16 years

I got this text from a dear friend this morning and was reminded how I felt exactly now 16 years ago. I spent 8:50-9:00 am that morning calling all my VIPs and besties from Atlanta, where I was at a conference, to make sure everyone was alive. The phones jammed at 9:00 am, and though I was miraculously able to get through to all the ones I immediately thought of, I found out later about a friend and former colleague who died on an upper floor of WTC 1.

In contrast, or maybe it's not a contrast, yesterday I taught a "Managing Stress with Basic Breathing Techniques" workshop through my pals at YogaWorks, and today I've been thinking a lot about teaching more yoga, more about stress relief, more about feeling relaxed and free in the body regardless of anything else happening in or outside the body.

It was essentially this day that sent me deep down the path of yoga. Within a few months of 9/11, I'd left my dot com job and decided to become a yoga teacher. By August of 2002, I'd opened a yoga studio that I ran for 12 years until I closed it, a few years ago, to focus on raising my two children.

My friend addresses the deep grief we all feel, and how all our lives changed on that day. Stress seems even stronger, deeper now, and I feel very sad at the moment that we were there, then, and we are here, now. Today I remember and grieve.