The winter months have always been hard for me. The extreme cold, the snow, the lack of sunlight, the lack of fresh air, and especially the holidays, reminding me that I have no family, take their toll on me. The winter of 2011-2012 was an especially difficult one, both emotionally and physically. In November, the person I loved told me he did not want to be in a relationship with me and suggested we take a long break from communicating. I spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, and my birthday alone -again. In January, I became sick with repeated sinus infections (on top of the one that I live with every day as a result of a mishap in the jaw surgery I had in 2006). In addition, my right Eustachian tube closed and would not open for months. I tried both traditional medicine approaches as well as holistic ones, but neither brought any relief. Something was very wrong and I didn’t know what to do about it. My body was also unraveling. I had torn my right groin practicing yoga nearly a year ago and sought the help of a deep tissue body worker to try to heal the muscle. However, this work not only did not help my problem, but caused a series of old and new injuries to appear in the same side of my body, culminating in a swollen, blown-up knee. I was beside myself. I couldn’t find a single positive though to grasp onto. These were the months after I completed my yoga teacher training, and the tears and pain that were opened and released in those weeks continued to flow nearly every day. When would the sadness subside?

In April, with the thought of wanting to backpack a 500 mile trail in Colorado during the summer in the back of my head, I found myself on a physical therapist’s table, her metal tool scraping my injured knee. How would I be able to hike 20 mile days with a thirty-something pound backpack up and down mountains when I couldn’t even walk down the street without pain? I found my way to a chiropractor and he began to gently work on my injuries, my crooked spine, and my nervous system.

In June, the manager of my lab decided to quit her job and my boss took the opportunity to downsize the number of his employees due to constant budget issues. Instead of having a technician, he would only have one employee working for him, other than the graduate students and post doctorate fellows. He offered me the position of lab manager with the stipulation that I would have to work longer and stricter hours with virtually no compensation in pay. I had been having a difficult time in the lab for many, many years, and this “offer” felt more like a prison sentence to me than anything else. My body was giving me clear signals that I needed to leave. While it felt scary to lose the security of a paycheck and benefits, this loss also opened up the door for me to go on the backpacking trips that had been in my mind since I hiked the Appalachian Trail. If I took over the lab manager position in early July, I’m sure my boss would not appreciate me leaving the lab for 5 weeks, and I am certain that he would not let me take six months off to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. I had to leave. I needed to be in nature again. I needed to go where my heart was happy.

Despite the forest fires that were engulfing several areas of the state, despite not having trained in any capacity for hiking up and down mountains with a heavy pack, despite not having anyone to hike with to provide safety while hitchhiking or traversing the open summits with daily threats of lightening, I bought some food for my journey, a new stove that met the fire regulation requirements, a tent that I would test out for the PCT, packed up 8 resupply boxes, and flew out to Denver.

Over the course of the next five weeks, I would come to understand that hiking this trail wasn’t just something that I had wanted to do for the past three years. It was something that I needed to do. I needed to find out who I really was again. I needed to re-set myself and find my inner strength. I needed to get myself out of a place of fear. I was reminded that what you need is always out there, waiting for you. I was reminded that when you stay true to yourself and your purpose, and step through the struggles in your path, you will set yourself free. I was reminded to believe in the goodness of people. And I was reminded to keep my heart open and trust.

The following entries are some of my stories from my time on the Colorado Trail.

I had the opportunity to take a mentorship this past January and February with the yoga teacher whose classes I have learned the most from, alongside 9 other women. We met on four Saturdays for 5 hours each. Most of us were hoping to learn some of the incredible assists that Georgia gives, as well as what goes into the designs of her creative and very intentional classes. On the first (very cold) morning that we met, Georgia lead us through the primary series Ashtanga class, which was how she began her own yoga practice (and why she has such an an amazing knowledge of alignment). It was my first experience with Ashtanga yoga- a very strict, disciplined, and challenging style. While I am thankful for the variety of postures and flows that I receive from the classes that I take, I can see the benefits of incorporating a set routine to practice challenging poses and transitions more frequently. After taking some time to write our thoughts on the class, we gathered for introductions, and were then split into two groups. Georgia informed us that each person in the first group would be teaching a 3 pose sequence (based on something inspired by the Ashtanga class we just took), and the people in the second group would be given a pose to cue and assist. Not expecting to have to get up and teach one another (at least not so soon), feelings of nervousness and uneasiness pervaded the air. Having to teach or adjust other teachers or practioners who have more experience than I do is uncomfortable enough, but, as I was reminded, cuing a pose in the middle of a class is an even more ungrounding experience for me. I left the day feeling awful about how I presented myself and kept thinking that everyone else must be wondering how I could possibly be teaching. It seemed like many of us were feeling similarly because instead of forming bonds with each other, I sensed an even greater degree of separation among us than before this first session together.

