits of yoga are far reaching, and age doesn’t matter.

If you’re at midlife and you want to start yoga, may I recommend you get yourself a copy of Pat Shapiro’s Yoga for Women at Midlife and Beyond. It’s an easy read, and the illustrated poses are doable for women at any age.
 
Photo credit:  www.patshapiro.com

Gardening and yoga go together

As our bodies enter midlife, we have to take care of them, and that means in and out of the garden where we love to play with the dirt, digging and tilling, shoveling and weeding, harvesting and planting, until our backs ache and we’re sore for days and days afterwards.  Gardening takes a lot of work and it’s demanding on the human body as it twists and turns our spines and transforms our muscles into creatures we never knew existed.  It’s all we can do to ease our bodies into a hot bath after a day in the sun and dirt, but we can stave off those sore muscles altogether if we learn how to stretch a little before and after .

That’s where the wonders of yoga come into play.  Most middle-aged people take their backs for granted and don’t realize that they need tender loving care like the rest of our body. We need to exercise regularly and stretch our limbs to build muscle mass that will prevent injury from happening. Yoga creates balance, and in effect it understands that muscles need to be strengthened and maintained so they can continue to work for us well into our golden years.

“We use our spines to move in four directions: to flex, to extend, to bend to the side and to rotate,” says Henry Homeyer, a gardening coach and garden designer, and author of an article entitled “Yoga for Gardeners,” (Brattleboro Reformer, June 11, 2009). “Generally, we hurt ourselves when rotating as that is the least commom movement. Shoveling compost from the pile into the wheelbarrow includes not only bending forward (flexing), but rotating as we take 10 pounds or more of compost, then twist to toss it . . ,” says Henry. It was not until he met Jill Johnson, a yoga instructor, who taught him a thing or two about yoga stretching before and after a stint in the garden. Now, Henry does his yoga stretches every morning.

If you’re interested in learning more about yoga poses for gardeners, may I recommend you get your own copy of Gardener’s Yoga: Bend and Stretch, Dig and Grow, by Veronica D’Orazio, a colorful guide offering 21 yoga poses to do before and after gardening. It’s well worth it and you’ll feel so much better!

Photo credit:  http://www.wellsphere.com/obesity-article//373717

Suffering from allergies? Let yoga ease your symptoms and boost your immunity

If you’re anything like me, you’re suffering from seasonal allergies, and it’s not fun, especially if your symptoms are interfering with your yoga practice.  With the weather changes comes pollen, weeds, pollution, and other airborne irritants that find their way into our nasal passages, causing watery, drippy eyes, wet, annoying sneezes, and stuffy noses, compromising our respiratory systems and obstructing our oxygen supply. It can be difficult to practice yoga when your respiratory system is in such a state of flux.

In an article  entitled “Sneeze Free,” Yoga Journal magazine (June 2009), Richard Usatine, a family doctor and a professor at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and co-author of Yoga Rx, notes that “stress can weaken the immune system and exacerbate allergy symptoms.”  The cure? I don’t know that there’s a cure, per say, but certain yoga poses can help your immune system become stronger and ease the symptoms of seasonal allergies, making them more manageable so that you can live your yogic life without interruption.

If you’re able to breathe out of your nose, try Skull Shining Breath, which is a series of short exhalations repeated through the nose in rapid succession which should cleanse the nasal passages.  If your nose is stuffy and irritated, then you may want to try breathing in long exhalations instead, which will also reduce stress and help your immune system along.  “To do this,” says Larry Payne, a Los Angeles yoga therapist and co-author of Yoga Rx,  “inhale for a count of three, then exhale for a count of four — gradually working your way up to inhaling for four and exhaling for a count of six.”

Yoga is a powerful remedy for stabilizing the immune system and keeping allergies and illness at bay, or at least manageable.  With a regular yoga practice, you can build up resistance and experience overall improvement in your health and well being.

Photo credit: health.howstuffworks.com

Yoga can open new doors and shape new lives

I can’t begin to tell you the countless ways in which yoga has shaped my life.  When I began my practice over eight years ago, I didn’t have a clue about the journey I was undertaking. And I haven’t yet fully reached my destination, and I never really will. Yoga is a journey of the heart and the soul, and once on the path toward realization there is no turning back. Yoga has the capacity to change lives, to light the way and to empower opportunities that we never before thought possible.  Yoga can transform your dull, drab existence to one of light and love and joyous fruits, and there’s nothing you won’t be able to accomplish. The following is one such story that proves my point.

In an article entitled “Yoga Opened Doors She Had Long Ago Closed,” Los Angeles Times (June 5, 2009), writer turned yoga practionioner Colette LaBouff Atkinson spent three hours every day commuting to her writing job, and then spent countless more hours sitting at her desk at home, eating fast food or Mexican take-out.  When she developed excruciating back pain and experienced many sleepless nights, she finally woke up to a reality she hadn’t wanted to face. Her ex-husband had always encouraged her to try yoga, but the words never sunk in.  It was time to revisit that truth, if not to save her back but to save her sanity.

At 39, Colette finally broke down and went to a yoga class on New Year’s Eve.  Eventually, one class turned into four or five a week and she was hooked.  “But in yoga, as anyone and everyone who’s ever benefited from it will say, all kinds of things became possible.  I was there only to breathe; nothing to revise or make again,” says Colette.  “I may not have been calm.  I may not have been supple or limber.  I may not have been still or steady.  But the more I went, day after day, I was different.”

During times when Colette couldn’t sleep, she read a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald called “The Crack-Up,” in which she related to a life that wasn’t exactly going the way he wanted it to. He (Fitzgerald) writes of himself in the third person: “[T[his writer told about his realization that what he had before him was not the dish that he had ordered for his forties. In fact — since he and the dish were one, he described himself as a cracked plate, the kind that one wonders whether it is worth preserving.”