Yoga's Healing Power, by Ally Hamilton

Praise for Yoga’s Healing Power “I have practiced yoga for nearly twenty years now, and I appreciate the spiritual and healing aspects of my practice as much as, if not more than, the physical ones. Thank you, Ally Hamilton and Yogis Anonymous, for providing both the physical challenge and the tools for healing and balance in my life. Yoga and life are journeys, and this book is a wonderful guide along the path!”

—Greg Louganis, four-time Olympic gold medalist in the sport of diving “This is a stunningly generous book about what it means to move through life with grace, presence, and forgiveness. It’s less of a treatise on yoga and more of a lesson on how to be human.

You’ll close the cover feeling more compassion for yourself than any yoga class could ever bestow. I was deeply humbled and greatly inspired by Ally Hamilton’s courageous take on life, love, loss, and surrender.”

—Claire Bidwell Smith, author of The Rules of Inheritance “Ally is really onto something fantastic with Yoga’s Healing Power.

She weaves her life’s story together beautifully as she guides us through the eight limbs of yoga. We’re not talking just physical yoga; this is yoga as a way of life. This is the yoga that only you can create through practice and a dedication to the process behind it—the process of yoga, the process of life, the process of love. That is the gift of this book—it’s a memoir, it’s a motivational piece, it’s a pocket therapist, and it’s a tailored yoga practice.

Ally offers us thoughtful advice coming from a place of gratitude.

She tackles universal struggles such as betrayal, shame, doubt, and rejection—experiences every adult has endured—and shows

us that we have the tools to understand and then address them. If we’re willing to put in the work to be our best selves, then we can understand the true gift that is yoga as a way of life, its healing power. This is such an honest, thoughtful, and unique book for anyone looking to really understand what yoga is all about.”

—Kathryn Budig, author of Aim True

YOGA’S

HEALING POWER

About the Author Ally Hamilton is a Santa Monica–based yoga teacher, writer, and life coach who connects daily with yogis all around the world via her online yoga classes. She’s the co-creator of Yogis Anonymous (www.yogisanonymous.com), which has been featured in The New York Times, Yoga Journal, Self Magazine, Shape Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. She’s a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and Positively Positive and a wellness expert at Mind BodyGreen. She also writes an almost-daily blog at http://blog .yogisanonymous.com and is the author of Open Randomly: Fortune Cookies for the Soul.

Ally grew up in New York City and earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University. During her senior year, she wandered into a yoga class thinking that it was going to be too easy for her and that yoga was “stretching on the floor.” After one eye-opening session, she was hooked. Not only was the physical challenge appealing, but she also discovered yoga was a way of being, not something you do for ninety minutes on a mat. In 2001, Ally moved to California to check out the yoga scene and she’s never left. She’s the mama of two amazing kids and one energetic labradoodle.

Please visit Ally at www.yogisanonymous.com for lots of yoga and meditation practices.

YOGA’S

HEALING POWER Looking Inward for Change, Growth & Peace

ALLY HAMILTON

Llewellyn Publications Woodbury, Minnesota

Yoga’s Healing Power: Looking Inward for Change, Growth & Peace © 2016 by Ally Hamilton. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Edition First Printing, 2016 Cover design: Lisa Novak Cover images: i Stockphoto.com/29873472©IS_ImageSource iStockphoto.com/10685014©skynesher Cover photo of author: Josh Nelson Llewellyn Publications is a registered trademark of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hamilton, Ally, author.

Title: Yoga’s healing power : looking inward for change, growth, and peace /

by Ally Hamilton.

Description: FIRST EDITION. | Woodbury : Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016018664 (print) | LCCN 2016019817 (ebook) | ISBN 9780738747835 | ISBN 9780738748986 () Subjects: LCSH: Yoga.

Classification: LCC B132.Y6 H26 2016 (print) | LCC B132.Y6 (ebook) | DDC 204/.36—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016018664 Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business transactions between our authors and the public.

All mail addressed to the author is forwarded, but the publisher cannot, unless specifically instructed by the author, give out an address or phone number.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific location will continue to be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to authors’ websites and other sources.

Llewellyn Publications A Division of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. 2143 Wooddale Drive Woodbury, MN 55125-2989 www.llewellyn.com Printed in the United States of America

Other Books by Ally Hamilton Open Randomly: Fortune Cookies for the Soul (2015)

Acknowledgments I’ve read countless books over the years, but I never realized how many people are involved in the birthing of a manuscript until I wrote one myself. I am forever grateful to my agent, Dana Newman, because without her enthusiasm and encouragement, I doubt this book would exist. It is a rare gift to find someone with so much knowledge who is also willing to be patient with a firsttime author and is ready to walk through some fire on her behalf when necessary.

I’d like to thank the amazing Angela Wix, whose insight and keen eye made this book stronger in many ways. The whole team at Llewellyn Worldwide, including Andrea Neff and Kat Sanborn, has been wonderful, supportive, and instrumental in helping me to create this book, which is such a huge part of my heart and is the reflection of a journey that began over twenty years ago in a sweaty yoga studio and continues to this day.

I’d like to thank my ex-husband, the father of my kids, and my business partner, Dorian Cheah. We’ve been on an incredible, exhausting, wild, challenging, and interesting adventure over the last decade, and I am amazed at all the beauty that’s come out of it. Without it, there would be no website, no global community of yogis taking classes, no Facebook page, and no blog, which really set the wheels in motion for all this writing.

I’d like to thank the blog readers, who always show up with enthusiasm, insight, honesty, and humor. Without a chorus of people screaming for me to write a book, I doubt I would have done it. I didn’t know that a real community could grow out of a virtual world, and I am very grateful.

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x Acknowledgments

I want to thank a few key teachers along the way: Michael Trano, my seventh grade English teacher; Jayne Connell, my tenth grade AP English teacher; and Mary Gordon, whose class I took at Barnard College of Columbia University. The amount of power that teachers have to change a life is amazing, and I am astounded and thankful to have crossed paths with such incredible, insightful, and talented people, who encouraged and nurtured my writing.

Strangely and perfectly, I also find myself surrounded by brilliant writers who are also treasured friends. Dani Shapiro agreed through a text to write the foreword to this book, even though she was immersed in her own forthcoming book. I am so lucky to have such a giving, kind, funny, generous, and insightful friend in my life, who also happens to be an accomplished and phenomenal writer. Mark Sarvas, also working on his (second) novel, stopped frequently to talk me off the ledge and give me advice and support whenever I asked for it. And throughout the birthing of this book, Claire Bidwell Smith spent many afternoons at my house reassuring me, as our kids tore the place apart, that writing and motherhood can somehow messily and beautifully coexist.