In the three weeks before our next meeting, Georgia assigned us to watch Brene Brown’s TED talk on vulnerability and write a response on how the ideas she puts forth in the video might inspire our practice and/ or teaching. The following Saturday, we met again, easing into the morning with meditation, and then taking a more typical “Georgia-style” class. We knew that we would have to stand in front of everyone and teach to the group again later in the morning, but for now, we were safe, alone on our mats, and in our comfort zones. We wrote our thoughts on our experience of the class, and then gathered together to discuss our responses to Brene Brown’s talk. I found the different responses to be interesting and thought-provoking, and the topic of our discussion- that happy, fulfilled people allow themselves to be vulnerable, seen fully in all of their imperfections, and live with a whole, open heart- allowed us to connect with each other on a much deeper level than when we had simply introduced ourselves and stated why we were here. We revealed meaningful things about our lives, talked about our insecurities, and shared places in our lives where we have a hard time being vulnerable. We started to relax and open ourselves to one another, and by the time we left the studio, I think most of us were filled with inspiration and gratitude. (And Georgia had changed our teaching assignments to take off some of the pressure that we were feeling the first day!).

By the third meeting (a week later), we were starting to feel more comfortable with each other, and concentrated on practicing assists on one another in various poses. Assisting requires a good eye and intuition, in addition to knowledge of correct alignment, as well as a comfort level in firmly touching another person. It is a skill that requires a lot of practice. (More than anything, I was reminded of how difficult teaching yoga is on that first day that we met. A good teacher comes up with new inspiring classes each time, has to practice the flow on her own, memorize it, be able to change it to adapt to the students needs on that particular day, be able to cue the poses well, be able to demonstrate the poses well, be able to mirror the students (cuing lefts and rights without mirroring is challenging enough!), observe the students, walk around and adjust their poses, find good music and make playlists, find good readings for the end of class, know the Sanskrit terms for the poses, and on and on!).

In our final meeting together, on a day that we were moved from one space to another in the studio because it had been overbooked, we practiced together and then (in a small closet-kind of room in the back of the studio), we had a discussion on ahimsa (non-harming). Many of us are very good at treating others with kindness, but have a more difficult time treating ourselves with kindness and compassion, especially in a world where we are constantly being bombarded with messages that we are not good enough the way we are. In talking about ways that we could practice ahimsa, we were reminded that we can not actually be kind to others without first being kind to ourselves. We need to learn to be honest with ourselves about what we need and how we can best care for ourselves, and then express those needs in an honest and compassionate way to those who we interact with. After our discussion, we moved back into the room where we first gathered nearly two months ago to teach and assist each other for one final time in a series of poses that we were inspired to deliver in the moment. Half of us were assigned to assist while the others practiced and rotated with one person teaching, and then we switched roles. Those of us who began with assisting, at first rather sparingly and timidly, adjusted a few of the poses that were being offered by the teacher. But as Georgia came to the front of the room to show us what she would do on the person teaching, we realized that we can have our hands on our student most of the time- not simply to help them align themselves in certain postures, but to offer them love and give them massages in times they were not moving. Our focus quickly began to shift into taking care of each other, rather than worrying about what we should be doing- or if what we were doing was “right”. Although most of us still felt very nervous standing on the teacher’s mat (all attention singularly focused on this person with great expectation- a ripe place for insecurities to loom), the feeling of love and support in the room helped to ease the feeling of pressure. By the end of our collective class, we enjoyed restorative, relaxing postures, and received caring massages from the person assisting. The final woman to teach talked us through two long restful poses. The first was side bends over a bolster. I was taken such good care of by a woman who, many times throughout the mentorship, expressed her wish to be softer around her students and her own children. And yet, in the few minutes that she paired with me, I experienced more nurturing from her than almost anyone in my life. She didn’t need to find any softness- it was clearly already fully there. When it was time to shift to a second pose over a folded blanket, Georgia wanted us to switch roles so the assister could experience what we were just given. She wanted everyone to get an equal opportunity to receive love. The woman who was working on me immediately looked at me and said, “Oh, Wendy. I’m so sorry. I really wanted to do this for you.” Those words, feeling, and intention in those few seconds meant more than I can possibly express. She knew that I was not loved and nurtured as a child (or even an adult), and had received very few opportunities to be taken care of like that. I wanted her to continue attending to me as much as she wanted to provide the care (which was a feeling that even surprised me) , but we switched roles as we were told, and I tried to take the best care of her that I could instead.

