yoga-class-synergybyjasmine.com

If you can breathe, you can do yoga. Before my yoga practice began, however, I experienced loss that literally robbed me of my ability to breathe.

A month into my freshman year of college, two people close to me died: Cancer in his blood vessels took the 52-year-old father of one of my closest friends, and two weeks later, my 26-year-old cousin died in a house fire.

Over the course of the year, I began to experience debilitating anxiety and depression, a weight that wouldn't allow me to leave my bed or reach to turn off the shower. Out of ever-thinning air I developed asthma, and would wake up in the middle of the night feeling as if my lungs had sprung a leak, and air wouldn't hold.

SSRIs helped, but it was yoga that saved me. On the mat I regained clarity, I regained the ability to stretch through my muscles and to be still in my own mind without panic gripping me like a fist wrapped around my spine. My body began to heal as my mind began to shake off the shrouds of constant terror. On the mat I learned to breathe. It felt like it had never happened before.

I began sharing it with others. I've been teaching for over three years now because I want everyone to have access to this simple thing that restored me.

If you can breathe, you can do yoga. If you cannot breathe, yoga will teach you how.