I’d also like to thank Dharma Mittra, Jorgen Christiansson, Bryan Kest, Ana Forrest, and Beryl Bender Birch for having such a huge and lasting effect on my yoga practice and for imparting so much wisdom over the years. Great teachers awaken the best in us and encourage us to feed it and share it, and I am grateful to count these people as my teachers.

Over the years, I have come to understand the importance of having friends in my life who are more like the family I’ve chosen for myself. I want to thank Joshua Nelson, Anne Lilburn, Bob Demaa, Adam J. Smith, and Alex Karlin for being

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my unshakable crew over the last decade. I have to thank Beth Quayle, an amazing friend and therapist and, always, my first reader, for her thoughtful comments and compassionate delivery. Jessica Perez Bricke has to receive a public thank-you as well. Sometimes you meet someone and know you’re going to be friends forever, whether they like it or not! If you’re lucky, you have a handful of people who really get you and love you in full acknowledgment of your flaws and your gifts. I am so lucky to call these people my friends.

Tracy Bleier and Wendy Greenberg Doucette have been the sisters I always wanted. We’ve been traveling together since high school, through college, dating, marriage, babies, divorce, single motherhood, dating again, and countless tears and laughter. I don’t know what I’d do without them.

I’d like to thank Jay Pietrzak for his constant support during the writing of this book, and for always scrambling my eggs into the shape of a heart. Also, it is incredibly handy to have a clinical psychologist available for questions twenty-four hours a day! Anderson needs a shout-out here as well. Thanks to both of you for bringing so much love and laughter into our lives.

I also want to thank my mom and stepdad, Catherine Hamilton-Holmes and Thomas Holmes, my little brother, Tommy Holmes, and my dad, Alan Clement. My childhood was the breeding ground for all the work I’ve been doing over the last few decades. I adore each of you and am so grateful to call you family. I appreciate all your gifts, your support, and your willingness to let me write about it all.

Lastly, and most importantly, I want to thank my children, Dylan and Devyn. Without you, my world would be dim. You are my sun and my moon and all the stars in the sky. You are my

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why and my yes and the reflection of all my hopes and love and joy. You are each a universe unto yourselves, and it is the greatest gift in my life to get to be your mom. May you always know your beauty and always share the best in yourselves. May you know joy and peace and adventure and love. May you always know how much I love you. It is the biggest thing I know.

Disclaimer The publisher and the author assume no liability for any injuries caused to the reader that may result from the reader’s use of content contained in this publication and recommend common sense when contemplating the practices described in the work.

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Contents Yoga Exercises & Meditations xvii Foreword xix Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Breaking the Pain Cycle 21 Chapter 2: Discernment: What Is Real? 31 Chapter 3: Releasing Your Grip 41 Chapter 4: You Are Not Your Thoughts 55 Chapter 5: Keep It Clean 65 Chapter 6: The Power of Vulnerability 75 Chapter 7: First, Do No Harm 89 Chapter 8: The Things That Can Be Stolen 101 Chapter 9: Let’s Talk About Sex 111 Chapter 10: Trust Your Journey 127 Chapter 11: Speak the Truth 133 Chapter 12: Know Yourself 145 Chapter 13: Tune In to the River of Life 157 Chapter 14: A Gratitude Practice 165 Conclusion 181 Bibliography 183 Glossary 185

Yoga Exercises & Meditations Chapter 1: Tadasana & Pranayama 29–30 Chapter 2: Cat-Cow, Downward Facing Dog & Guided Meditation 38–40 Chapter 3: Supta Baddha Konasana & Releasing Meditation 53–54 Chapter 4: Half Sun Salutes 63 Chapter 5: Series A, Spinal Twist & Visualization Meditation 71–73 Chapter 6: Savasana & Guided Meditation 86–87 Chapter 7: Meditation for Feeding a Loving Voice & Standing Frog Pose for Anger Management 95–99 Chapter 8: Backbending/Forward-Folding Sequence for Balance & Meditation for Giving and Receiving 108–109 Chapter 9: Low Lunge Variation for Heart Opening, Baddha Konasana for Hip Opening & “I Am Love/I Release” Meditation 122–125 Chapter 10: Series A and Bridge Pose & ”I Am” Meditation 131–132 Chapter 11: Series A and B & Sat Nam Mantra Meditation 140–144 Chapter 12: Series C & Gyan Mudra Meditation 155–156 Chapter 13: Forward Folds & Surrender Meditation 161–163 Chapter 14: Series A and B as a Gratitude Practice & Seated Meditation 178–180

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Foreword A number of years ago, while visiting Los Angeles with my husband and young son, I did what I always do when I travel: I spent some time researching local yoga studios. It had been a particularly rough time in my life. We were trying to have a second child and were in Los Angeles for fertility treatments that were enervating and depleting. I felt old, tired, worn-out, cranky, fearful, and unsure of what it was that I really wanted. As I checked out yoga studios, it was difficult for me to even imagine pushing myself to show up at a class.

A studio not far from our hotel had a late-morning class listed, led by a teacher named Ally Hamilton. Something about that class caught my eye. The time was good for me, and I liked the warm, inviting sound of the name Ally Hamilton—so I dragged myself there one Friday morning. The class was offered in a huge loft-like space and was filled to the rafters, it seemed, with hip, perfectly toned, tanned, tattooed yogis and yoginis. I wanted to flee—but I didn’t. I unrolled my mat behind a column and stayed, as a beautiful young woman with a wavy mane of dark hair, shining eyes, and a wide, inviting smile began to lead us through what turned out to be a class that was in equal parts kick-ass and inspiring. At xix

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the end, lying in savasana, I felt wrung-out and reborn, my inner life handed back to me.

I returned to Ally’s class every day I could manage while we were in town. I unrolled my mat behind the same column. I was completely smitten with her, but I never spoke with her, never introduced myself. I’m not even sure we made eye contact. I tend to be shy and hang back in new situations, and this was no exception. But when I returned home, back to my East Coast life, Ally’s teachings stayed with me. I had been practicing yoga for a long time—decades—and had developed a home practice.

As I unrolled my mat next to the fireplace in my New England home, I found myself thinking of the beautiful young woman who had unknowingly helped me so much during a time when I needed help. And so, after my practice one afternoon, I walked straight from my mat to my laptop and wrote her a note, which went something like this: Dear Ally, You don’t know me, but I was the blonde woman hiding behind a pillar in your class last week in Santa Monica. Your teaching made a real difference to me, and I want to thank you.

I knew, as a teacher myself, that we aren’t always aware when we’ve reached a student or that we’re making a difference, and I wanted Ally to know. I didn’t expect to hear back from her. But in short order, I received a note from Ally, one that fills me with wonder at life’s synchronicities to this day. She had been a student at Columbia when I was a professor there and was a fan of my books. She told me that she would have been completely intimidated if she had known I was in her class. And there I was, intimidated by her! Oh, human beings. We’re all so vulnerable and frightened, so filled with insecurities that keep us separate rather

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than allowing us to connect—which is, of course, the thing we most long for.