We gathered together one last time for a few remaining words, most of which we were not able to express. We had just demonstrated that all you need to do to connect with someone is to show your love, to give love, and to be able to openly receive love. It’s so easy to close one’s heart in order to protect it from getting hurt, and it is so easy to focus on one’s insecurities and perceptions of lack. But in that hour, we demonstrated so clearly that we are all enough, exactly as we are, that we lack nothing, that we have so much kindness and goodness to give, that simply by staying by someone’s side is so healing, and that the power of touch is so much greater than any words we could ever say. We are all made of love. We all have it. We just need to strip away our fears, our insecurities, and our self-doubt and allow what is already there to shine through, extending ourselves to one another. Love, not knowledge, is the greatest gift you can give. It is always available and so amazingly powerful.

(P.S. Three days later, thanks to Georgia’s cues, I was finally able to do a pose that I had been trying with only marginal success for two years (galavasana)! I had written to Georgia about it being one of my challenge poses, and Georgia told me after I did it that that was her intention for me! Intentions really do work!!)

My birthday was last week. I invited several people over for a little gathering because I did not want to spend the day alone (yet again). Because it was a long weekend, many people were unable to attend, but the ones who came made it a very special day for me. I didn’t expect anyone to bring anything except for a little food or drink to share, so I was very surprised and touched at the cards that I received with such loving and meaningful words. And even more surprised that several people wanted to donate to my upcoming five-month long hike! The person that made the biggest donation was a woman who I have known for the least amount of time. I felt stunned and very grateful, and when I thanked her the following day, she reminded me that I was the one who had put the suggestion out there, and that she had given me the donation because she could.

These words, “because I can”, reminded me of something I did for a person I met on my thru-hike of the Colorado Trail. During the time of my hike, there was a mountain bike race from the same starting and ending points of my hike. It was a self-supported race, where the riders sleep as little as possible, and race throughout the night and day. On the tenth morning of my hike, after having hiked alone the entire time, a rider, carrying his bike over the train tracks, walked towards me as I stood on the trail, snacking on a power bar. It turned out that he had started the race two days earlier than the main pack and was doing the race on a time-trial basis. He told me that he was completely broke, and that he had run out of gas money on the way to the trailhead and had to have his brother wire him money from Japan. He said that he was going to try to make it to Durango with the $80 remaining in his pocket. I was completed astounded at what he was telling me. How can someone feed themselves for over 400 miles of effort, on $80? At first, I thought that he was going to ask me for money, but he did not. He ended up walking his bike alongside me for about 2 miles until we came to the trailhead where I would attempt to hitch a ride 11 miles into the town of Leadville for my next resupply. Along the way, we told each other stories about how we feel protected on the trail. When we strip away all of our comforts, and become our most vulnerable and exposed, we discover that our needs are somehow taken care of. He had debated for awhile, whether or not he should do this race with so little money available to him, but he kept receiving the message, “Go and you will be taken care of.” And so he went.

At the trailhead, when it was time to go our separate ways, I offered to give him $20 because I had the money. He declined, telling me that my company was more than enough. We exchanged contact info and he asked if I could take some of the extra food he was carrying, and mail it to him further ahead on the trail. I bought some extra snacks for him in town, wrote him an encouraging postcard, and mailed off the package (although he did not end up picking it up).

We didn’t connect again until I was near the end of my hike. He finally told me why he had no money and I also learned that his 40th birthday was coming up, and that he would be spending it alone. So, upon arriving home, I bought him a (hopefully inspiring) Pema Chodron book, made him several CDs of some of my favorite music, wrote him 2 birthday cards with uplifting quotes, re-sent him the package of food that had been sent back to me, and wrote him a check for $100 so that he could enjoy his birthday and not worry about where he was going to get money to pay his next bills from.

