Or,
It
happened to me: I was in an abusive relationship during my Peace Corps service,
and I want to help people love themselves through yoga like it helped me
Hey populace!
It’s been real quiet on my end, and I
acknowledge that fully. I’ve almost been
a total recluse since June, 2012, when I got to my second Peace Corps site in
Botswana. A lot has happened. I was thinking about what I wanted to do for
my birthday this year, and I realized: I want to tell people what’s happened,
where I am, and where I would like to go.
Why do you wanna do that?
Because I woke up since June,
2012. And when I say I “woke up,” I mean
that I became aware of how much I have been hurt and hurt myself, and how much
love I wish to give. And I discovered
that sharing what has happened to me is an amazing way of making what happened
help others. I was ashamed of my story
over the past 2.5 years for so long, and now that I love myself for all of my
herstory, including the tough, nasty, horrible-feeling parts that I wanted to
push down and out of my heart space for so long, I want to share it so that
more people know that the kinds of things I went through are nothing to be
ashamed of. To the contrary, they are
things I can celebrate, and try to celebrate every moment I remember that I am
alive.
So, what happened?
The short version is this: after
experiencing the 2012 Malian coup d’état as a Peace Corps volunteer in the
capitol of Mali, and then being the victim of a violent crime as a Peace Corps
volunteer in Botswana, I got medically evacuated out of my Peace Corps post,
diagnosed with PTSD, discovered I was an emotional eater, and isolated out of
shame to tell anyone that I was back home, let alone why. When I say “victim of a violent crime,” I
mean that I was sexually assaulted and in a domestically violent relationship
with an abusive partner in Botswana, and finally reported it to Peace Corps. They got me out of my post and back home,
where I realized that I needed to feel grounded again. I chose to stay in Washington, DC with my
dad, get my emotional eating under control (I frequently ate because of how I
felt instead of how hungry I was, and it caused me great distress), started a
daily yoga practice, cultivated an amazing relationship with the partner of my
dreams, and found an amazing trauma therapist.
All of these pieces together have brought me to want to help others in
domestically violent relationships feel grounded through yoga.
Whoa. How can I help?
By reading what you just read, you’re
already making my birthday dream come true.
Read, let it marinate, and share something you learn from it, or the
post itself, with others you know, love, talk to, etc.! If you wanna read more, I have this blog post. It is far longer than my description of my project on Gofundme, and really goes indepth as to what I've been through, and how I got to the beautiful place where I am today. So, keep reading for the full story!
Can I help more?
The title says the next step of a
birthday gift to me: donate $8 to my Gofundme
campaign page here!. Donate
more if you can and want to, of course! I
am trying to make $2,870 to take a 200-hour yoga teacher training (the most
basic, beginning teacher training one needs in order to learn how to teach well
and not get people injured, get necessary yoga teacher insurance, and get
certified to be a teacher who people will let teach at their studio or in their
business or organization) and teach 52 free classes to domestic violence
shelters over a year (the idea being, 1 class per week).
Why donate?
It’s expensive to get trained to be a
yoga teacher! It’s not just the fee for the training, which is $2500-$3000; it’s also the books (including ones I bought for a teacher training that I did
not obtain a scholarship through), the transportation
costs, a nonrefundable deposit from
a teacher training I could not obtain a scholarship through, fundraising fees, and the insurance so that you can handle
getting sued if somebody gets hurt during a class, which hopefully, they
don’t. But better to be safe than sorry!
Why $8 specifically?
My journey over the past 2.5 years has
also been my journey to getting into a daily practice with yoga, which I
believe is the most grounding, beautiful part of my life today. And my journey off of my mat these past 2.5 years
aligns itself perfectly with 8 yoga poses, or asana in Sanskrit, that compose the first parts of a sun
salutation, or surya namaskar. A sun salutation is a frequently practiced
set of poses in yoga that enable one to bow to the sun, ideally done in the
morning. Not only does my name, Akinyi, mean “born in the morning,” but I also
have come to salute the light inside of me every day. So I think it’d be beautiful if enough people
could give a minimum of $1 for each
“pose,” or part of my story of coming to salute my inner light. $8 from about 360 people would allow me to go through
a teacher training, get insured for a year, and teach free classes at domestic
violence shelters.
