From the Yoga Mat Into Life...

I first tried yoga in 1998 after watching Madonna discuss her yoga practice with Oprah while promoting her awesome album, Ray of Light. I was intrigued, so I bought a couple of VHS tapes of yoga routines and tried it. I struggled at first but felt drawn back to the routines time and again. 

 At first I only practiced once a week. Then I added a second yoga practice each week. Before long, I started looking forward to yoga days because I loved the way I felt after I finished. Today I mostly practice routines on Do Yoga with Me, but I still own a DVD of the first yoga routine that hooked me, Ali McGraw: Mind &Body, which remains one of my all-time favorite routines.

 Eventually, yoga became my primary form of exercise. 

 I still love the way I feel when I finish a yoga routine and have grown to enjoy the practice itself - well, at least most days. I love it when I push past that last edge to move into a pose I've never been able to do.

 As much as I enjoy dancing and walking, they don't keep me engaged the way yoga does. In fact, yoga seems to help me with these other forms of exercise as well as with golf, bowling, and hiking.

 Yoga helps me relax and stay focused. It centers me when I feel like the world around me is chaotic.

 My writing has improved alongside my yoga practice in ways I never anticipated. It's helped me be more focused, pay better attention, and to notice things in ways I didn't before. I've learned to invite flexibility and strength into my writing in ways that help me consider things in ways I didn't before.

 My relationships have benefited from my yoga routine because I come to them calmer and more in touch with my emotions. 

 Sometimes when I come to the mat with stress, anger, sadness, or some other negative emotion, my body feels stiffer and the poses are harder to move through. At these times, if I focus on my breath, my body finds forgiveness for myself allowing me to fully embrace the moment but come away from the mat feeling less distressed. 

 I find that as I focus on the poses and my breath, everything in the world fades into the background for me to pick back up when I'm finished. Often when I pick it back up, it's with better clarity. 

 All of that has allowed me to come to my relationships, my work, and my life with a more open heart and mind.

 Yoga isn't magic, yet the flexibility, strength, and balance it brings extends beyond the mat into life and living.

T. L. Cooper is an author and poet whose work aims to empower and inspire through an exploration of the human condition. Her poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared online, in books, and in magazines. Her published books include a collection of short stories, Soaring Betrayal, her Silhouette Poetry Series, and a novel, All She Ever Wanted. She grew up on a farm in Tollesboro, Kentucky. She currently lives in Albany, Oregon with her husband and three cats.

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