Coming from a family that was always financially strapped, where the word “money” brought such fear to my father that he could not help me with any math homework that involved money, where my siblings and I had to start working jobs at age 11 to help pay my mother’s bills and pay for our own clothes, I have always had to rely solely on myself, knowing that if anything happened to me, I had no one to turn to. (My father has not communicated with me in over seven years, largely because of his irrational fear that I will ever need something from him…). Luckily, I learned to budget my earnings well. I almost never go out to eat, I don’t drink, and I don’t spend money on entertainment, which is what has allowed me over the course of many, many years, to be able to fund my long hikes. I knew at the time of my Colorado Trail hike that I would be losing my job and source of income soon, and that my PCT hike was going to cost a lot of money. My first instinct was (as always) to hold onto the money I have, knowing that I will be spending my savings extremely quickly, with no plan as to how I will earn my next dollars to pay my own bills. But I knew that at that moment, I had enough to share, and I wanted to help a person who was in need. Even though I knew that I might soon be in a position of needing help, at that moment, I understood that I was in a position to give help. I did it because I could.

And then, unexpectedly, when my birthday came around, the universe returned to me exactly what I gave to someone else by way of some amazingly loving people who I met by doing what I love. And so, I am learning that by simply relaxing and releasing my grip and fear around what I think is limited and lacking in my life, only then can I be open enough to receive what has always been around me in abundance.

Thank you so much to each person who has written me a card, offered me a hug, or given me a gift! It all means so much to me and I am very grateful!!

One day in middle school, we were all required to go to a makeshift area in the back of the locker rooms, bare our backs, and be examined for scoliosis, as mandated by the state. The entire process was uncomfortable for me, and during the exam, it was discovered that I was one of the people they were searching for. Being diagnosed with a spinal deformity made me feel even more embarrassed and ashamed of my body than I had already been feeling. In gym classes, I was always one of the very last people picked for teams. I had felt weak and unwanted for a long time, and this feeling had greatly increased at the new school I was attending after my family had moved. In the hallways, other students would whisper about me and make fun of the clothes I wore. Now, I was labeled as having a crooked spine, and had no one to tell me what this meant for my life. It only made me feel more ugly.

I don’t remember my diagnosis being brought up again until I had to have my physical exam for entrance to private high school and college. During one of these exams, an x-ray was taken of my back. In the dressing room, when I had a moment to myself, I opened up the envelope that contained the x-ray in case the doctor wouldn’t allow me to view it. I was shocked and horrified to see the shape of my spine. It looked like the letter “S’ and nothing like the linear alignment that is shown on skeletons and in textbooks. I couldn’t understand how I could possibly be living with a spine that was shaped like that! The doctor told me that in a couple of years, I would need to have spinal surgery, in which a steel rod would be inserted in my back, replacing my vertebrae. I knew I wanted no part of this surgery. My mother had already taken so much of my spirit away from me, and now these doctors wanted to replace the bones that made up the core of my body with a metal rod that could not move. NO! I needed to get away from these people. I needed to get the required signatures and never return to this place again.

Throughout high school, I tried to run on both the cross -country and track teams, as we were required to participate in sports each trimester. I was more drawn to individual sports, in which I had only to rely on myself, and where I would not be a disappointment to anyone else. However, each trimester, I inevitably came down with a muscle, or a ligament, or a tendon injury in some part of my lower body, and spent the majority of the practices in the trainer’s room, icing my pain. I did enjoy running when I could, and ran cross-country during the first year of college, even managing to keep up with the top runners on the team during the day that we ran 10 miles in practice. After college, I tried, at various times, to keep in shape by running. However, no matter how slowly I started, I was never able to run for more than a few weeks at a time, still constantly plagued with injuries. It was frustrating to have to listen to other people’s stories about their completions of marathons and other events, while year after year, knowing full-well that I had both the desire and ability to accomplish the same achievements, could not because my body wasn’t allowing me the opportunity.

I eventually turned instead to cardio workouts in the gym and pool, and supplemented them with strength workouts with weights. I still often injured myself in various activities, tearing my Achilles tendon, for example, which caused pain for years even while doing nothing but sitting! I tried several forms of treatment for this injury, eventually undergoing the entire ten sessions of ‘rolfing’ – a series of deep tissue bodywork sessions in which the fascia of the body is shifted to better align the muscles and bones of the body. A couple of years later, I managed to hike the entire Appalachian trail, in part, I believe, because of that connective tissue work. After suffering the effects of hiking for over 2,000 miles up and down mountains with a backpack that was too heavy, for 10 months too long, I finally relented to attending my first yoga class. I loved it and immediately incorporated the three noon-time classes a week that were offered at my gym into my schedule.

