For the past ten years, I have been practicing this or something like it, sometimes as many as three times a day and others 3 times weekly. The thing is that for this period of time I have established a consistent practice. This is the only thing that has stayed with me all along, immutable, when things came and things went and the unimaginable happened. My life has taken so many twists and turns and when things got really tough the only thing that remained untouched for me was the practice and the teaching of Yoga. This practice has been and still is my shelter and my teacher, as when you feel that someone loves you so unconditionally that you cannot avoid running to them for shelter and learning. It has been a mirror in which to look at the fixations of my personality, the delirious state of my larger-than-life ego, my anal perfectionism that so crushingly I imposed on myself and others. It has been a shelter that I went to when nothing really made sense anymore and I kept practicing when everything felt like noisily crumbling non-stop around me. But most of all it has been an impartial teacher that has taught me what strength really means. The strength I have learned through my yoga practice is the ability to stay firm and focussed on my heart and living my life pulled from the centre of my core and out into the world rather than being pushed around or feeling demanded by external events. It sounds easier said than done, but to really live the way you feel requires sheer determination and an unshakable trust in Life and its turns and twists. This really has nothing to do with muscle power or will power; it’s all about trust. Doing postures on your head, or balancing in your hands, flipping back, floating forward and jumping through are all nice things that make you feel good and require a certain level of skill that you could learn in gymnastics anyway. They become Yoga when you commit to practice diligently, observing your emotional reactions to this practice, following your breath like your only compass and then you discover that Life has been conspiring on your behalf all along. This is the beginning of steadfast Strength. As my teacher used to say “Ana don’t let anything make or break your day”.