Meet @selenagarefinoyoga sharing her #yogasavedmylife with us. These are her words 💚

"My world has ended many times & been remade with yoga the only constant. I’m supposed to tell you about how yoga saved my life. I don’t know where to begin

So where do I start? Do I start with how yoga pulled me from my days as a homeless, 8th grade drop-out abusing drugs? Or do I tell you about how yoga gave me a home in my body when I was modeling in NYC at 17 & being taught to loath myself & my imperfections?

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Should I begin with how my practice kept me from falling apart when I was living in the African bush caring for dying? Or perhaps it saved my life more profoundly when it gave me a home inside myself once again in my own temple of flesh & bone after 2 major abdominal surgeries that literally gutted me

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Maybe the place to begin is how my practice gave me steadiness & kept me from falling into an irrevocable grief after I lost my spouse 4 weeks after we were married to severe brain trauma that left him violent & lost to me forever

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Yoga for me began as a physical practice but I found my way deeper into the heart of things over time & it has given me the capacity to shift, to become a master of intensity rather than a slave to circumstance. It has given me the sweetest of resilience

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I am bordered but not hard. Yoga has empowered me to navigate every area of my life with grace. Critically it has given me options for my behavior. I am less subject to the stimulus & reaction cycles of life. I am constantly cultivating responsiveness & move away from reactivity. That is the gift of a dedicated life of practice

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We are all working out traumas, bad habits, habitual emotional tendencies, but yoga provides us the opportunity to still the lake of our consciousness so we can peer in be given the opportunity to unravel our deepest held unresolved emotional material. That frees us up to experience more joy, to love better, & to serve with open hands

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This is how yoga has saved me. It has given me the tender resolve to not only withstand innumerable tragedy, but to rise strong & in love. It can do the same for you 💚

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📸#1 @jimmyhwheeler .

📸#2 @petelongworth