Six months into my yoga practice, I tore a muscle in my outer right upper arm. I didn’t realize where I had sustained this injury from for quite awhile. I thought maybe it was from shoveling all that snow that fell in the winter of 2011. It persisted for several months. Soon after, I tore one of my right groin muscles. Again, I did not know what had caused this tear, and even though I could barely rise up into a Warrior I posture without great pain, I was not willing to give up my couple of hours of yoga classes a week, because I loved it too much. So, I continued to muscle my way through the postures, fighting through the pain, and relying on my healthy muscles to carry the extra burden. It was extremely frustrating to not even be able to do the most healthy and gentle form of exercise without getting injured!

As I began a more regular yoga practice at a studio, and went through teacher training, my injuries at times showed signs of healing, but would inevitably start speaking to me again (particularly the groin injury). Other older injuries, such as the torn Achilles tendon would also reappear. I also began experiencing pain in my outer right knee and my back would hurt, even in simple backbends such as cobra pose. I tried a couple of deep tissue bodywork sessions with my main yoga teacher to try to help my groin injury, but those sessions would always leave my groin in even greater pain afterwards.

In late January of 2012, I once again sought the help of a different body worker at my yoga studio for my groin injury. After agreeing that his work could help it heal, once seeing me, he seemed more interested in working on the structure of my collapsed chest. He advised me that if I wanted to correct that problem, I would need to come back to him on a weekly basis. So I agreed to see him for weekly bodywork sessions to help my shoulders open and my chest to lift, reversing a lifelong pattern of folding in on myself. However, after each session with him, injury after injury started showing up in a very pronounced way, mostly along the right side of my body. After my sixth session, my right knee had swollen to twice its size, my Achilles tear had reappeared, my groin was still very torn, my lateral deltoid had torn again, and my rotator cuff was now injured! It felt like my shoulder blade was ripping off of my body! After two weeks of serious swelling in my knee, my main yoga teacher urged me to see a doctor, thinking that I had torn something. I was sent to a physical therapist, who thought scraping the side of my injured knee with her metal tool was the best thing she could do for it! In the meantime, I had asked a friend for a recommendation for a chiropractor, knowing that I had scoliosis, and believing that my bodyworker had caused these injuries to sequentially show up in a such a pronounced way, most likely from working on me as he was taught for a person with a straight spine and 2 symmetrical sides. Because of my scoliosis, I have a tremendous amount of asymmetry in my body, which was revealing itself more in more in my yoga postures over the past months as my body tried to protect the injuries that were occurring.

After my chiropractor’s initial look at my back, he went to retrieve a plastic model of a torso from another room, came back and informed me that my spine was shaped like an ‘S’, and that additionally, there was a deep outward curve in my upper spine and a deepened inward curve in my lower back. Because of the lateral spinal curvature, my right hip was higher than the left and inwardly rotated. I was at first overwhelmed with a dreadful feeling of hopelessness that I would never be able to participate in physical activities without being injured. All I wanted was to be able to practice yoga and teach it to others. But the information also confirmed my intuition that I injured my groin from doing postures such as Warrior 2 or side angle pose, in which the leg is externally rotated. Forming a right angle from a leg that is always inwardly rotated is too much of a stretch. I would have to learn to adjust my poses accordingly and follow the advice of my own body and not the cues that the teacher was giving the rest of the class.