Writing and sharing this was my way of straightening
my back out before coming down once more into myself, full of love for myself
in a forward bend, or uttanasana. Getting to this monetary goal would allow me
to come to the last pose in a sun salutation: to rise, strong as a mountain,
back into “prayer hands,” or Namaste
hands. It will help me rise and give
gratitude through the gift of yoga.
Give me the longer version of what’s happened to you. I wanna know more.
Happy to give details, especially if it
might help people understand how difficult it can be to be in an abusive
relationship, how difficult it can be to leave one, how hard it is to feel like
your emotional eating might be out of control, how intense it can feel to be
depressed and/or have PTSD, and/or how difficult it can be to reach out for
help:
Mountain Pose, Disempowered: Feeling like the silver lining
must be real, denying PTSD, and the beginning of a practice
The first pose in a sun salutation is
mountain pose. You relax your shoulders
down your back and open your palms forward, calm, still and strong, like a
mountain. It feels empowering--if you connect with the pose in an
empowering way. This is just like life:
it feels great, if you connect with
it in an empowering way. I didn’t.
I started out my Peace Corps service in
Mali, and was there only 5 months before the 2012 Malian coup d’état
happened. A close friend of mine and
fellow volunteer was stuck with me in the regional Peace Corps house in the
capitol of Mali during the coup. She was
also a regular yoga practitioner, and led me through a yoga sequence (set of
poses) that changed my life. I had only
done yoga once before, but yoga was literally the only thing that helped me
feel better during lockdown during the coup.
I was then evacuated out with the rest
of the Peace Corps volunteers there, and abruptly found I couldn’t sleep more
than 2-3 hours per night, even while taking the equivalent of 4-8 Benadryl per
night. I also was intensely afraid of
tasks that required any amount of responsibility or potential risk. I found that I was ordering boxes of “healthy
binge-worthy foods” (i.e., “nutritional bars” that I would eat by the 5s, dark
chocolate-covered dried fruit, cashew nut butter alone by the ½ cup, etc.)
through Amazon and having my dad send them to me in regular care packages. I felt like I couldn’t stop eating my
feelings, and hadn’t been able to since the coup had started, except when I
restricted what I ate to try to lose weight. I felt like many of my thoughts
were about food, working out, my body and what it looked like, or how afraid I
was of people hurting me or me getting “fat.”
It didn’t help that I used to be heavier--when I was 15, I was 228 lbs,
and am now about 100 lbs lighter. I was just
fixated on this anxiety loop that began and ended with me hating living. I mean, how hard is it to love being alive
when all you feel you can do is focus on how much you hate being you?
I got to my new Peace Corps site in
Botswana and started seeing a therapist and doing yoga more regularly to try
and at least sleep better. It
helped. I started to smile more. I felt less intense anxiety speaking to
people at my site and walking to my volunteering work. I even started emotionally eating less. What used to be a minimum of a bi-weekly
ritual of eating my feelings, became a once-every-three-weeks occurrence.
But this funny thing started happening
where I started not to give myself space to focus on the negative. I felt like feeling “bad” was indeed “bad” (I
use quotation marks because I no longer spiritually believe in “good” or
“bad”--everything simply exists, without judgment until we make judgments,
which are not facts and just make me suffer more). So I put a silver lining on everything and
justified everything: “Things happen for a reason”; “At least you still have
____!”; and “What a first-world problem!” became my catchphrases. I denied my
anxiety as if that would help it go away.
And it did get better, but it didn’t change what I didn’t yet
understand: that I had post-traumatic stress disorder.
Uttanasana: Being assaulted and going inward to a false “me”
The second pose in a sun salutation,
after raising one’s hands above one’s head and stretching up toward the sky, is
coming down into a full-frontal bend, or uttanasana. Palms toward the floor and back as straight
as possible, we fold into ourselves, thank ourselves, and embrace ourselves
before moving any further. My problem
was that I didn’t accept myself as something deserving of love. I told myself
that an abusive relationship was what I deserved, and isolated from people I
loved out of intense anxiety. I came
inward, but to a “me” I hated, a false “me.”
I met a man who worked at a UN agency
operating in Botswana, and we immediately began a relationship. He was from a radically different culture
from me (and also not from Botswana), and I did what I’d begun doing: I
justified his abuse by defending him and saying it was a “cultural
difference.” He thought all “really
black, African” womyn were ugly?