That—as the saying goes—was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I have practiced with Ally, had tea with Ally, broken bread with Ally, gossiped with Ally, cried with Ally, and watched her continue to grow and evolve as a teacher, a mama, a writer, a human being. To hold this book in my hands and witness her wisdom distilled into this elegant, warm, funny, oh-so-real, honest account is a gift that it thrills me to know so many readers will be able to share. Yoga’s Healing Power isn’t just for serious yoga students. It’s for everyone who is trying to live an authentic life. In her inimitable way, with the deepest reverence and a well-honed sense of humor, Ally has created a field guide that combines powerful personal stories, yoga philosophy, and hands-on practical tools and practices that are both simple and profound. I haven’t read anything quite like this wonderful little book. Sit back, relax, and get ready to have your world rocked in the best possible way, Ally Hamilton–style. Namaste. ~Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion

Introduction One afternoon when I was a senior at Columbia University, I walked into a yoga class. My best friend had been urging me for months to give it a try. She’d shown me some poses here and there and remarked on how easy it would be for me since I’d done twelve years of ballet. I thought that yoga was stretching on the floor and that it was going to be too easy for me. So, of course, I went to an advanced class—and quickly had my ass handed to me.

I had all the flexibility in the world, but very little upper-body strength. These people seemed to be hovering in impossible positions, and even more incredibly, they seemed calm and focused, and they were all breathing deeply.

The next time I went, I tried a beginners’ class and began to understand that the focus of the entire physical practice was steady, conscious breath. And I noticed that when I left, I felt amazing— connected, centered.

Twenty-four years later, I really cannot imagine my life without yoga. It is the foundation of every relationship I have, beginning with the one I have with myself. It turns out, yoga is not

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“stretching on the floor”; it’s a way of life. It’s a system that teaches you about yourself. It’s an incredible set of tools for healing.

I think that if I’d never done yoga and I looked around today, I’d be even more confused, because social media can be great, but it can also skew things. If you look at yogis on Instagram, for example, you’ll probably come away with the idea that yoga is like gymnastics. After all, you see all these gorgeous, young yogis on hot, sandy beaches, standing on one hand, or smiling with their ankles behind their head, or twisted into a pretzel.

The thing is, you cannot Instagram your process. What you don’t see are the years and years of practice, the countless moments of confrontation, the hours of learning how to fall calmly and without judgment, the days when it was a struggle to get to the mat, the poses that just didn’t want to happen, and the patience, perseverance, and dedication that went into the pose you’re looking at, with its perfect filter. The pose is not the point. The pose is just a tool.

Of course, some people become obsessed with the physical practice. Culturally, we are all about the externals. We love to focus on how things look. And sometimes we get really confused and think that’s what life is about. If I could just look right on the outside, I’d be happy. If I could just graduate from an Ivy League school, I’d be set. If I could just lose ten pounds or find the right person, everything else would fall into place. If I could just press to handstand in the middle of the room, I’d feel successful. The truth is, these are all huge traps. If happiness lies outside of you, if it exists in external objects, then you’re really in some trouble, because it will never be enough. You’ll lose ten pounds and think that maybe five more would be even better. You’ll meet someone and maybe hormones and excitement will be like drugs for you for a few

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months, but when they wear off, there you’ll be again. Happiness is an inside job. There isn’t a big enough house, a fast enough car, or a low enough number on the scale to make you happy if you aren’t at peace with yourself. And that is what yoga is about.

It’s an invitation to journey inward, to take stock. We’re invited to look around with an objective eye and see if there are places where we have healing to do—places of fear, doubt, longing, or self-deception that are blocking our ability to open to joy and gratitude.

There’s a faction of people who think yoga is all about the poses, and there’s another group of people who think that it’s a religion, or it’s New-Agey, or you have to worship Hindu deities and eat granola singing “Kumbaya” all day. This is also a huge distortion.

You will often hear yoga described as an “eight-limbed” path.

Patanjali, who is believed to have written the Yoga Sutras around 400 CE, laid out the moral and ethical foundation for people who wanted to begin the practice of yoga. The physical practice is only one-eighth of the equation. You might wonder what benefit there could be to learning about concepts that were presented back in 400 CE. I can’t even wrap my head around when that was.

But I can assure you that these concepts are totally meaningful today, in our iPhone-carrying, kids-screaming-in-the-backseat, mortgage-is-due, not-enough-hours-in-the-day lifestyle. Everyone is crazy busy. Everyone deals with anxiety, confusion, grief, uncertainty, and rejection, and worries about the meaning of it all at some point or another.

We’ve created so much stress for ourselves. If you want to keep a roof over your head, you have to scramble. If you want health insurance for yourself and your family, you need a job

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with benefits. If you want to be able to take two weeks of vacation time, you’d better be willing to make serious sacrifices during the other fifty. Where’s the part about fulfillment, meaning, and happiness? It’s an insane way to live. If you have kids, you’ll also notice that parents compete with one another, as if there’s a prize for the parent who’s doing it perfectly or an award for having the most accomplished kid. Haven’t we all had it pounded into our heads that this game is about survival of the fittest?

Who has time to worry about the inside of things?

The problem is, this way of life isn’t working for us. We have more anxiety and depression today than ever before, and more diseases related to these issues. And our response is to grab a Xanax, a sleeping aid, an antidepressant. Please do not misunderstand me. There are actual mental illnesses and chemical imbalances that require medication. But there’s no doubt that as a culture, we overmedicate. We treat the symptoms and stuff the root cause under the rug, along with our hopes, dreams, and deepest fears. We even medicate our kids. Is it ADD or normal rambunctious energy? Is your kid unable to focus, or is he being asked to sit still and pay attention to something that is of no interest to him? Is he the problem, or does the system need an overhaul?

Sometimes our relationships fall apart. We have our expectations and believe in happily ever after, since we’ve been fed a steady diet of that since kindergarten, but it doesn’t seem to work out that way in reality. The moment when we sail off into the sunset on our wedding day is not the end; that’s the beginning.

But we set off without a clue as to how to sail.

Until you are right with yourself on the inside, there is no area in your life that’s going to blossom the way it could—not

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personally, not professionally. And life should feel good. We’re here for only a blink of time.

I wrote this book because I want to share the healing tools that have worked for me. You do not have to eat granola all day or chant to a Hindu god. You do not have to adopt a spiritual name, move to a cave, or twist yourself into a pretzel. You do not have to be able to touch your toes. You just have to want life to feel good and be willing to do some work to get there.