My yoga practice was not allowing me to ignore the abnormal curves in my spine. It was forcing me to acknowledge the different patterns in my body and adjust my postures accordingly. In early June, I had the opportunity to attend a weekend-long workshop on yoga for people with scoliosis, which was taught by a visiting teacher from California. She first presented us with information about the structure of the vertebral curves in a person with scoliosis, the rotational component of scoliosis that goes along with the curvature, and the news that the curves often deepen throughout our lifetime if nothing is done to prevent this from happening. I was shocked at what she was telling us, as I had never before heard any of this information! I had no idea that my bones on one side of my spine were crunched together and spread out along the other, that my ribs formed a similar pattern, that one side of the ribcage was shifted forward, and that one shoulder was more forward of the other. I had no idea that by side bending equally on both sides, I was actually increasing the lateral curves in my spine! Suddenly, the origin of every injury that I had sustained during my life, including the tear in my lateral deltoid became crystal clear. All of them were a direct result of my scoliosis. My arm injury was caused because of the position and rotation of my right shoulder, causing more stress on that arm when I tried to enter into yoga postures with binds. I couldn’t believe that no one had ever informed me about the structure of my spine, ribs, shoulder and pelvis before and what the implications were for my life and the activities that I had tried to participate in. Even the teacher who led my yoga teacher training, who has scoliosis himself, never suggested that I do anything differently on the two sides. I walked away from the scoliosis workshop with many different emotions. I was overwhelmed with the information that I now had to try to incorporate into my practice, angry at the doctors and teachers in my life who never offered any information on how to work with this type of body, and grateful to be, for the first time, in a room full of people who all had this similar struggle, and who were doing everything they could to work with it and live a healthy and happy life. Perhaps most importantly for me, was noticing that I saw only the beauty in each of the individuals in the room, and that there was nothing ugly about the curves in their spines. For my entire life, I viewed my own scoliosis as something that made me more ugly- something that I wanted to hide, push away, and pretend wasn’t there.

The practice of yoga doesn’t allow you to ignore any part of yourself. It centers around uniting each individual with his or her true, whole self. Because the entire body is used in each of the postures, each practitioner is given the opportunity to learn about their own strengths and weaknesses, blockages, habitual patterns, and feelings and experiences that have been pushed away and ignored because they were once too painful to deal with. Had I kept trying to run, I would have only been repeating the same patterns of sustaining injury after injury, trying to heal, and attempting to run again until my body simply wouldn’t allow me to. In my yoga practice, my body spoke loudly to me with the new injuries I was sustaining in both my upper and lower body. Until I understood where these injuries were originating from, my body was going to keep screaming at me, and showing me in new ways that I needed to start listening to what it was asking for.

My yoga practice has taught me that you can’t push anything that presents itself in your life away. What you don’t acknowledge will only come back with a louder voice in the future. Instead, we must learn to softly work with the challenges that have been offered to us, invite them in, sit with them, ask them what is needed, and learn to see the inherent beauty within each of our struggles.

This week marks a huge transition in the course of my life. The job that I have held for almost my entire existence since graduating from college is coming to an end. Due to continual budget constraints, my boss decided to eliminate my position. In truth, he did offer me the job of lab manager instead, telling me that if I did take that position, I would have to work more and stricter hours than I currently work, without equivalent financial compensation. At first, I was shocked to hear this news, as I had no forewarning, and asked him if I could think about it for a couple of days. In reality, however, I had no need to think about my decision for even a moment. I knew and had felt for more years than I care to admit, that there was no choice. A large part of me had died staying in this job, and because I did not know how to make my way out of it myself, the universe closed this door for me in order to open new doors. Here was my chance to hike the Pacific Crest Trail- something that I had been wanting to do ever since I finished the Appalachian Trail, and something that I would not be allowed to do if I accepted the role of lab manager. And here was a chance to begin a new life- one that can be shaped more by me and my own interests.

Because of who I am and the life that was given to me, I am not a person that can spend the majority of my days devoted to doing work that does not touch my heart or fulfill me. I have endured an incredible amount of pain and hardship, and have been left with the remnants of trying to make sense of what has happened. I need to be around people who are in touch with themselves, who share and give love freely, who are empathetic and compassionate and willing to give hugs. I need to be around people who inspire and uplift. I need to go to places that allow me to find my own freedom and sources of strength and my own well of hope. I need to find a way to support myself in a way that makes me feel happy and fulfilled, and where I can share my strengths.

I feel the most hopeful when I am outside and moving. I am friendlier and more open to people, and I even amaze myself with the optimism and encouragement that I can offer others (when not in a state of exhaustion). I also feel remarkably less fear when I am hiking alone, than when I am living in “ordinary” life. The most common comment that I receive when I am hiking alone is how brave I am (especially to be out there as a female on her own). Most people- even the men- said they would never even consider going out on trails alone. For me, I feel the opposite way. I feel much less afraid than I normally do, much stronger, more open, and more happy. There is no choice for me. It is what I must do.

