All of us have our “thing.”  Maybe yours is depression, perfectionism, control, the need to please, anger, resentment, insecurity, or feeling of inadequacy. Mine has always been anxiety.   It doesn’t really matter what your “thing” is, left unmanaged it grabs a hold of your life in ways you never could have imagined. My desire to conquer anxiety is what led me on my quest of self-discovery.  Ironically, what I found is that true peace is not found in a fight, but rather in a surrender.  

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Anxiety has been with me ever since I can remember. To some extent you could say I was born with it.  Certainly, you can look back at the multitude of traumas my childhood provided and justify the feeling of fear and dread I carried.  However, the truth is we don’t always need a good reason to be the way we are; sometimes that’s just how it is. As a kid, my anxiety manifested in obsessive compulsive behaviors (OCD).  I would wash my hands until they bled, count obsessively in my head, and navigate a plethora of behaviors only I understood. As a teenager I realized those behaviors couldn’t go on. So, I masked the anxiety with a wide range of rebellious activities. If I'm honest, I am amazed I made it out of this period.  However, the true damage anxiety instilled in my life didn’t come until my adulthood.

I lived every moment in fear and weighed every decision against the worst case scenario. Looking back, I don’t think the fear itself would have been enough for me to make a change. No, it was the fact that anxiety was robbing me of truly experiencing my life, or really enjoying the small moments. Most importantly it was damaging the relationships I cared the most about.  Standing paralyzed on the sideline watching my life pass me by was finally enough for me to seek a new path.

For years I would pray that bad things wouldn’t happen. One day I changed that prayer and started searching to find peace in whatever came --

that has made all the difference. My journey has not been perfect.  It has been sloppy and chaotic. I have failed just as many times as I have succeeded.  Yet each time I have chosen to live the principles I will teach you, each time I have stopped and sat inside myself, I have made my way back to light and found peace.    

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I remember taking my first yoga class at 18 years old. It was a few months after my dad had taken his life with a heroin overdose.  Somewhere between down dog and pigeon, emotions started welling up inside me and I spent the entire time in savasana with tears flowing down my face.  I left that day feeling so light with a spark of an idea inside my mind. I could see that somehow our bodies can release our emotions and this is intricately linked to healing.  I quickly certified in yoga and started teaching at local gyms. I then decided to go after a Bachelor's degree in Psychology to learn all I could about the mind and emotions. The more time I spent in my body, however, the more convinced I became that true healing needed to involve all parts, body, mind, and soul together.  With this realization, I set off to learn everything I could about the physical body and received a Doctorate degree in physical therapy. Shortly after