I’ve been teaching yoga for over twenty years. In 2009, I opened a studio in Santa Monica, California, called Yogis Anonymous, with my then-husband, who is still my business partner.

We had a toddler at the time, our son, and I gave birth to our second baby, our daughter, six weeks before we opened the doors. In fact, we began demolition the day I was in labor with her.

Was this part of some five-year plan? Uh, no. Who would ever plan for so much birthing all at once? But I think that’s the way life is for most people. You can make all the plans you like, but that won’t stop the twists and turns from showing up. It’s how you respond to them that defines your life.

Neither one of us had ever owned a business before, although we both had been entrepreneurial in our own way. My ex is an incredible musician and composer, so, like any artist, he was no stranger to hustling, to working hard, to putting his dreams into action. And while teaching yoga might look glamorous from the outside, most teachers are independent contractors, working all over town at studios and gyms and paying for their own health insurance, unless they’re lucky enough to procure several classes at a corporate gym. So I was no stranger to hustling, either.

At the same time, my ex had this idea that we could record classes from our Santa Monica studio and invite people to subscribe

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to our site so that anyone, anywhere, could join us for class. Basically, we opened two businesses at once.

I invited several of my friends, my colleagues, to come and teach at the studio. I’d been in Los Angeles for eight years at that point and had built close friendships that I treasure to this day. We began a Facebook fan page for the studio, and my journey into the world of social media began. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I’d read some books and I understood that you only had about three seconds to grab someone’s attention, so I’d post pictures of cats Photoshopped in lotus pose, or dogs in up dog, or posters with meaningful quotes on them.

And, of course, I’d post about events at the studio.

We’d been open about eighteen months when we began streaming classes from our studio in Santa Monica across the globe. Not being a very techie person, I was amazed when I started receiving emails from people taking class with us in Hong Kong, France, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Burbank. (Yes, getting over the hill and going to Santa Monica is quite a trek when you live in Burbank!) Pretty soon these people who were joining us online were also fans of our Facebook page.

I was getting kind of tired of posting frogs in frog pose by that point. I was sleep-deprived due to having an infant and a toddler and a new business and eighteen teachers texting me on most days. I was trying to figure out how to balance it all, and my ex was encouraging me to express myself on the fan page in a more meaningful way.

So one day I wrote an essay about loss. I was an English major and a psychology minor in college, but I hadn’t written anything that would be read by anyone else since then. The essay was not a thirty-second grab; it was long and pretty raw. I didn’t

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spend a lot of time editing it or thinking about it. I figured I’d post it, and my mom and maybe seven other people would like it and that would be that. I felt vulnerable sharing with so many strangers and writing something from the heart. In fact, my heart was racing when I hit “post.” But I was wrong about the outcome.

The essay took off like nothing we’d ever posted before. The comments were honest and thoughtful, and instantly I was in a conversation with a bunch of people I’d never met. I was astounded. We realized that people were hungry for this kind of conversation, so a few days later I did it again. And the same thing happened.

I was writing about universal issues—rejection, betrayal, fear, shame, guilt, doubt—and people were only too happy to meet me on that field and get real about how life was feeling to them.

A lot of people were struggling, in turmoil, feeling stuck or confused or angry or unfulfilled. And so the blog was born.

I can’t begin to explain the way this took on a life of its own, but I’m incredibly grateful about it. I’ve exchanged countless emails, private messages, public comments, and virtual hugs with people I may never meet, along with conducting life-coaching sessions in person and over Skype. All these experiences have had a profound effect on me as a teacher and as a human being, and the book you’re reading was born from that feeling of gratitude.

A Guide to This Book In each chapter of this book, I’ll introduce a topic, such as breaking the pain cycle. Then I might share a story from my own life or from the lives of other people close to me that is a modern, real-world example. (When sharing other people’s stories, I’ve

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done my best to limit the details to those that I feel are essential to get the point across.) From there, we’ll delve into the philosophy more deeply. At the end of each chapter, you’ll find some journaling questions to help you hone in on where you might be stuck. You’ll also find some yoga exercises and a seated meditation to ground you, so you feel connected to your body and your intuition, giving you the tools you need to train the mind to be present, engaged, and curious. If you’re feeling stuck, these tools will help you begin to shift. You’ll want a journal for the journaling questions and also for your gratitude practice. You might find that you like to carry it with you. Please pick something that feels special to you.

The Sanskrit word for intention is sankalpa. In order to overcome negative samskaras, or patterns that aren’t serving us, we need to set the intention that we want to make a shift and then use a set of tools to see that intention through. I begin the book with identifying samskaras (Chapter 1: Breaking the Pain Cycle), because I believe so many people are stuck in that unconscious quagmire. In order to create something new and find prolonged peace, you really need all the tools we’ll be discussing in this book. All these tools work together. You just have to know how to use them.

Every spiritual practice and religion has an ethical and moral foundation, such as don’t kill, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal, be kind, and so on. This is pretty obvious stuff, right? But I think what’s powerful about the yoga practice is that it involves the whole being. It doesn’t ask you to memorize rules and then try to live by them; it teaches you to practice these ideas in your own body, from the inside out. It doesn’t ask you to take an idea on faith; it tells you to go ahead and test it out. Work with your

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own body, your own mind, your own breath, your own emotions, sensations, memories, and pain, so you can open to joy, love, and gratitude.

Like anything, an intention only works if you work it. Maybe you’ll copy your intentions and post them on your fridge, or next to your laptop, or on your bathroom mirror. Put them someplace where you’ll see them all the time so you’ll remember not just your intentions, but also to act in alignment with them as best you can when you head out the door for the day.

We’ll be talking in detail about how to sync up your ideas and desires for change with your behavior, choices, and actions. Intentions are powerful, but without action, they’re just words, and words won’t get you far.

We’re going to delve into all eight limbs of the yoga practice and some other important philosophical concepts that are integral to yoga and to any healing process. You may decide to give the physical yoga practice a shot at some point if you haven’t already, and I hope you do. It’s a wonderful way of developing a relationship with your body and tuning in to your intuition. Without our health, life is very challenging, and getting on a mat and syncing up our breath with our movement is a sustainable and incredible way to care for this gift of a body we’ve all been given. You will find accessible but powerful yoga exercises at the end of each chapter, along with a seated meditation. However, breathwork, the physical poses, and seated meditation are only three of the eight limbs of yoga, so there is so much more to explore!

In addition to discussing the eight limbs of yoga, which include the yamas (five ways we want to relate to the world around us) and niyamas (five ways we want to relate with ourselves), we’ll

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also talk about the five kleshas, or obstacles that block our ability to be free and happy. The kleshas are ignorance about ourselves and/or the world around us, strong identification with the ego, attachment to pleasure, aversion to pain, and fear of death. We all struggle with this stuff. We’ll also dive into the concepts of viveka, which means “discernment,” and vidya, which means “clear seeing,” or the ability to recognize what is real and what is not real.