I have begun to clear my desk, lab bench, and freezer full of tubes, and as more and more space opens up, more space arises in me as well. I feel more free and less encumbered by years of work that I was never meant to do. And while it is incredibly frightening to have no idea how I will support myself, how I will be able to fund my own future hikes, to lose my security, my access to benefits such as having a printer, my health insurance (I will no longer be able to get my chiropractic adjustments, which have become so important and useful to me), I also feel the sense of a new beginning emerging- one that can now stem from my core, one that can be shaped by love. My desire is to create a life from a place of love- doing the things that I love, sharing the love that is inside of me, and being open to receiving love in return. There is no time to do anything less.

There’s a common saying among long-distance hikers to “hike your own hike.” It seems like a simple motto, but as with many things, it takes on more meaning the farther one gets into his/her hike, and the more one thinks about the saying. It’s so easy to get caught up in a competitive mode, or the herd mentality while on one of these hikes (just as it is in life). There are many hikers that start the Appalachian Trail in Georgia, with the goal of making it to Maine. Although there is a wide range of starting dates for this trail, it is easy to feel “behind” if hikers who were once in your vicinity break away, hiking at a faster rate, doing more miles per day, and taking less rest time. On the Appalachian Trail, there are notebooks in most of the shelters along the way where hikers can write down whatever is on their mind. While these notebooks provide some entertainment on breaks and knowledge of where fellow hikers might currently be, they also create a sense of comparison. “That person is a week ahead of me now. I am so slow. I’ll never catch up with them. I’ll never see them again.”

But that is their hike. And this is yours. Their backpacks are probably much lighter than yours and allow them to travel at a faster rate. Maybe they have to finish the hike by a certain deadline and are hiking much faster than what would be an enjoyable pace for them. Maybe they don’t have enough cash to take rest breaks in towns along the way.

I tried once, in New Jersey, to walk with a guy who I knew from the start of my hike. He was given the trail name, “Sir Richard”, as he came from England. For a long time, I had been hiking alone. I hadn’t met anyone that I “clicked” with like I did with the people I met in the first week of my hike, when we were all fresh and eager and on our own. (Most of them were now far ahead of me because I was taking longer stops in town to write a web journal). By this time in the hike, everyone had their hiking partners or groups, and there wasn’t a sense of others wanting to make friends. One day, alone again, I was putting on my pack after taking a side trail to collect water. I looked in the direction I had come from and to my great surprise, suddenly saw a familiar face! Sir Richard! I had thought he was weeks ahead of me by now! How on earth could he be behind me? It turned out that he was slowed down by painful shin splints by trying to hike too many miles, too fast. I happily walked with him and we caught each other up on our experiences so far. He said he was happy to have someone pace him so that he wasn’t overdoing it again.

Several days later, we hiked to an outdoor center, where I had some packages waiting for me. I usually only received my one maildrop with my food and supplies for the next section, but at this particular place, I received two extra care packages! It took some time to get everything sorted and packed away, and I sensed that Sir Richard was growing restless and frustrated. So, I quickly tried to throw everything into my pack. Only now it was a huge, very heavy, lopsided tower! And Sir Richard wanted to hike fast. My shoulders, back, and knees were protesting loudly. This was too much weight for them to bear. I couldn’t talk because I needed to conserve all of the energy I had in order to carry this huge beast of burden. We had at least 10 more miles to hike that afternoon. And now I felt like a lousy, silent, grumpy companion. At one point, I needed to cough and no matter what I did, I couldn’t clear my throat! When Sir Richard pointed out an old stone wall in the forest, I desperately wished that he wanted to go take a closer look at it in order to give me a chance to take a short break. However, he wanted no such thing. As usual, I had to take my pack off every 15-20 minutes to give my screaming shoulders and back a moment of reprieve, only now, a million mosquitoes swarmed us and started sucking our blood the moment we stopped. Sir Richard told me that he was going to move on. He said that he felt like he was pressuring me to keep up with him. I was now left to suffer all on my own. New blisters were forming on my heels, I was exhausted, in great physical pain, and dejected because I couldn’t keep up with the pace of my friend. I was not hiking my own hike.

