Three years ago, I came home from work one day to discover that my life was about to change forever. My husband of six years informed me that he wanted a divorce. I had thought we were planning for children; clearly we had different goals for our marriage! I was completely stripped of everything I had known for seven years. The reality of divorce left me feeling vulnerable and terrified, and I had no idea how I was going to create a new life for myself. If I am really honest about it, at one point I had no desire to even begin picking up those pieces. We were married when I was 23 years-old; most of my adult life had been as a wife, so finding my way on my own seemed impossible. The strong, confident, independent woman I had always known was gone; she just up and left right behind him.

This all happened about four months before my 30th birthday. I was living in a city 3500 km from my closest family member, and I was pretty much unemployed. Things looked grim to say the least! There was just so much to do, and so much pain to feel. It turns out I was really great at the logistical side of divorce: I negotiated my divorce settlement without a lawyer, I found a job, I found a new apartment, and I took a holiday. The part where you just get down to business was the easy part—if divorce has an easy part!

It was that whole other side that I was not managing very well; the part where I couldn’t stop crying for at least two hours a day and in really inappropriate situations. I couldn’t grocery shop because the cereal aisle made me weep – it was completely irrational. Driving was incredibly dangerous—the tears blurred my vision. I resorted to wearing really big sunglasses everywhere I went, to hide the tears that just would not stop. Even my dog seemed a little depressed because living with me was no longer a rewarding experience!

Clearly it was time to fix this crying—but how? The thing about any life crisis is that they all come with a metric ton of unsolicited advice: read self-help books, get a massage, forget about him, start dating, go on a vacation, and see a counselor. It just keeps coming. People are merciless about it—they have no idea how much it hurts to hear that if you would just read this one last book, all the pain would go away. I tried it all. I spent a fortune in counseling, which offered some perspective but was not a fix-all. The self-help books left me feeling like a recluse. My vacation was satisfying in the sense that I got away from the daily reminders of my old life, but also lonely in the sense that I had never been on a vacation without him. None of it even began to touch the pain that could still knock me off my feet on a daily basis: the wound just seemed so incredibly deep—a giant gash that just kept oozing odd bodily fluids. My husband, the one who had promised me that he would always be by my side had left, walked out, and my ever-so-logical brain drew the conclusion that this must mean I contained a fatal flaw that caused him to want to be away from me forever. I drew the conclusion that I was damaged, never to be repaired again.

It was at this time that I decided I needed a new challenge—a distraction, or a routine that would shake off all of this rubble I was under. I am naturally a very high energy person…boisterous if you will. For years, friends have recommended that I try yoga to find peace and balance in my life. I always shrugged this suggestion away. How could I even stay quiet that long? I have never been a physically flexible person. Since I was already completely out of my “usual self” I decided that my challenge would be yoga. Yoga is supposed to be good for you, right? I thought to myself. That’s what all the Hollywood stars say anyway: “Yoga is good.” I needed “good”; a whole lot of it.

I enrolled in a beginner yoga class just a block from my house—a place I had walked past at least a hundred times before. My instructor was a tiny, flexible, ball of fire, and she scared the life out of me. Each and every Sunday I attended my class with my seven classmates and I began to learn about yoga. I was so focused on the poses that I learned little about the history or purpose of yoga—my mind was fully engaged in making my body contort in a myriad of ways and keeping up well enough to not draw too much attention to myself. Sure, the pain was still there, but for 90 minutes every Sunday afternoon I got to remind myself that I was strong, and this is where the true power of yoga resided.

At the beginning of every yoga class, we were asked to set an intention for that class and to focus on that one intention for the full 90 minutes. According to Buddhist teachings, an “intention” is based on understanding what matters most to you and making a commitment to align your worldly actions with your inner values. Essentially, you don’t just set an intention and walk away from it; you live by it each and every day in everything you do. Our instructor suggested that we focus on breath, strength, concentration…pretty much any intention you could imagine. I began setting my intentions to match the emotional struggle I was in. When I felt weak, I would set my intention to practice being and feeling strong. When I was feeling abandoned, I would intend to focus on my body’s unique ability to find support in every pose. When I was feeling overwhelmed, I set my intention on just breathing and listening to that breath for 90 minutes. My most powerful intention was that of compassion, to be compassionate to myself and offer myself the care and love that someone in a lot of pain really needed.

This idea of intention was so incredibly foreign to me. I realized that I had been living 95% of my life in the past or the future and very little in the present. I was so concerned about where my life might head and what I had lost; I had forgotten to focus on me, right here and now. The months went by, my practice continued, and yoga became a necessary part of my weekly routine. I needed to take the time to slow everything down and remind myself that I was strong, independent, and flexible. When I stood on my mat each and every week, I was blessed with the gift that my ex-husband had taken from me that Friday night: peace. I had finally found the peace that my heart needed to release me from all that pain and let me live. No more worries about what could have or should have been; only the reassuring gift that in this moment I had…me.

I thought yoga was going to make me physically flexible; what I didn’t realize was that it made me emotionally flexible at the same time. Three years later, I still maintain a fairly dedicated yoga practice, faithfully spending at least three 90-minute sessions a week on my mat. I am grateful that I don’t have to spend most classes fighting back emotional tears, and I’m even more grateful for the regular reminder of just how far I have come. I have built a new life on the foundation and strength that yoga helped me rediscover—a life that was a distant vision three short years ago. Namaste.

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