So to sum up my musings about how yoga helped me. I wrote about mantra and it's power to protect the mind from negativity. When you grow up in a traumatic world, you view the world as broken, problematic, inferior. Because that's how you view yourself. With meditation, mantra, asana and story, we can start to see that negative ego mind, and realize that it is not me. As Christ is reborn into the new life of the self, or as in the Maha Mritunjaya mantra "the gourd is released from the vine," you can see your true self in the light of love, self-love and acceptance, and you can catch the ego mind acting up with negativity, hatred, fear, worry. I cut away any of those ideas as they arise and I stay present and grounded with breathing, physical sensation and awareness. There is no longer fear and worry, just presence of eternal. This relieves all those horrible feelings. I replace it with love, no matter what. I have great love for everything that happens. It's just the world. It's like what poet Maria Ranier Rilke  said, "perhaps everything dark is just something wanting love." I met a woman in Mexico City who told me this dream once, and I think it sums up the need to love even the dark and love ourselves, life situations and the world just the way it is and keep it whole. She said there was a priest standing on a hill, and all the demons came crawling up to be saved from him. But he refused to save them. But an eagle came and all the demons came into him, and the eagle flew up into the sky and the demons became his breath which he freed into the sky. I think this is saying how important self-love is. Martin Luther King was big on self love. Erich Fromm in his book The Art of Loving talks about the need for self-love, and that love is something humans are evolving into and learning. So much of our world's trouble come from this terrible self-loathing, that religions of old have pressed onto us with guilt, shame, fear and hatred of the self and body and negating any power. Yoga has helped me love myself, love all that is. St. John of the Cross said, "Where there is no love I will put love and then there will be love." So in every situation, every thought, I see my mind's thoughts. I am aware if if it's putting out negative or loving thoughts, and always change it now to the loving. Becuase I tell kids and people alike that you create your universe. It's really true. You better think postive as if your life depended on it! And it does! I hate the feeling when I'm angry or worried. I don't want to feel that way. It's not aligned with the divine; it's stuck in ego that way. I love my life. I love all that has happened to me. I love all the stress and difficulty that comes my way because it's part of the awe of life. I don't resist it anymore. I'm best friends with it.This I will teach to children. I will be resuming after school yoga classes at Creekside Elementary in Boulder at the end of September. I will be calling it Mythic Yoga and teaching 4th and 5th graders. It's time to teach some yoga philosophy and these tools to these kids. I wish I had all this when I was little. It would have made all the difference. But alas, then I wouldn't be here now! Love and peace,Sydney Solis