My introduction to yoga was accidental. Quite literally in some ways. It was 2007 and I had recently been in a car accident. Thankfully I walked away but with me came two newly slipped/herniated discs in my lower lumbar spine. Super fun. I was in constant pain, barely sleeping and hardly functioning, and the nightmares every night only made everything worse. Prior to knowing about my back, the doctor I was seeing kindly treated each of my complaints with a prescription. For pain, here’s some Darvocet. For muscle tension, take a Flexeril and Soma. Nightmares at night? You’re experiencing stress and anxiety, take Xanax and Ativan. And those are just the ones I remember. By the end of the day, as someone who barely even drank, I was on quite the cocktail of drugs. And as the days passed and the pain increased, so did my tolerance, requiring me to up my dosages regularly.

Enter pivotal moment. My husband at the time, sat me down one night after dinner and said “I am worried about you.” He shared with me his fear that if I didn’t find another way to handle my pain that we would be staring down the barrel of a completely different problem very soon. And he was absolutely right. It was the closest I came to truly ever being dependent on something. And as a child with one addict parent, that was enough to spark a change. You see, part of the problem with constant pain is this fear that nothing will help, that it will never get better. And now, many years later, I can say with utmost certainty that construct applies to both physical and emotional pain. And at the same time, is completely false.

I made an appointment with my internal medicine doctor and she suggested I look into some natural supplements and, wait for it…. yoga. At first, the idea of exercising and moving my pain ridden bones sounded ludicrous. “Umm, did you perhaps not hear me? I am in constant, stabbing, debilitating pain. Why would I go use my body more?!” But alas, I was open to anything. So yoga hunting I went and immediately I found a new, adorable little studio close to home called Yoga Blend. From the moment I walked in I fell in love with the vibe and over the next several months it became my home in more ways than one. I walked in to heal my body and yoga ended up opening up my heart.

Fast forward to today,  I have a great workout regime, absolutely love my gym (and my gym family!), and feel fabulous. I also haven’t taken a yoga class in 4 years during which I’ve gone through a divorce, career changes, financial instability, and tons of pain and fear and guilt and shame and worry and all of those other very human feelings that accompany these life changes. My focus has switched more to strength training and boxing. Ironic, isn’t it? That in symbolically fighting for my life I learned to actually just fight.

Such interesting parallels in life, right? We often consider these to be coincidences and not connected but having been through what I have, we may very well be fooling ourselves. Everything is connected. From the micro level of particles and atoms to people and all the way up to the macro systems of our world. Like the butterfly effect, this idea that there is sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a “deterministic nonlinear system” can result in larger differences in a later state. For example, a tornado’s formation being originated by the flapping of a butterfly’s wings weeks earlier. Energy will beget energy. We are all interlinked.

Today I walked back into yoga at Warrior & Co Yoga (amazing little studio!), quite fitting right? I don’t know why I had waited so long, and in some ways, if I’m being honest with you (and myself) I’ve probably avoided it for the connections it held to my past life. Because reflection often hurts. And perhaps my brain needed to authentically fight to stay strong. Whatever the reason, I believe what I needed in the moment was placed in front of me. Moving through a flow routine though, as my muscles were shaking and sweat was dripping down my body, my body remembered, and I pushed myself through the pain and realized that whether I’m boxing or in a vinyasa flow, I’m still me. An I am strong – I always have been. And my strength isn’t dependent on what I do but on who I am. That will move with me no matter what studio (or world) I walk into.

There is a purpose in the pain and the difficult. If it were easy then it wouldn’t be meaningful. Sometimes out of the pain comes the most pleasant (and surprising) of discoveries, if you’re ready to see them. Over these past several years I have learned to trust my gut and mostly to be present, which has in itself showered me with a plethora of gifts. The biggest difference in that hot room today wasn’t that I am now single, broken in some ways, older, and workout differently – but the biggest and most impactful change was that I was THERE. I was present the entire time, in my body, and in my heart (even in savasana!) And for that, I am grateful.