(This was taken before a tennis tournament in 2002.  That’s me on the far right)

I have always been athletic.  I played soccer, tennis, basketball and softball through middle school and then cut down to only tennis and soccer in high school.  I was never *the best* at either of them, but I did play varsity tennis for three years.  Through all of these activities I developed knee problems.  Not any injury in particular, but just an annoying soreness that would not go away.

I went to physical therapy.  I had an MRI, and other tests.  They never found anything really wrong.  The conclusion was always that my hamstrings, as well as other leg muscles and tendons, were tight so that was causing increased tension on my knee cap and in the knee area.

I was given exercises to do.  As a typical high school kid, I was very inconsistent about doing those exercises.  In a span of about five years, I went to three different physical therapists.  Each of them reinforced the same thing: you need to keep up on the exercises at home.  I never did that for more than a few weeks.  I knew I had poor flexibility and tight muscles, but I always just chalked it up to the fact that I am 5’10” and I have long legs.  I was convinced I couldn’t change it.  I knew that I would never be able to touch my toes, and that was just how it was gonna be.

I went to college.  Stress happened, and I got lazy.  I wasn’t nearly as active – although I did teach tennis for a local recreation league a couple of summers.  Throughout my college years, the knee pain was still there – but not as much of a bother since I wasn’t really playing sports or doing anything very active.  I did take a few classes here and there at the campus rec center, but nothing on a regular basis.  Since I had flexibility issues, I was hesitant to take classes because I thought I would be “the one” in the class that couldn’t do the things that were asked and would look like a fool.

Fast forward a few years.  I just got married and have a wonderful, fun, job.  However, this job has lead to me sitting in a chair for numerous hours a day.  Great right?  Easy, lazy, job sitting in a chair?  Yeah I thought so too.  My body did not think so.  I started having back issues.  Again, nothing serious, just soreness and pain.  When I went to my annual physical, I told my doctor about the pain and expected to come out with a prescription for more physical therapy.  My doctor suggested yoga.  Really?  But my back hurts already, how am I going to be able to put myself in those positions? And not to mention, my inability to touch my toes – I will definitely look like a fool!  Well, I guess I could maybe give it a try.

So, hesitantly, I began my search for a yoga studio.  I had lots of questions:

How do I know what kind of yoga I should do?
Ashtanga, Vinyasa, Hot Yoga, Power Yoga, what the heck is the difference?
I know they say that classes are good for all skill levels…..but really?
Seriously, how would I ever be flexible enough to do this?

Coincidentally, a couple of weeks later I got an email from a local store.  They were partnering with a local gym to offer outdoor yoga classes once a week for the whole summer. Well, this sounds like a good start!  Then I checked the prices. Um, how much?  Really?  Oh boy, how am I going to convince my husband that I was going to spend this much money on yoga classes?!

Luckily, it didn’t take much convincing.  He agreed that I need to do something about the pain that my body is in and this might just be the thing that I need.  There was an option to pay class to class or sign up for the whole summer.  I signed up for the whole summer.  How could I skip out on a class that I had already payed for?  Sounds like pretty good motivation to me.

The first day of class I was nervous.  There were about 30 people there.  Luckily, everyone running the class was very nice and friendly.  My first class came and went.  I got excited.  Yes, I was quite sore afterwards….and the next day….and the next day.  But it was a good soreness.  It told me that my body was working on fixing the things that needed to be fixed.

I kept going to class, week after week.  I got used to the flow of class, and the different poses.  My instructor is fantastic.  She is very enthusiastic and fun.  Each class is very similar, but never exactly the same.  One of the things I like most about her style is that she always throws in random tidbits about why we are doing a pose, or what we are benefiting from by doing the pose.  One day she said something that hit a chord with me.  She explained how all of the muscles and tendons in your body are connected.  When there is a pain or soreness in one area, it is not just that area that needs to be worked, you need to work all surrounding areas as well.  Why didn’t anyone ever say this to me before? (or maybe they did and I just ignored them thinking I knew what I was doing.)

So now, after nine weeks of class, I am more flexible than I ever though I could be.  It is still hard, and I am still sore after class.   But guess what?  I can touch my toes.  Really touch my toes – sometimes even the floor.  I would guess that I gained 6-8 inches of flexibility.  I never ever though I would be close to able to do that.

One of the things that I love the most about yoga, is that every pose is different for every person.  Just because some poses come easily to you, doesn’t mean that all of them will.  Different people are strong and weak in different areas.  This realization really helped me stress out less about being in a class full of people.  I was no longer concerned about how I compared to the others.