(You’ll find this in Chapter 2: Discernment: What Is Real?)

We won’t be progressing through the eight limbs in order.

I’ve used examples from my own life and my own healing process as a through line for this book, and my life has not unfolded in a linear way or according to any formula. There have been surprises (both wanted and unwanted), heartache and joy, and gifts I never would have thought possible. I’ve found that different limbs of this practice have emerged based on the work I’ve been called to explore at different points in my life, and I suspect it will be the same for you.

Here is an overview of the eight limbs of yoga, along with which chapter will incorporate each one as the main theme.

The Eight Limbs of Yoga First Limb: The Five Yamas (Commitments/Restraints) 1. Non-violence (ahimsa): Non-harming. Kindness in word, speech, and action. Compassion for yourself and everyone you encounter. Kindness toward all living creatures.

Found in Chapter 7: First, Do No Harm.

2. Truthfulness (satya): Honest communication, thoughts, and actions. Alignment between how we feel, what we think, and what we do. Found in Chapter 11: Speak the Truth.

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3. Non-stealing (asteya): We’re not going to steal material items, nor will we steal another person’s time, energy, or heart. Found in Chapter 8: The Things That Can Be Stolen.

4. Accountability (brahmacharya): We are responsible for our own energy, actions, and choices. If we’re in a committed romantic relationship, we’re responsible with and for our sexual energy. If we’re dating, we’re kind and conscious, we don’t treat people as toys. Found in Chapter 9: Let’s Talk About Sex. 5. Non-possessiveness (aparigraha): We’re not going to allow ourselves to become marinated in envy, grasping to have what others have or to be where they are. We’re going to break the habit of comparing and contrasting. We’re going to trust our process. As Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Found in Chapter 10: Trust Your Journey.

Second Limb: The Five Niyamas (Observances) 1. Purity or cleanliness (saucha): The body is the temple, the container that holds your essential spark. It’s the instrument that you use to practice compassion, gratitude, joy, discipline, and awareness. It’s your home. As such, you want to keep the temple clean and open, so it’s easier to see clearly what’s happening within you and around you.

This also applies to the outer home. The less clutter there is around you, the less clutter there will be within you. Found in Chapter 5: Keep It Clean.

2. Contentment (santosha): We’re going to live in the present, and open to each moment as it is. Santosha is not happiness; it’s an inner steadiness, an inner peace that is not

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lost when circumstances fluctuate around us. Discussed in Chapter 14: A Gratitude Practice.

3. Hard work and dedication (tapas): Fire or heat. Practical, powerful work that requires effort. We’re going to apply ourselves to the work of healing and opening, and we’re going to maintain that practice. For many people, the physical yoga practice (asana) and a regular breathing practice (pranayama) are two ways to build that inner fire. We commit to finding what we need to build that heat, and we commit to maintaining that effort for our own well-being and for those around us. Discussed in Chapter 12: Know Yourself.

4. Self-study (svadhyaya): We’re going to look at ourselves with honesty and compassion. We’re going to bring to the surface any old wounds or tendencies that are hampering our ability to open to joy, love, and gratitude. When we don’t show up the way we’d like, we’re going to look at what happened so we can understand what went wrong and do it better the next time. We’re going to be accountable for our actions and the energy we’re spreading.

Found in Chapter 12: Know Yourself.

5. Devotion to the divine (Ishvara pranidhana): Every day, we’re going to live with the awareness that we’re a part of something larger than ourselves. We’re going to be sure that we aren’t missing the moments of beauty or the opportunities to connect and rise above. We aren’t going to take for granted the beauty of the sun, the sound of rain on the roof, or the various shades of green in the trees.

We’re going to notice that sparkle in the smiles of our children, of our partners, and of total strangers. We’re go-

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ing to honor that spark within ourselves. Found in Chapter 13: Tune In to the River of Life.

Third Limb: Asana Patanjali described this limb as seated meditation and some simple postures to keep the body healthy, strong, and supple.

In our culture, there’s a huge emphasis on the physical practice of yoga. Some people want a sweaty flow class with lots of arm balances and inversions. Some people prefer a yin class, with deep stretching. There are people who love Kundalini yoga, with lots of mantra repetition (words or sounds that are repeated to aid concentration), breathwork, and kriyas (cleansing exercises). Some people enjoy restorative yoga, and some love Iyengar yoga or Ashtanga yoga. It’s very personal. Maybe for you, sitting in meditation for ten minutes will be the way. I recommend that you explore all the options until you find the one that resonates with you, and then stick to it. You’ll want to spend enough time on one path to really explore it and give it a chance. You’ll have an opportunity to explore the physical practice of yoga at the end of each chapter, along with breathwork and a guided meditation.

Fourth Limb: Pranayama Prana is described as the energy of the universe, and because it permeates everything, it’s known as the “breath of life” or the “life force.” With pranayama, or breathing exercises, we try to increase the flow of prana in the body. Sometimes this means elongating the inhale, pausing, elongating the exhale, and pausing again. In vinyasa flow classes, we use Ujjayi breath this way, while creating a slight constriction in the back of the throat,

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which produces an “ocean” sound. This is something we’ll explore (along with the physical practice) at the end of each chapter. If a practitioner gets to a point in class where they cannot breathe deeply, consciously, and easily, then there’s too much strain, either physically or mentally. Pranayama practices are like yoga practices—there are many of them. Breathwork is powerful, so you want to be sure you’re working with a reputable teacher. But even if you keep it simple, there’s no doubt that taking time to breathe deeply is calming for the nervous system.

Fifth Limb: Pratyahara Pratyahara is the withdrawal of the senses from attachment to externals, whether we’re talking about coveted objects, food, or thoughts. It’s when we release our attachment to a strong identification with our likes and dislikes. In the physical yoga practice, we use tools like the breath, the focal points, and sensations in the body to drop away from all the mental chatter and be present from moment to moment. Found in Chapter 4: You Are Not Your Thoughts.

Sixth Limb: Dharana Dharana is uninterrupted concentration. This is such an essential tool to work on, because without the ability to focus our attention on one point for a significant length of time, there’s no way for us to fulfill our dreams. There’s no way for us to be present. There’s no way for us to hear the quiet voice of our own intuition. Seated meditation is a powerful tool. We sit up, we breathe in and out, and we try to stay focused on the inhales and exhales and the sensations in the body. Sometimes

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we work with mantras or visualizations. If the mind wanders away (which is very likely at first), we notice that, we pick it up, and we start again. Over time, we train the mind. The physical yoga practice is also a very powerful tool. When we focus on the breath, on the focal points, and on sensations in the body, we become present. We quiet the storm that’s usually raging in the mind, and we breathe. As with different forms of yoga and pranayama techniques, there are also many different types of seated meditation. Explore until you find one that resonates with you, and stick with it. We will work on dharana at the end of each chapter when we sit to meditate.

