LITMIR.BIZ

      PREFACE

      My story

      Once upon a time, I was an artist-mother-couch potato living with my young family. When I began to practice yoga in earnest I had three small children. My twins were seven and my younger son was four years old. I began to drag myself up the single flight of stairs to my neighbor’s loft, where she would teach yoga classes once a week. I would practice my heart out for an hour and a half, feeling very unfit. After all, my main source of exercise was running after children, all of whom had emerged from high-risk pregnancies confined to bed rest. No wonder my muscles were quivering in those early poses. I would leave each class feeling triumphant. I was thrilled with the “high” I got from doing yoga, and with the simple fact that I had made it through the class. Afterwards, sore muscles would be with me for days and I would say to myself, “I’m never doing that again!” I would keep saying it until the day before the class when I’d finally be able to move properly without pain. Then my thinking would shift and I’d say, “Let’s see what the teacher is doing this time!”

      Over time, I began to love the way I felt after yoga. That feeling began to last longer and, at the same time, the sore muscles would fade more quickly. I was getting stronger in many ways. I became a less reactive parent. I began to understand how to make space for myself. I had always made time, however little, for making art. While it did not create more time, practicing yoga was giving me insight into myself that helped my art get to the point more quickly. I began to see that the quiet place I could find by messing with art materials was the same place I sought in my yoga practice. Cultivating both an art practice and a yoga practice was improving my mental health. Everyday challenges that previously left me anxious and depressed were now faced with good humor. I noticed ease in social situations that had never existed before.

      One day, my teacher asked me if I would consider doing the teacher training at the local yoga studio where she was teaching. I laughed out loud! I said, “Don’t be silly, I’ve barely practiced yoga.” I truly had no thought of doing anything more than getting my act together. Yoga had revived my energy and revealed a way to get a handle on my life. From the time my twins were born I had been running a ragged marathon. Finally, I was choosing when to sprint and when to slow to a walk. A few weeks later, my teacher asked me again. She said, “You should apply to the teacher training program.” And suddenly, like a switch had been flipped, I said, “OK, what do I have to do?” I applied, was accepted, and began the three-month program all in a span of about three weeks. I really had no idea what I was getting into, but I jumped in with both feet. I wanted to deepen my practice, which I certainly did. Everything was new. I had never even heard of a sutra or a mudra or much of anything else we were learning. And the practice schedule was intense. My mind and my body were opening and absorbing and I was truly transformed. I am as proud of that hard-earned 200-hour yoga training as I am of anything I have done.

      Around the same time my teacher was suggesting a yoga teacher training, I had been toying with the idea of studying art therapy. I had been teaching preschool art classes for several years. I loved seeing children discover their creative selves and witnessing their work blossom into unique forms of self-expression. I was also enjoying many fabulous art experiments with my own children, observing powerful moments of self-possession, growth and insight. This was also around the time that my older son received a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism. The diagnosis was a confirmation of what we already knew; this was a child who had his own way of experiencing the world. His uniqueness created challenges for him, of course, but also challenged us as a family. And as I’m sure you can imagine, the other two children had their unique challenges to contribute as well. I had begun to realize that the gifts that allowed me to negotiate

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