Kathryn E. Livingston

Yoga isn__ just about showing up on the mat. It__ about showing up in your life, in your day; it__ about opening your heart while standing firm and strong and believing in yourself.

Without yoga, my breast cancer experience would have been much more difficult. The trust, courage and strength one develops through the practice of yoga will set anyone up to face life's most challenging experiences. I've heard folks say «Oh, I don't do yoga.» Give yoga a chance, and you will find that it's so much more than pretzel poses. Yoga is about finding your own balance in our crazy, tempestuous times. It's about standing tall with confidence even when the winds of your world are swirling around you.

It__ not just about recognizing how __recious_ every moment is, or about __iving for today._ It__ about finding the sacred center of now, and living there, moment to moment, always.

Maybe it__ something to do with the movements: the Cat and then the Cow, the twist to the left and then to the right, the reaching up, and then bending to the ground, the constant training of the body to move one way, and then to move in the opposite way. Hatha: sun, moon opposites, dark and light, yin and yang. This must be key in the way yoga shapes the mind and heart, in the way it helps one to understand that every movement has a counter movement, that every action has an opposing action, that the happy parts of life will be met by the sad, and the sad, in turn will be met by the happy.

_When you__e in the darkness, know that the light will come. We are light and dark, sun and moon, male and female, yin and yang; life is composed of opposites, in a continuing cycle of change_. When you are in the light, don__ step back into the darkness. Live in that light, and breathe it in fully. I__e spent so much of my life going over and over the sadness and fear of the past. But we don__ need to go there when we__e not there. When we are in the light, be here, now.

Take a Tree Pose in your life.

To believe all you have to do is look at the sky.

Before yoga, my life was filled with regret about choices I'd made in the past, and fears about choices I'd make in the future. Yoga teaches us how to be present in the present. Once you learn how to live in the now, you realize that the past is a memory and the future doesn't exist. Yoga will help anyone facing anxiety issues, separation and attachment issues (moms, I'm talking to you here!), or serious illnesses such as cancer and depression. It's a practice that slims your body while expanding your heart.