Seventh Limb: Dhyana Dhyana is a state of being. It is often described as meditation, but in order to fully understand it, we have to define our terms.

Dharana (uninterrupted concentration) is the training ground for dhyana. Dhyana is the state of being where it’s no longer an effort. If you sit to meditate and the mind is distracted and you have to keep beginning again, that is dharana. Dhyana happens when you sit and breathe and that is all. There’s no effort.

Are you breathing, or is life breathing you? I know that sounds “out there,” but it’s hard to put a state of being into words. It’s something you have to experience, and it only happens if you’re working all eight of these limbs for an extended period of time, and even then, it’s not something you can force. Some days when you go to sit, you may feel an instant belonging to everything and a sense that there are no boundaries between you and the world around you, that it’s all the same. Other days, you may be distracted by thoughts of dinner. It just takes practice and dedication, but it’s well worth the effort because there’s

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something incredibly calming, reassuring, and freeing about the feeling of belonging to the universe, of being one with everything. This is something we’ll be working toward with our meditation practices. If you can get even a taste of it, you’ve experienced the final limb.

Eighth Limb: Samadhi This is a state of nondual absorption. Some people describe it as union with the divine. The subject merges with the object. If you can achieve this state, even in bursts, it’s such a blessing. It changes the way you move through the world. It makes it possible to live in love instead of fear. Found in Chapter 14: A Gratitude Practice.

_____ So there’s an overview of the eight limbs of yoga and the major philosophical concepts we’ll be exploring. I also want to give you a summary of my own background, so you have a sense of where I started and where I’ve ended up. It’s my belief that when we share our stories of struggle, we help each other feel less alone. It’s a bit like lighting a torch in a dark tunnel so that hopefully the next person will have an easier time.

My Story Like many people, I’m a child of divorce. My dad moved out of the house a week after my beloved grandmother died, when I was four years old. I remember the day my grandma died, and I remember the morning my mom told me my dad wasn’t going to live with us anymore. I remember being scared and confused and feeling like incredibly important people were disappearing

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from my life. Everything shifted at once. I felt my mother’s grief for her own mother and her heartbreak and rage over the loss of my dad as her husband. She’d lost her own father at thirteen, so at twenty-eight she found herself without either of her parents or a husband, and with a four-year-old.

My father, who struggled with fidelity in his romantic relationships long before I arrived and well into my teenage years, made a habit of talking to me about his difficulties. I became his confidant. I remember holding him while he cried in my arms over his troubles around commitment and his need to be free.

This began shortly after my parents’ divorce and continued until I was thirteen, when I finally put an end to it. But in the interim, I worried about my dad and wasn’t sure if he was the victim of all these women who wanted a commitment from him or the perpetrator of pain. He had moved in with the woman who eventually became my stepmom shortly after he and my mother split, but he continued to date other women on the side, and often brought me along. I remember meeting countless “lady friends” of my dad when he’d pick me up from school, then going home to dinner with my stepmom and keeping my mouth shut about the afternoon’s activities. I remember my stepmom locking herself in the bathroom to cry all night when women called the house for my dad.

At my mom’s house, things were also confusing. She’d developed an affinity for Chardonnay, and it scared me. Sometimes her personality would change and she’d become enraged at me, and I’d think that I had to try harder to be better. It never occurred to me that her behavior and the alcohol were connected.

I believed I was the problem. She took care of me, and sometimes she fought my battles for me, but I never knew when the

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tide would turn and I’d be left frightened and wondering what I’d done or why she didn’t love me. Those were the thoughts of a child, of course. I know now that my mother has always loved me and that she was just going through her own struggles. But she wasn’t very affectionate when I was little, and she wasn’t one to heap on the praise, so I developed this idea that I had to work harder to please her.

As we move through the book, I will talk about how these issues blossomed into patterns that led me into all kinds of trouble well into my adult years, and how I eventually overcame them.

A big part of the drive to write this book is my desire to share the tools that have worked for me and for so many people I’ve worked with over the years. I believe that life should feel good, and since we’re here for such a short amount of time, we really should make the most of it. Your past does not have to ruin your present or determine your future. We all have issues. We all have confusion and pain and fear and a great desire to heal. Facing ourselves and doing the work to heal takes bravery and strength, but it’s absolutely doable.

My great hope is that this book will be like your best friend for the next little while. It can root for you and light your path and be there for you when you’re feeling down or scared or enraged, or whatever it is you might need to feel in order to release the stuff that isn’t serving you. My wish is that by the end of this book, you’ll feel a lot better about yourself and about life in general, and you’ll have the tools to help you sail your boat in whatever direction feels right for you, with confidence, grace, ease, strength, awareness, and curiosity. And if you end up sending me an email, I’ll be pretty happy about that, too.

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May you use your practice to make the world within you a more loving, honest, compassionate, patient, kind, aware, and peaceful place to be. ~Ally Hamilton

Chapter 1

Breaking the Pain Cycle Why do we repeat patterns that cause us pain? Why do we attract people and situations into our lives that are going to lead to heartbreak? How do we stop the cycle? Yogis refer to these patterns as samskaras. Not all samskaras are negative, but the ones that are can really get us in trouble.

When I was seventeen, I began dating a man who was twentyone years older than I was. My parents tried to stop me, but they have nineteen years between them, and even though they divorced when I was four, I was positive my relationship was different. I was seventeen and I thought I had all the answers. My previous boyfriend, who had been kind and sweet and awesome in every way, also tried to stop me. But he had moved across the country to go to college, and the truth was, I was heartbroken. I felt abandoned, even though he was talking about seeing me over Christmas break and calling every day. No matter; he’d left, and it stirred in me something old and raw and completely unhealed.

So I let this guy who was so much older come at me with his cars and his boats and his private plane to his house in the 21

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Hamptons. He had a terrible reputation for cheating on everyone he dated, but I thought I’d be able to fix that. Also, something inside of me believed that I was the kind of person someone could leave. So who cared, really?

The first time we were together was strange and sad. We flew out to his house and went directly to the beach, where we got in his speedboat. He drove us out to the middle of a secluded bay area. I knew he’d done it before—all of it. It was like some kind of seduction ritual, something to get out of the way. I knew he didn’t love me. That came a few years later, after he’d broken me and it was too late. But I let him have me that day, even though I felt nothing. I was playing out all kinds of ancient history. I wasn’t in love with him, and I certainly didn’t love myself, not even a little. When it was over and I was swimming in the ocean, tears came streaming down my face, unexpectedly, without permission. I dove underwater, trying to wash them away, trying to wash the whole thing away. I don’t remember much else about that day or that night, but I felt dead to myself and also strangely satisfied that I’d done something so careless and reckless.