In yoga, we are constantly being reminded that we shouldn’t compare ourselves with anyone else in the room, that we all are on our own journey, that we open up in our own time. We’ve all had different life experiences, inherited different genetic traits, and have treated our bodies differently during the course of our lives. The more that we try to do what we are told to do, or what we think we should be doing, or what others are doing, the more we move outside of our bodies, and away from our centers, which will almost also lead to injury or harm to ourselves. If instead, we begin to listen to our own inner wisdom and the guidance of our own body, our practice will evolve over time in a natural order. When we have built enough strength in one area of our body, a new pose will be attainable. When we have opened up another part of our body, another pose will be possible. We are always where we should be.

The way in which we live our lives only becomes meaningful if we live it in the same manner. We must follow our own heart and our own intuition. We must follow the places that joy leads us, share our strengths with others in order to make the world a better place, continue to work on our weaknesses, and live life at a pace that we are able to maintain without depleting ourselves.

We must remain true to ourselves. We must stay on our own paths- just as we must “hike our own hike”.

From a very early age, I learned to hold my breath, to tense my muscles, to clench my teeth, to fold in on my myself, to close down, and to live in fear.  Everything that I did was wrong according to my mother. Every sound I uttered, every movement that I made was criticized. I tried so hard to be “good”, to do what she wanted, to follow her rules, but nothing I did could ever be right, because her rules were constantly changing. I grew up in a world of hate. My mother only spoke badly of people- of me, my father, my siblings, our neighbors. She isolated us from her extended family and from my father’s family. We never had visitors at our house. I didn’t know there was anyone that I could reach out to for reassurance or love. I only knew that in order to survive, I had to become very, very small.

I yearned for the day when I was old enough to go to college and escape my mother and her toxic environment. I didn’t realize, however, that reaching out and connecting with others were skills I hadn’t yet had a chance to learn. And so, I remain isolated, burying myself in school work, and discovering what depression really was.

And then, I was forced out into the world with no school as my haven, no family to offer support or guidance. I had no feeling of self-worth and no idea that my life could be molded by me. I didn’t know what I wanted or what was possible for me. All I had known was suffering. And so, I accepted a job which paid minimally, and in which I worked to fulfill someone else’s dreams. My soul was suffocating and I had no idea how to find my way out.

Although I was at times paralyzed with depression, a silent strength somehow kept me going- even after the unexpected death of my brother when he was just 21 years old. Somewhere inside of me, there was a tiny part that knew there was a different way to live- a way that was much more fulfilling, a way in which I could feel happier…

The day that I set foot on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia, alone, with my thirty-five pound backpack was the most freeing day of my life. In 2009, I set everything that I had known aside and began a nearly six month trek up and down the Appalachian mountains- all the way to the end of the trail on top of Mt. Katahdin in Maine. I had never gone backpacking before the idea to do this had crystallized in me.

The following summer, due to the damage that long hike had incurred on my body and falling back to the same unhappy life that I had been living before the hike (now made worse with the knowledge that there was a life outside in which I was tremendously more happy), I found my way to my first yoga class. I loved it and haven’t stop going since. I even became certified to teach, which has been the best experience of my life so far. I began the process of learning how to breathe, to stretch, to open myself and my heart, to begin to connect with others, to share. I began to learn how it is that I add to my own suffering and how to detach myself from my past so that I can live more fully, vibrantly, and peacefully in the present. I am learning to trust that everything is and will be okay.

I am now planning my second long hike- this time on the Pacific Crest Trail, which begins at the border of Mexico in California, and finishes seven miles across the Canadian Border. It extends through California, Oregon, and Washington. It is more than 500 miles longer than the Appalachian Trail, has to be completed in a narrower time frame due to weather constraints, and consists of more extreme environments than the AT (beginning with 700 miles of desert).

Long distance hiking and yoga share many parallels in what they offer to one undertaking these two paths. They both allow one to feel his or her own inner strength and potential, allow a connection to something greater than themselves, and create a sense of grounding as well as freedom. (Coming from an abusive family with no place to ever call home and no one to reach out to for support, I never before felt a sense of grounding in my life. This is the base of a person’s existence. One can not rise and explore without a firm base). They are both centered around movement, stripping away anything external and unnecessary, exploring the self, and living fully in the present moment. In both activities, you learn to trust your instincts, to discover the source of your own happiness, and to appreciate all that you have and all that your body does for you. They both teach you that meaning is found in the journey (not in the destination), and that kindness does exist in humanity.

I hope to share some of what I have learned from both my yogic journey and long distance hikes and how they have helped me begin to find my own sense of self-worth, as well as the discovery that I am not alone in this world.