Cultural difference in learned beauty standards! He “hated gay people”? Cultural difference! He played “rough” with me and hurt me on
several different occasions during play-wrestling? He just doesn’t know his strength! At least he’ll wrestle with me--he’s a
feminist! And when he sexually assaulted
me for the second time in 6 weeks? He had
just never learned consent. That
culture, huh?! Just not giving people
what they need, so it’s not their fault they do ugly things, no matter what
they are and how much we can all generally sense how to treat each other with
dignity.
Over the course of the worst 6 weeks of
my life in this 6 weeklong relationship, I started emotionally eating at least
3 times per week again. I stopped
practicing yoga every day, like I had started doing only 3 months prior. My life started falling apart--I was walking
on eggshells with an abusive partner who even proposed to me within a week of
seeing me. Handling the anxiety, with
undiagnosed PTSD, bouts of emotional eating and crazy exercise that drove me
crazy, and already feeling isolated as a Peace Corps volunteer in a new place,
new country, and second site over the course of half a year? I managed as best I could, but it was nearly
impossible to keep it together. If it
had not been for the amazing people I knew and loved at my site, as well as
both volunteers in-country and people I love in the US who I would call and
write to, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to be as strong as I was. A fellow volunteer helped me develop my yoga
practice in such a loving direction that I learned how to sequence my own
practices (line-up poses in such a way that felt good to do, on my own, using
my own ideas and not hurting myself doing it).
She always stays in my heart.
After I was assaulted for the second
time, I did hip opening practices in my abusive partner’s house while I debated
what I should do: should I leave, or stay?
Hip openers help us open up the emotional junk drawer we stuff our 4
main emotional offenders into: guilt, shame, anger, and sadness. So I tried and tried to open my hips. And I finally discovered that I had the
strength to act in a compassionate way toward myself for the first time in my
life: I reported being sexually assaulted to Peace Corps, and they offered to
medically evacuate me to the US to my dad’s place to stay with him and see all
the professionals I might need in Washington, DC so that I could get the
medical attention I needed to get back to service or amicably end my service. I left on medical evacuation and came back to
the US in May, 2013.
Third position: Medical evacuation, still down and isolating but seeing some release
The next part of a sun salutation is
bringing the hands up, to the knees, the calves, or fingertips to the floor,
and straightening the back, looking forward.
Medical evaluation, a 6-week long process, felt a whole lot like that,
because I felt like I could see the light on horizon again, but I was still
down.
I saw a therapist 2-3 times per
week. I started seeing a psychiatrist too
because I kept having nightmares.
Finally, I understood my troubles sleeping, which persist to this day: I
get nightmares, retraumatizations, of what I saw in Mali, once I fall
asleep. Well, the psychiatrist gave me
antidepressants and benzos. This meant
that I woke up and took a pill to relax me, and before going to bed, I took a
pill to help me not remember what came up at night. After 6 weeks of seeing a therapist and not
really making extensive progress in any given area of my trauma, I continued to
take this medication and go to a free program for help with emotional eating while
still engaging in emotionally-fueled behavior surrounding exercise and food. At around this point, I stopped doing yoga
altogether--it physically reminded my body of the actions I took in my abuser’s
house and presence in general, and the last thing I wanted was to be in touch
with my body after what it had gone through.
Do not misunderstand me: I was so traumatized
and riddled with anxiety that I thank the Universe for these medicines during
this time. They helped me be able to
literally smell flowers and smile again, like I had before Peace Corps from
time to time. But I can personally say
that they were a crutch for me. I needed
to figure out what terrified me about what I had experienced and work through
it to heal. Drugging myself for several
months, without a therapist to help me work through what had happened, was not
a solution. I also felt like I couldn’t
stop socially isolating myself from others around me. I didn’t want to tell many people I was
around because I didn’t know what to say to anybody about why I was there.
But at the end of the day, I wasn’t at
my Peace Corps site anymore. I wasn’t in
the house where my ex-partner had abused me.
I was in my dad’s place, around friends and family from home, and had a
team of professionals dedicated to helping me heal. Some friends I opened up to about what had
happened even traveled hours to visit me.
Many people came to my house to keep me company when I just didn’t want
to be alone in my head. I cannot
emphasize how amazing it is to have love in your life when you go through hard
times. We all know it, but I feel like I
forget how much I matter, even when I’m not consciously helping somebody. Just a voice on the phone telling me things
would get better, could make my month back then. Heck, at a minimum, it still makes my day!