Yoga has had a few other benefits as well.  It has made me more aware of my breathing.  This helps when I am stressed, especially when I am laying in bed trying to sleep.  I concentrate on my breath and it clears my head and calms me down.  Being able to touch my toes was something that I never thought I would be able to do.

Yoga has taught me a different way of thinking.  Through stretching and coming to class on a regular basis, I am now able to touch my toes.  Something that I never thought was a possibility.  That realization of the impossible becoming possible really helped me have a more positive attitude in other areas of my life.  I now have hope for things that I once thought were an impossibility.

- Kelly from Brownies and Zucchini

When I boarded a Nairobi-bound plane in August 2009, my mind was abuzz with excitement about my upcoming semester abroad. Ahead of me lay 4 demanding months of studying and working in the development sector of “Africa’s most dangerous city” (a moniker I would soon learn to be utterly false). I expected to find a lot during my stay in Nairobi: challenge, thrill, adventure, and knowledge. I did not, however, expect to find yoga. In fact, my yoga mat was one of the last things I pushed into my suitcase before zipping it shut. I was uncertain how my American yoga practice would fit into my Kenyan lifestyle. But true to form, yoga found me.

I hadn’t been in the country long before I discovered Africa Yoga Project (AYP), a Nairobi-based nonprofit started by American yoga teacher Paige Elenson. With help from Paige’s good friend Baron Baptiste, AYP uses the transformative power of yoga to change lives and strengthen disadvantaged communities in Kenya by teaching free classes in slums and training the most promising students to become teachers themselves.

I was instantly drawn to Paige’s warm and open spirit, and she invited me to attend a free AYP class taught by her Baptiste-trained Kenyan teachers. Not quite sure what to expect, I tied my mat onto my back and made the trek across town to the Sarakasi Dome, a performing-arts space in a rough-and-tumble part of town.

Two and a half hours later, I stumbled out onto the crowded and dusty sidewalk, still in awe of what I had experienced. It was the same power yoga that I practiced at home, just… better. More alive. More vital. The energy and spirit that reverberated around the room throughout class was palpable, and the sense of community and willingness to lend a helping hand to others was unlike anything I’d experienced in my 5 years of practice. It was yoga at its most elemental.

As I returned to class each week, I began to view the AYP studio as a place of refuge from the emotionally draining city in which I was living. Nairobi is sprawling, slum-filled metropolis characterized by wild contrasts: devastating poverty and tremendous wealth, easy laughter and saddening violence. Although I grew to love it, warts and all, each day in Nairobi was a special challenge. As a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian, I experienced the acute discomfort of sticking out like a sore thumb when walking its streets. Even after I became accustomed to the lack of anonymity, the constant scrutiny was often wearing. To many Kenyans, I was not a real person. I was a white oddity, an anomaly in a sea of black faces.

But AYP class was the only place in Nairobi where my skin color was insignificant.

Once I entered the yoga studio and lay my head on my mat alongside Kenyan yogis doing the same, I was no longer unique. Like everyone surrounding me, I was simply a student of yoga. As we breathed and flowed together as one, I truly understood yoga’s equalizing powers. The AYP community could not have been more welcoming and accepting of me, and to them I am eternally thankful.

For more information or to make a donation, visit africayogaproject.com.

- Anna from Blue Plate Special

Sometimes, I think being a normal-weight girl with an eating disorder is harder. No one can tell behind the smiles and eyes, just how much pain you’re actually in. I’ve had countless friends shrug off my struggle, dismiss me as an attention seeker, and my parents tell me that if I just stopped eating junk, I could lose weight. I’ve had people at my job make snide comments about dieting to me, and I’ve felt suffocated in conversations that triggered me. There were only two periods in my life when people were aware that my behaviors were supremely unhealthy. But those aside, no one thinks twice when I decline a dinner invitation, leave a restaurant early, or exclaim that “I absolutely HAVE to workout forever today.” The best is when my friends laugh as I say, “I’m never eating again” after a meal. Usually they think I’m just dramatic. They don’t know that I mean I really don’t ever want to touch another morsel of food again.

I can’t even say I remember what started this whole mess in the first place anymore. I just know I was in the fourth grade when I thought it was a fantastic idea to skip lunch. It wasn’t a particularly bad day, or anything. I just know my packed lunch was suddenly unappealing. And so it began…

Initially, my eating disorder was in fits and phases. A few months here & there, a year in middle school. In high school it reared its ugly head my sophomore year and stayed until I was a senior. I hoped I was done with it. However, in college, it came back with a vengeance, and became an unwelcome roommate for many years.