I stayed with him for three years. Once he had me, he kept me on a tight leash. It’s funny how people without integrity assume that other people also have none. He was threatened by the guys at Columbia who were my age. He’d drop me off on campus sometimes and get upset if I was wearing lipstick, or tight jeans, or a short skirt, or pretty much anything that wasn’t a sack.

He cheated on me regularly, and he was good at it. I could never prove it, but I always knew when he was with someone else because it hurt. It hurt in the way that sends you under the kitchen table, holding on to yourself as you sob and wonder what the hell you’re doing in this situation.

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But getting out wasn’t even possible at that point. I thought if I could just be perfect enough to get him to love me, it would save both of us. I was so deep in the pain cycle and so attached to getting my happy ending.

You cannot save anyone, though. All the love in the world won’t get the job done. You can’t make someone faithful or kind or compassionate or sensitive. You can’t make another person happy. They are, or they are not. You can harm yourself. You can allow yourself to be abused, mistreated, neglected, and betrayed. But I don’t recommend it. A healthy, happy, secure person wouldn’t have been on that boat with him in the first place. Of course, he preyed on a seventeen-year-old, and today, when I look back, I have all kinds of compassion for myself. But it took me years to get there—and a lot of yoga, a lot of therapy, and a lot of weeping and writing and reading. Anything you repress, run from, or deny owns you. It owns you. And if you don’t turn and face that stuff down, you’ll call it into your life in other ways. The truth wants out. Your heart wants to heal so it can open for you again.

Whatever is in your past does not have to define your future, but it probably will if you don’t do the work to liberate yourself.

We have such fear. We think these things will overwhelm us, that we won’t survive. But what you won’t survive is the denial.

The worst betrayal is the betrayal of self. That’s the part that kills you. That’s the part that makes you feel that you could be swept away by the wind. Looking at your stuff hurts. It’s painful and deeply uncomfortable in the short term, but if you trust yourself enough to lean into all that pain, you’ll find that it loses its grip on you. If you allow the searing heat from those wounds to be released, your whole being can take a real, deep breath, maybe for the first time in ages.

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You can forgive those who let you down, who didn’t or couldn’t show up for you the way you would have liked or the way you deserved. You can forgive yourself for choices you made that were harmful to you or others. When we’re in pain, we don’t tend to treat ourselves well, and sometimes that carries over to the people to whom we’re closest. But life can be beautiful. You can close the book on the old, painful story that was just a replay of your past. You can start working on a new way of being in the world, a new way of belonging to yourself, of interacting with those closest to you, and of creating a life that brings you joy.

This is not to say that the old pain won’t show up from time to time when you’re feeling triggered or tested or vulnerable, but it won’t grab you and knock you off your feet—because it won’t be the boss anymore; it won’t rule your life. You’ll just see it for what it is: an echo of a very old story that came to completion. It can’t be rewritten, but you get to decide how to think about it; you get to choose what you dwell on. I highly recommend that you direct your energy toward love, toward ideas, people, and pastimes that bring you joy, and toward what it is you have to offer in this world. We’re taught to look for a happy ending, but that isn’t how life works. You might be able to find that in a book or a film, but in life, happiness is a daily choice, and it requires our participation.

Sometimes it’s unrealistic to try to choose happiness. If you’re heartbroken or feeling betrayed, rejected, or discarded, or if you’re going through intense grief, it would be illogical to strive for happiness. Part of our difficulty lies in reaching for feelings or states that don’t make sense. Our best bet is to open to reality as it is, and to allow ourselves to feel the full range of emotions that

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we experience as human beings. Having said that, there are probably more days than not when happiness is a choice; it simply requires that we direct our attention to all the things that are good, that are going well, that are flowing, that we do have right now.

If you do that, you’ll never find yourself sailing out to sea with someone who doesn’t know how to do anything but hurt you, because why would you spend your time that way?

Anything within you that is unhealed will keep showing up in your life until you deal with it. It’s absolutely true that “what we resist persists.” Anything we push down, run from, or deny, any pain we try to numb out, will keep rising to the surface until we address it. This might show up in the romantic realm. For the majority of people, that’s where this stuff gets played out— in intimate relationships. You may have noticed that you have an uncanny ability to pick people who know just how to push your buttons or break your heart. This is not a coincidence.

When we’re driven by unconscious forces, we keep calling into our lives those people who reflect back the places within us that need our kind attention. We all want to heal. We want to be open. We want to be at peace. But we can never find peace until we know ourselves.

You may have developed coping mechanisms as you grew up, and perhaps they were necessary and served you then. Maybe you learned to run when things got scary or to make yourself invisible. Maybe you became the peacemaker in your family. But any avoidance or survival tactics need to be examined when we’re out in the world on our own, because sometimes the way we got through was to push down the uncomfortable, painful, confusing, or messy stuff and just keep smiling for the world at large. Or perhaps we hit our teenage years and started

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blurring the edges with drugs or alcohol so reality would look and feel a little better.

We all have pain. We all suffer. It’s not a level playing field, of course. Some people face enormous, mind-boggling loss, or violence, abandonment, or abuse. But we all have our stuff. And in order to face it, we have to bring it into the light. For many people, the idea of dealing with their pain is not just unappealing; it’s terrifying. They fear that it will be their undoing. But running from our pain is exhausting and futile. Pushing it down requires so much energy that there isn’t much left to do anything else. (We call this depression.) Numbing it out is not sustainable, because you’ll need more and more of your numbing agent, and eventually it will take over your life.

For example, if alcohol is your numbing agent of choice, you might start with a glass of wine at the end of the day to take the edge off. If you’re really trying to blur the edges, that one glass might become two. When we build tolerance to a particular substance, it means we’ve developed a physiological response that results in needing more of the substance to get the same effect.

Over time, those two glasses might become a bottle. Alcohol is just one example. We can be addicted to drugs, to food, to sex, to approval. The point is that when we’re psychologically or physically dependent on something, that something owns us. We need more and more of it to feel okay.

So often, we don’t even realize what’s happening. Freud noted this back in his 1914 essay “Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through,” when he observed that his patients’ drive to repeat traumatic events overrode their “pleasure principle,” their drive to be happy. He began to formulate the idea that people were motivated to gain mastery over events or emotions

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that had overwhelmed them. He also came to understand this as a desire for the familiar. We feel comfortable with what we know, after all, even if what we know doesn’t feel very good.

