I have been asked to write a story about how yoga has influenced my life. Personal story is so important to me. It is the yoga. We are able to self reflect and see our “story” our history, that we have created and are identifying with, rather than the true Self.My older sister, Nancy, who became a Hare Krishna devotee when I was in the 8th grade way back in 1980, always told me that devotees pray for difficulty, because that’s when you are always thinking about God. You don’t think too much about him when you are having fun, but you are always praying “Help me God!” when things go wrong.So it is with my yoga. It has always been with me because of life’s curves and suffering. Mythologist Joseph Campbell always said that the obstacle is the path. Indeed it has been for me. I am so grateful for all my suffering, because since an early age it turned me deeply inward and toward the spirit. Just as in the Hindu myth of Dhruva, he sets out to find Vishnu because he was cheated out of his kingdom, suffering and trouble is a good friend to have.In my e-courses I teach Mythic Yoga, which connects one to his or her personal story, and explores that story that is in the body. So many people have a lot of stuff come up in these courses, even though the first two are about teaching yoga to children through story. However, we are always exploring our personal story through our dreams, experiences, etc. There is a certain vulnerability that comes from telling your personal story, but also a release. I have been heard and witnessed. My story and life has value. And for another person to hear and listen is a gift, for they too make connections and see themselves in your story and are able to say with safety, “I undestand. Let me tell you my story.So may this be an inspiration to you. Share your story. That is the yoga. I grew up always knowing my father was a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp. He was Dutch, and Indonesia, where he was born in 1933, used to be a Dutch colony.As children we heard all his stories of the jungles of Java, as well as the horrors of the camp. My father had terrible migraine headaches all his life. I felt the need to take care of and protect my father, who also was bullied by my schizophrenic mother. The big folk lore of our family was my father’s death experience in the camp. He had amoebic dysentary and beri beri, saw himself outside his body, but his late grandmother he had a vision of told him to go back. He returned to his body in the camp and was miraculously healed.I was always fascinated by this story. There is no death, my father always said. I knew that by reading all the yoga books he had, there would be no death. And most of all there would be an escape from this new concentration camp, our home.My mother had severe mental illness. She was creative and sweet one minute, writing poetry and dancing to Sony and Cher, but the next she’d be screaming at you, terrorizing you. She’d come in the middle of the night to your bedroom threatening to cut all your hair off becuase we dared to trim the matted hair off our dog. She dressed in rags and never combed her hair. Our house was squalid, as it was never cleaned and my mother scoured garage sales and other people’s garbage cans for things. The house was packed to the gills with junk and disorganized. It was so filthy that when my mother screamed at us to clean the kitchen floors, we used a putty knife to scrape the black goo off that came up in curls. Needless to say the local kids teased us and I felt great shame and rage, which I repressed. I retreated into a world of silence and stories and my father’s books on yoga and myths. There was a silence there, a hope, a guide. I could meditate and find peace and I would pray for help. I was in tune with Jesus too, because not only because I was baptized Catholic and went to Episcopal Church, but my father gave me a new age version of the book to read about Jesus called the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, which was written by Levi who read the Akashic Records. So a yogic Jesus was also very important to me. You were always on high alert for terror from my mother, and I always felt ungrounded, there was no place safe in our house to be yourself, and I was not allowed to be me, for I cared for my father, and I was careful not to cause trouble like my sisters. That terror carried over into my adult life. Extreme negative thinking drove me to destructive behaviors. I was so ungrounded that I skipped around life chaoticly, dropping out of things, talking a mile a minute. I was definitley outside my body, outside of reality. Not wanting to be here and now because that was never safe. Even though my sister became the Krishna devotee and talked non-stop about Krishna and things I didn’t understand, that didn’t do a lot of good. What did was my own meditation and my own dealings with suffering. I guess it’s just time and experience. Becoming aware of things, my thoughts, my life, who I thought I was.I had two bouts of suicidal depression when I was 19 and 21 and was hospitalized. Each time I bottomed out, I came to that quiet inner space. Even though the world continues on with suffering and happiness, suffering and happiness, I was still there and present. I had felt it all, and afterwards I was able to counsel people in this. Difficulty happens, but it passes, I’d tell them. Hold to the center, meditate. The difficulty is a gift. It helped you find the center. More tomorrow!Love and Peace,Sydney Solis