Yoga and meditation literally saved my life. Today , I’m going to tell you the story of how that happened.

Yoga isn’t always Om Shanti and pranayama. Sometimes it’s a home practice where I can scream bloody murder between up and down dog. Yoga isn’t always seated meditation, spine erect, legs in lotus. Sometimes it’s deep moans as I roll into a yogi pistol squat. Yoga isn’t always rhythmic ujjayi breath in half pigeon. Sometimes it’s weeping in a public class because I cannot wear the “I’m fine” mask anymore.

This is exactly why I have been a yoga student for 15 years. Yoga is less about the physical asana practice and more about taking the practice off the mat to create unshakeable contentment during traffic jams, chronic illness, and heartbreak—when I show up on my mat everyday meeting myself exactly where I am with grace and compassion.

For years, I practiced yoga on and off. Practicing diligently at Yoga Works in NYC, Ashtanga at Yoga East in Louisville, Sanctuary in Nashville. During August of 2015, insomnia barged into my life and refused to leave. It took me months to figure out I had Lyme (and a host of other bizarre illnesses I had never heard of).

My whole body bloated up like a balloon, my chiseled bone structure turned into chipmunk cheeks. Twenty hours a day it felt like someone was stabbing me with a pocketknife in both shoulder blades. Most nights I smoked myself into a stupor to alleviate the chronic pain and if I was lucky if I slept for 2 – 4 hours. My body was wet cement. On most days, ordinary tasks such as paying bills, washing dishes, doing laundry, answering phone calls, grocery shopping felt like a triathlon.

In 2016, I decided to pursue healing by making yoga a lifestyle. I moved home to Louisville, KY from Nashville, TN, quit my job, and made my full-time job healing my body, mind, and spirit. I moved into our quaint log cabin built of salvaged wood and stone nestled in the woods. One of the few things that gave me solace during this maddening time was lying in bed upstairs in the loft bedroom watching as the sun made its flamboyant entrance and dawn light seeped through the tiny window that was too high to have a shade. Carolina Wrens and Cardinals sang the morning choir. When I walked downstairs, my mom always asked me if I had slept and 6 days a week the answer was “No” that year.

By 2017, my sleep had improved a tiny bit. That January I began my 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training in Nashville after being a yoga student for 10 years. We learned the Baron Baptiste Journey into Power sequence, which is power vinyasa and usually taught without music. With the only sounds of breath and the teacher’s cue, inhale mountain, exhale forward fold, inhale halfway lift, exhale chaturanga, I found flow.

In that flow, I forgot about insomnia, pain, and put all my focus in the present moment; sensing my abdominals pulling me from up to dog down, every time my mind wandered off the mat, I compassionately escorted my mind back to the present through my audible ujjayi breath. In this practice, I saw how I was in pain, but that I was choosing to suffer by constantly obsessing about how I slept the night before, about my shoulder pain, about my fatigue, if I would discover the root cause that would make it all stop, etc. I was not only living, but perpetuating a story that wasn’t necessarily true. The more I thought about my pain, the more energy I gave this unwanted circumstance. The notion of surrender, or in yoga and Sanksrit—ishvara prandihana, was foreign to a recovering control freak like me.

Eventually, I began to see the space surrender created in my body, mind, and spirit. That God’s got it. Although I began yoga because I wanted a beautiful body, I stayed because it gave me a beautiful mind—that no matter what was happening to or around me, I could choose how I reacted. And surrender.

It took me many more years to cure my insomnia, and yoga cultivated the calm trust within me I needed as I slowly, but surely healed. As I continue to heal, life throws me curve balls. But I know that when I am solid in my yoga and meditation practice, I can be present with whatever the present moment sends my way. We can’t always choose what happens and we can control how we react to what happens.

I owe my so much of my healing and deep unshakeable contentment to my yoga and meditation practice. And my practice now extends far beyond the mat and movement. I am practicing when I hit every red light, when someone says something that triggers me, when my heart breaks, when I help a coaching client release their trauma, when I really see the dusk light dancing through lush Kentucky trees as I ride my bike down country roads with wind in my face. I am beyond grateful to simply be alive!

The lessons of Yoga are simple and powerful.

We always have a choice, on and off the mat. And the choices we make now create our reality.

Yoga and meditation saved my life. And that is why it plays such an important role in the work I do with others.

I’m hosting a spiritual yoga, meditation, and breathwork retreat in Taos, New Mexico. If you are looking for a path to healing, a path to unshakeable contentment, a path to experience the transformation of powerful surrender and deep presence, and authentic connection with spiritual people then consider this your invitation to join me in that work.

My wish is that the gift of Yoga and meditation may provide you the same level of transformation it has gifted to me.