This is why sometimes when we’re in a relationship, we feel triggered. It’s like “home” all over again, and we mistake the intensity of the “pull” of it for the feeling of being in love. What we’re really after is a happy ending. We want to heal. But when we call people into our lives to help us play out something old, we aren’t going to heal; we’re just going to recreate a dynamic that’s familiar, or repeat behavior patterns that aren’t serving us. Since we’ve done this unconsciously, not only will we find ourselves unable to master our pain, but we’ll also succeed in creating more pain for ourselves.

Freud wasn’t the only one who observed these tendencies.

Yogis call these tendencies samskaras, or grooves in the unconscious mind. They’re emotional or mental patterns that are believed to be our “karmic inheritance” (lucky us!) that we’re likely to grapple with throughout our lives. The word samskara comes from the Sanskrit sam (“joined together” or “yoked”) and kara (“action” or “cause”). As with any pattern, the more we repeat it, the more we strengthen it. Samskaras are not all bad.

We might have a pattern of caring for people, for example. It’s the negative samskaras that get us in trouble, that keep us stuck in the pain cycle and hinder our growth.

We are not powerless, though. We can bring these patterns into the light and examine them. We don’t have to stay stuck in that groove. In fact, we can climb out of that ditch and start creating a new, healthy groove. But in order to do that, we first have to acknowledge that a pattern or way of being exists. We have to be able to see that. Much of our pain results from our

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lack of awareness that we’re repeating behaviors or choices that land us in the same ditch, over and over again. In the example I shared with you, I didn’t realize that I was dating a man who was elusive, like my mother, and unfaithful, like my father. It didn’t occur to me that I’d been triggered by being left and that I was flailing around trying to soothe my rebroken heart. It was obvious, but I was too close to the situation to see it. Time and distance helped, as they always do. This isn’t easy work. There are certain things we’d rather not see. But if you want to heal, this is the first essential step. We have to start where we are, and we have to know where we are in order to begin.

Journal Exercise Let’s identify your unconscious drives, shall we? Grab a journal, contemplate the following questions, and take some notes. This is just so you can get really clear about where you’re at right now.

1. Think about patterns in your life, personally or professionally. What keeps showing up for you? For example: • Do you find it difficult to communicate with people?

• Is trust an issue for you?

• Do you often feel disrespected, unseen, or unheard?

• Do you participate in relationships that make you feel terrible?

• Do you believe your value is measured by what you can do for other people or by whether they give you approval?

2. What do you believe is the source of your doubt, or your rage, or your fear that you may not be good enough? When did this begin, and how does it manifest itself today?

• Do any events from your childhood jump out at you?

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• Do you recognize a dynamic that existed between you and one of your parents that’s evident in the way you interact with someone important in your life now?

• Do you have any self-limiting beliefs that are so ingrained you don’t even question them, such as “No one likes me,” “Everyone leaves,” or “You can’t trust anyone”?

3. Think about what triggers you. In your relationships with family members, close friends, and romantic partners, what drives you crazy? Just list this stuff for now. All we’re looking to do is bring it to the surface so we can name it.

Yoga Exercise: Tadasana & Pranayama Sometimes when we start to become conscious of our weakening habits, strong emotions rise to the surface—and that’s good.

That’s what we want. But the mind-body connection is real, so we want to give some attention to the body to help it release tension as well. Your body has been with you through everything.

Sometimes it stores events and emotions for years, and for many people, working with the body is a way of unlocking that holding pattern. The body has habits, too, and some of them don’t serve us at all. Do you often find that your jaw is clenched, or your brows are furrowed, or your shoulders are up around your ears? In order to release tension, we have to create some freedom in the body.

Come to standing. We’re going to explore tadasana (mountain pose). Before you can fly, you have to be able to stand on your own two feet. When I teach, I often talk about rooting down in order to rise up. Tadasana is all about that. Bring your feet together, with the big toes touching and the heels a little

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bit apart, so that your second toe on each foot would bisect your heel if you were to draw a line. You can also have your feet hip-width apart, but make sure your toes point straight forward. Either way, lift the toes up so you feel your feet rooting down. Lift your kneecaps and quadriceps, and gently draw your navel in and up. Lift your heart and the crown of your head. Lift the shoulders up and back, arms at your sides, palms open to the front of the room.

Feel yourself breathing in and out. Make your inhales and exhales the same length, without force or strain. Fill and empty your lungs completely. Pause at the top of your inhales and at the bottom of your exhales. If possible, limit your breathing so it’s coming in and out through your nose. Create a subtle constriction at the base of your throat by lightly placing the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth, and drag the breath along the back of your throat on the way in and on the way out. You want to create an ocean sound (Ujjayi breath means “ocean-sounding” breath). This might be your first experience with pranayama ( breath control). Tuning in to your breath, deepening it, and slowing it down are all powerful ways to calm your nervous system, and they’re always available. You can do ocean-sounding breath while you’re driving in your car if you’re feeling frazzled or even when you’re feeling great.

Your posture says a lot about the way you feel about yourself, but it also affects the way you feel. Standing tall and feeling your feet rooting you to the ground is also a way of rooting yourself in the present moment. Feeling the breath moving in and out brings you right into the now. The ability to be present with whatever you’re feeling is key if you want to know yourself, understand what is real for you, and start to make big shifts in your life. This is our first taste of meditation.

Body, Mind & Spirit / Yoga “Yoga and life are journeys, and this book is a wonderful guide along the path!”

—Greg Louganis, four-time Olympic gold medalist

Holistic wisdom for sustained peace Ally Hamilton changed her life with the eight limbs of yoga, a spiritual tradition first recorded in the Yoga Sutras 1,600 years ago. Join Ally as she shows you how to apply the wisdom of this honored tradition to your modernday life.

Physical poses—asanas—are the best-known aspects of yoga, but in the eight limbs practice, healing comes through exploring your relationship to the world and to yourself while learning to recognize the obstacles that block your path. Yoga’s Healing Power shows how to create the life you want from the inside out, working with your mind and emotions, your body and breath, your memories and your pain. With hands-on exercises, meditations, journaling prompts, and stories of healing, this book helps you uncover your particular gifts and begin to feel joy.

“Ally is really onto something fantastic with Yoga’s Healing Power. . . .

We’re not talking just physical yoga; this is yoga as a way of life.”

—Kathryn Budig, author of Aim True “I was deeply humbled and greatly inspired by Ally Hamilton’s courageous take on life, love, loss, and surrender.”

—Claire Bidwell Smith, author of The Rules of Inheritance

Ally Hamilton is a Santa Monica–based yoga teacher, writer, and life coach who connects with yogis around the world via her classes on her yoga website, www.yogisanonymous.com, which has been featured in The New York Times, Yoga Journal, Self Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. She’s a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and MindBodyGreen and the author of Open Randomly: Fortune Cookies for the Soul. $15.99 US / $18.50 CAN

www.llewellyn.com • Facebook.com/LlewellynBooks • Twitter:@LlewellynBooks