As I finished college, and had no direction as to what came next, my eating disorder just got worse. In college, I had used restriction and exercise as my two modes of control, however, once back in my parent’s house I began experimenting with diet pills, diuretics, and laxatives, and began down a road of bulimia.

The summer I turned 23, I was out to lunch with friends at our local Whole Foods. I had been following some crazy regimen consisting primarily of protein shakes and power bars, and decided that day to have a salad. When I felt compelled to purge after a SALAD, I knew I needed help. Without telling my family (who believed i needed to lose weight) I found myself an outpatient treatment team and got help until I moved for graduate school that fall.

I transitioned to a new city that fall (2008), and convinced myself I’d leave my eating disorder home. However, by January I was miserable. I had convinced myself I needed bariatric surgery (I was nowhere close to qualifying) and made an appointment for a consultation with a doctor. When my mom found out, it caused a whole lot of tension. I found myself a proper treatment team in my city the following week. After that, things seemed to start getting better! I was able to be behavior free for six full months and complete the first year of my masters!!!

Last September, I got busy, and my meal plan, self care, and any ability I had to put recovery as a priority fell to the wayside quickly as I began my internship, the next round of classes, and a rigorous job. With little time to complete my school work, I started to look for control in the only way I knew, and without ever really realizing it, bulimia was back. It quickly spiraled out of control, yet I refused to believe that. I refused to go to a residential program when urged to in January by my treatment team. It wasn’t until March, after a rock-bottom week, and realizing that I was losing all of my friends, that I knew it was time to do something.

With the support of my team, my mom and my friends from back home, I took six weeks off of school and started a day treatment program. I didn’t like it, or get along with the director, so I left and decided to try and finish the school year. As soon as classes ended, I found a new program, at night, that I  clicked with instantly.

Despite my strong connection and gratitude for this program, my anxiety was still soaring. I didn’t know how to manage the feelings arising from treatment, or days without my eating disorder. I felt lost, alone and confused. I had always done yoga but never with any consistency. One night at treatment, I stood in the hallway talking to one of the caseworkers, tears streaming down my face. It had been a particularly rough night, and I felt like things would never get better. I had been using skills all evening but nothing could alleviate my feelings. She asked me if I needed to go to the emergency room. I shook my head violently no. That was the worst idea ever. Then, she suggested yoga.  I didn’t think yoga could do anything for me, but I sure as hell didn’t want to be hospitalized, so I nodded through the sobs.

Slowly, as I pedaled my feet in downward dog, I felt things shift and my tears start to slow down. As I did vinyasa after vinyasa, focusing on the poses I always loved the most (pigeon, tree, wheel, & hip openers), my breathing returned to normal and I found silence in the chaos.

The next day, Ashley blogged, challenging us all to 30 days of yoga, and I decided to take her up on the offer. Still slightly skeptical, I figured I had nothing to lose but bulimia and that wouldn’t be half bad. I started small: ten minutes a day, in my living room or on my porch. I was hesitant, and often my inner critic got the best of me and I was distracted, frustrated and hesitant. However, I was also excited. I remembered that I had enjoyed hot yoga a few years back when I lived at home, and began to research studios in my area. I found one, and excitedly called my treatment team to ask if i had medical clearance to practice in the 100 degree heat.

I got bloodwork & vital signs done and my doctor made a deal with me- I could go, but only if I was completely compliant for 24 hours before hand. If I was to use any behavior, I wouldn’t be able to go. It was a goal, and something I COULD achieve. For the first time in months I found myself having behavior free days, and skipping off to yoga. Knowing that I had EARNED the privilege of classes made it that much sweeter. I did crow for the first time, and was overjoyed. I was behavior free at work so that I could make the 6:30pm sunday class. I looked forward to yoga.

I wish I could say that I found yoga and suddenly was bulimia free. If only! Its still very much a work in progress. But yoga has become vital to my treatment. It was the first thing that broke through my wall, gave me something to work for that was exciting and positive. Its helped me significantly reduce certain behaviors. Its become my go to in program when groups get hard- all the case managers know that when I can’t calm down, that asking me to find my yoga playlist & a mat is the best way to help me get grounded. I’ve found a permanent space on my bedroom floor for a yoga mat, and spend the last ten minutes of most days on it.

There are so many things I want to be able to do on the mat- more twists and binds, and tons of balancing poses. I dream of getting myself into headstands and side crow. I know that the way to do this is consistency, and the way to be consistent, is through being healthy. I’m looking forward to the day that I can say that I held side crow, because I know that it will be about much more than yoga- it will be about my journey to healthy, too!

- Emily (also posted here)