Forward Fold, Palms Flat: Flat feelings and antidepressants
Next in a sun salutation comes folding
forward again in uttanasana, with
palms coming flat down on the ground to prepare for push-up pose, or chaturanga Dandasana. At this point in my herstory, I folded back
into myself and my emotions flattened.
I realized that my medication wasn’t
helping when I switched medications and started feeling really emotionally
detached. Nothing felt really good or
really bad anymore--it all felt flat, without purpose. Nothing felt intentional. Everything was frightening. I gave my testimony of being assaulted to
diplomatic lawyers, and it never became a court case: the police department in
Botswana, which had to be addressed in the town he had lived in for 2 years
prior, found that there was “insufficient evidence.” I also got diagnosed with PTSD by the end of
my medical evacuation.
So, after 3 months of not emotionally
eating but still exercising constantly, I emotionally ate again. And then, I decided I didn’t want to feel
flat anymore. I wanted to feel
everything that was happening and just see how I did. So I spoke to my psychiatrist and went off of
my medication with her guidance on how to do so safely.
Chaturanga Dandasana: Allowing myself to emotionally eat and almost hitting rock bottom with my PTSD, mixed in with the LSAT
With your palms down on the ground, you
either walk back, one leg at a time, or jump back, into push-up pose, or chaturanga dandasana. If you are able to, you hold yourself 4
inches or so off the ground with your elbows squeezing in to your midline,
looking forward. Well, at this point, I
was 4 inches from rock bottom. I was
sleeping patterns mixed with nightmares, and emotionally). And I was now worried about gaining weight
again.
I stayed in my emotional eating program
even while I started emotionally eating again.
I wanted to avoid total relapse, without realizing that I was still
engaging in emotionally-fueled behavior with exercise even though I wasn’t eating
my feelings anymore. But the more scared
and angry I felt, about losing the court case opportunity or my sense of self,
the more I emotionally ate.
I also started seeing a free trauma
therapist at the DC Rape Crisis Center, who helped me accept what having PTSD
meant in my life. I didn’t know that
people who get PTSD actually suffer on a physical level: you can see the
difference in their brains vs. the brains of people without PTSD (check out a
great picture of those differences here: http://www.u1077.caen.inserm.fr/files/2013/07/SEME_2_EN.jpg). And when people get a “trigger,” or a
reminder of a traumatic event, two different parts of their brain actually get
activated. It suddenly wasn’t just
something I believed on some core level that I was making up: I finally felt
like what I was experiencing sucked and made sense. I had a condition. It wasn’t my fault that I was so anxious,
depressed, moody, and strange around food.
I emotionally ate, cried, shook, slept, didn’t sleep, was paralyzed by
fear, had nightmares, all when I had triggers.
And triggers could be anything for me, including high stress situations
and loud noises like sudden cars honking, which made me shake because they
reminded my brain of the atmosphere during the coup and/or the sounds of
gunshots in Mali.
The court case not going through
actually further cemented a dream I had always had: to use my people skills and
become a lawyer who could help further sexual and reproductive rights. Cool, right?
But, not-so-cool to study for the LSAT (the examination you must take to
apply to law school in the US) while you’re 4 inches from rock bottom. It was hard to study for and take repeated
practice tests that were timed while seemingly constantly getting triggers I
could finally identify as legitimate triggers.
The test timing would make me anxious, which would make me dissociate,
or intensely checkout, from reality to feel safer. And then I’d come back, only to have less
time to finish a section on the test. I
was constantly getting retriggered, and it sucked. I left the emotional eating program, and
tried to go it on my own, as more of a diet and goal of not eating too much
anymore instead of an effort to meet my feelings head-on instead of eating them
and stuffing them down, or exercising them away to hidden corners of my body I
couldn’t access as easily.
Upward-Facing Dog: Recovery from emotional eating, loving
myself, being able to love others, and appreciating my heart opening
From push-up pose, we move into
upward-facing dog, where, the tops of the toes on the floor, knees off the
ground, palms by your hips and chest proudly opening up, gaze toward the sky,
we open our hearts through a backbend to the sun. My herstory filled with light I could see
once I opened my heart through recovery in every sense of the word.
First, I stumbled onto a partner who
I’ve fallen deeply, deeply in love with.
