Fortunately, in 2003 I discovered Bikram yoga. Yoga satiated my love of movement and intensity. Not only did I become more aware of my body, but I started to catch my breath. I didn’t realize I’d been holding it for so long.

Four years later, my mom died, and what I now know to be an awakening force woke me up even more. It led me to deepen my yogic practices and studies, and in 2008, I completed my first yoga certification from a month-long live-in training at Kripalu Center For Yoga & Health.

Initially, as a member of Westchester Medical Center’s integrative team, I offered yoga to children with cancer and their caregivers. I then went on to create Yoga for Mamas and Grow Yoga – themed adult yoga classes curated to accelerate our embodiment and nobility off the mat.

By 2011, I was basically behaving as a mother and yoga teacher. Some of my top-down parenting, ‘unexplained’ rage, and alcohol use caused shameful internal rumblings about how I was showing up as a mother, sister, and teacher.

For the next six years, I worked with a life coach. I learned to consciously create my life, take accountability for my actions, and examine and reframe old destructive thoughts and behaviors. I constructively transmuted my anger, crafted apologies and delivered them to those I harmed, and got sober.

I became certified as a practitioner life coach in just under two years – quite a feat as only three out of twenty trainees completed the program. The rigors of ‘cleaning up’ many of my life areas positively changed the way I related to myself and the world. I became more of a leader in my life.

In 2017, I was introduced to holotropic breathwork as part of my teacher’s emotional intelligence curricula. Suddenly, the breaths I merely caught in yoga became real – open, flowing, and full.  I felt years of suppressed grief, residual trauma, transgressions, domination, and submissiveness release from my body. Space opened for more love, kindness, inspiration, and creativity. I began to radically yield to my life and live in dynamic peace, even as my outer life changed completely.

Four years later, I completed a 400-hour trauma-informed breathwork training from Alchemy of Breath, an internationally accredited breathwork school. I knew I had to share conscious breathing with others, either independently or combined with yoga or coaching work. As I did, they, too, developed the inner resources  to make adaptive choices. Their renewed self-trust, confidence, and relational skills enlivened them in even more fresh and beautiful ways. Witnessing these transformations, remains a pinnacle of this work.

Just before completing my Alchemy of Breath training, I became certified in Katonah Yoga, a practice that completely reshaped my body and allowed me to articulate a new narrative for my life, setting the foundation for the profound transformation I experienced through breathwork.

Now, in the autumn of my life and flowering, I’ve come to understand that my years of hardship were vital for my self-cultivation and life’s calling. I see it all as service to the whole. Best of all, I feel the wonder around me again. My free-spiritedness from childhood is making a magical reappearance.

I’d love to see yours bloom, too.