I was drawn to yoga because I grew up with it. My grandmother, Amma, lived a life of yoga, and it was so beautiful to witness. Her practice wasn’t something she did for an hour. It was how she moved through the world. Yoga was familiar to me, part of the world I came from. So when I stepped into yoga studios as an adult, I expected to feel at home.

Instead, I was faced with everything I had ever avoided. The appropriation. The bullying. The way the West so often depicts yoga as style over substance: the right outfit, the perfect pose, the picture, while the depth gets left behind. The quiet feeling of not quite belonging in a practice that was mine to begin with. Those emotions followed me into every room, and for a long time they were the story I told myself, and my reason to stay away.

Then I became a mother, and I knew I had to stop making excuses. I couldn’t change the rooms, but I could change the narrative. So I started going inward.

That’s when yoga began to show me what it really is.

I used to think yoga was about how you looked: the right shape, the deeper bend. After two C-sections, I had to rebuild my body from the inside out, starting from scratch. It changed my whole relationship with my practice. Now every time I step onto my mat, I’m humbled, and grateful for what this body has carried. Asana is the mirror of your inner world. Whatever is moving inside you shows up on the mat, and the body always tells the truth if you’re willing to listen.

The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit root yuj: to yoke, to join, to unite. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras describe it as the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind. The poses are only one of yoga’s eight limbs. The rest of the path is how we live, how we breathe, and how we turn inward.

In 2020, when the world slowed down, I went deeper. I completed my 200-hour training with Indigo Yoga in New Jersey, where I grew up. I trained in Reiki, through Master level, in Sedona with the magical Reiki Traveler. Now I’m completing 300 more hours with Yoga Renew in Hoboken, where I lived when I worked in NYC, and I’m in a year-long training studying the practices of the Q’ero shamans of Peru. Next, I’ll be learning more about my own lineage in India. I’m a lifelong seeker, and I’m learning how to bridge these worlds, because everything is connected.

Everything is energy, too, and the body is how we listen to it. Yoga isn’t the only tool I use. Meditation, acupuncture, Reiki, massage, crystals, tarot, therapy, somatic movement, dance and community are all cogs in the same wheel, each keeping the whole thing running smoothly. None of them holds every answer. Together, they help me come home to myself.

These days, practice looks less like perfection and more like showing up wherever I can. I carve out time for at least a couple of classes a week, because there’s a magic in moving with others that I’m still trying to put into words. On other days it’s a few sun salutations with my kids, or dropping down to practice a pose wherever I happen to be. Sometimes it’s meditation, sitting in nature, a walk or dancing in the kitchen. It’s all the same thing: finding my way back to myself whenever I can find the time.

As a mother, yoga has given me more than flexibility. It has taught me to hold space for others, to breathe before I react, and to lead with my heart and with love. The patience I find on the mat is the same patience I need at bedtime, in a hard conversation or in a meeting that goes sideways. The practice doesn’t end when class does. It comes home with me.

So why do I practice? Because yoga is a doorway to my inner world, and to a life in alignment with my truest self. Over 20 years of building a career and walking a spiritual path, I’ve learned that the best version of yourself is the most authentic, sovereign version of yourself. There’s no need to be anyone other than who you already are.

The path isn’t easy, but I’ll stay on it. In the end, yoga isn’t something I do. I am yoga.

I hope to share practice with you soon — through experiences, gatherings, classes, private sessions and more. Watch this space, and I’ll share the gifts I gather along the way.

“Not all those who wander are lost.” — J.R.R. Tolkien

More on my yoga journey →