I fell in love for the first time, and let myself trust someone for the
first time. He loved me fiercely enough
to try to tell me when I was being hateful toward myself, which helped me see
which anxiety loops I was enacting that weren’t serving me.
Then, I got a new therapist at the DC
Rape Crisis Center whom I was far more honest with than my first one.
Then, I felt strong enough to check
myself into another free program to stop emotionally eating, and not only
stopped eating my feelings and constantly exercising, but also started
following a nutritionally-sound meal plan to regularize my eating patterns
(i.e., the times I ate so I didn’t get too hungry, what I ate so my blood sugar
didn’t do crazy things and I didn’t get ravenous at random times, the amount I
ate so I had a steady source of fuel to live throughout the day, etc.; stopping
frequent emotional eating is a long, hard road, and if you wanna hear more
about it and where to possibly get help for either yourself or someone you
love, please let me know, and I’d be more than happy to help). Lastly, and most importantly, I started
building my self-esteem and truly loving myself for who I was, regardless of my
weight.
I would be lying to you if I said this was
not still a daily task. My default, as I
found out with my current therapist and the program I got involved in, was
always to mask my feelings with food or exercise. And to hate myself for bad things that
happened to me so that I felt like it was my fault, so that maybe I could
control bad things and stop them from happening. But I can tell you now, I love myself. I have opened my heart. This is why some of you have started hearing
from me more regularly, instead of a random message or phone call, never to
hear back for months, for many of you, most likely, until this blogpost.
And, the funniest thing happened! I
started practicing yoga again once I got into recovery. And at first, my body recoiled somewhat
frequently or I dissociated during poses I had practiced during my abusive
relationship in Botswana. But then, I
started to breath. And my body
relaxed. And my poses got deeper. It was happening: I could practice yoga every
day, and was getting stronger and stronger.
And it wasn’t about working out.
It became a practice in connecting to myself. And once I connected with myself regularly, I
started to breath when I got a trigger.
And then, I could do a grounding exercise. In other words, I will always be triggered as
long as I live. PTSD does not go away. But a trigger doesn’t need to be scary. I can manage them and live a happy, full life
with the condition I now have. And yoga
helped me begin to do just that.
Finally, I felt happy to be alive.
It took 2 years, but I arrived.
So, I decided, I want to teach
yoga! I’d tried it a couple of times in
Botswana, and absolutely loved it. With
hardly any experience aside from yoga DVDs I had sent to me during my Peace
Corps service (remember those binge-worthy care packages from my dad I told you
about?), I led people through poses that helped them feel peaceful, in front of
my own eyes and heart. And I loved
it. And after recovering my sense of
happiness in being alive, I had 7 months of daily yoga practice under my
metaphorical belt and I wanted to give back to people in domestically violent
situations, for free. I wanted to spread
the gift of yoga. I found a yoga studio
with a full-ride scholarship possibility for those interested in instructing
survivors of trauma (perfect, right?!?) and immediately started interning there
in June of this year. I then got trained
for and started volunteering as a doula in August in Northern Virginia, to help
womyn through their birthing processes. I
even started a part-time job in November of this year, my first paying job
since my medical evacuation: essentially serving as a receptionist for my local
yoga studio, for small monies and free classes.
Then, in the past 2 weeks, after going
through the craziness of taking the LSAT in June and applying to schools from
September through to early November, as well as deciding to disclose to the
schools I applied to that I had a disability (PTSD), I got accepted into 4 of
the 9 law schools I applied to!! Life
felt grand. More on that soon, and where I want to go,
but, in short, what a victory! I got a
fairly low score for what I felt I could have achieved prior to manifesting
severe PTSD symptoms, and had a reasonable, but not stellar, GPA, and still got
accepted into amazing programs.
Downward-Facing Dog: Losing the scholarship
We shift our toes underneath our feet
and reach our hips up and back into downward-facing dog, weight in the thumbs
and pointer fingers to open the shoulders, looking down and letting the neck
release, lengthening through the back and tucking the belly button in toward
the lower back. Usually a pose of incredible
lengthening and strength, for me, it was seeing the ground again.
I didn’t get the scholarship. It was being reserved for students met
through the scholarship program’s outreach activities, of which I had not been
part. And I felt like my dreams had
fallen apart. To me, teaching yoga to
other survivors of domestic violence, several of whom get PTSD, but most of
whom suffer from anxiety-related issues at a minimum, would mean that I had
taken my herstory and used it to help others.
And I felt so sad about not getting the scholarship. And my birthday was coming up.
Jumping Forward: Coming back to a self empowered, being ok
with over-jumping or under-jumping and embracing the practice
From downward-facing dog, we either
walk, step, or jump back to the front of our mats, feet in-between our
hands. When I jump, sometimes, I
over-jump. This leads to a hilarious
situation where I stumble and fall.
Other times, I under-jump. This
means I have to adjust and get my palms in line with my footsies. In all cases, I embrace what happens, because
that’s what yoga is: embracing what is for what it is. It doesn’t mean I love it. It just means that it’s there and I accept
that it exists. Just like how I don’t
love triggers, I can at least accept that they’re there, and that allows me to
handle them in a way that best complements my recovery, right? So I jumped forward from hearing about not
getting the scholarship, to this grand idea.
What if, for my birthday (and for as
long as it takes to get enough donations to do so), I got enough people to read
my story and donate money to get other people in domestically violent
situations free yoga that might help them heal, like yoga helped me heal? Each donation would be someone saying, I care, and I will help. What could be better than that for my
birthday? What material gift could give
me more joy? I love teaching, though it
has always been uninsured, and, with my lack of official training, at least
somewhat uninformed. But people
consistently tell me that my teaching helps them, which is more and more
often.
So, it’d be $2,870. And 360 people giving $8 for me to teach yoga at domestic violence shelters with insurance for a year? That’d be a huge gift, to everyone I teach and myself. I will email each person who donates after one of the classes I teach, about how the class went, which shelter they helped me teach at, and a pose that I dedicated my intention toward in gratitude to them. If you have anything you want me to say concerning growth during a class, I can say at least a part of that at some point either before, during, or after my classes as well. I want to bring yoga to people who could use it, as a group project with people like you, reading this right now.
So, it’d be $2,870. And 360 people giving $8 for me to teach yoga at domestic violence shelters with insurance for a year? That’d be a huge gift, to everyone I teach and myself. I will email each person who donates after one of the classes I teach, about how the class went, which shelter they helped me teach at, and a pose that I dedicated my intention toward in gratitude to them. If you have anything you want me to say concerning growth during a class, I can say at least a part of that at some point either before, during, or after my classes as well. I want to bring yoga to people who could use it, as a group project with people like you, reading this right now.
Help me do this. Donate what you can. If you
can donate more than $8, gorgeous! Go
for it, stardust. If you can’t
donate but love what I’m trying to do, share this story! Send it to a yoga and/or other
site/organization that deals with the stuff I went through in any way, share it
on your facebook page (or reddit/wherever you lurk on the interwebz :-) ), share it via
e-mail with people you know and care about, share it with people struggling
with anything I went through. We can make
the world a better place together.
If I don’t raise enough money soon, I
can take the training whenever. I just
want to donate my time and physical and emotional energy to helping people help
themselves through yoga at some point in my life, and before I start law school
is a great time to get the 200 hours of training under my belt and get started.
If you have any questions about
anything I went through, or just wanna know more, please don’t hesitate to
e-mail me or message me about it. When
one person goes through trauma, we are all affected. I shared this story because it is, in this
sense, our story. Not only am I not
alone: everyone who is alive, I strongly believe, is impacted in some way by
the things everyone goes through. When we
share, we release the power of shame and guilt, anger and sadness. We pool our strength and rise, strong like
mountains. We look forward. We salute our inner lights. Together.
Loads of love and Namaste!
Akinyi
P.s. For more on what PTSD is, here’s one of many handy
sites with a load of info on it: http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/PTSD-overview/basics/index.asp
P.p.s. For more on how yoga can help survivors of trauma,
here’s a site I love that explains what yoga looks like when you work with
survivors of trauma: http://thebreathenetwork.org/the-journey-to-heal-understanding-trauma-sensitive-yoga
P.p.p.s. Yoga rocks.
If you gots any questions on how to start up your own practice, send ‘em
my way. I can literally geek out for
hours about it with you, I promise. Feelin’
saucy after reading this and wanna do your own sun salutation? Here’s a step-by-step guide: http://yoga.about.com/od/yogasequences/ss/sunsalutesteps.htm
P.p.p.p.s. Here is a great explanation of emotional eating: http://www.medicinenet.com/emotional_eating/article.htm
