“I TOOK A YOGA CLASS AND I adored it. I’ve done yoga in bigger classes — like 25-30 people — but this class had nine people in small studio. The woman who was teaching had the most beautiful energy. It wasn’t, ‘You have to do the poses right.’ She wanted you to do them carefully and safely, but you didn’t have to do them perfectly and she gave different variations. ‘If you don’t feel you’re up to this level, there’s an alternative. If you can’t do that, it’s OK; focus on your breathing.’ That is such a positive reinforcement for people to keep coming back and take care of themselves. When you feel that a class is too difficult for you, or you leave it and you’re beating yourself up because you couldn’t do something, you don’t go back. She also said, ‘The great thing about yoga is that you could lay there, do none of the poses and just focus on your breathing, and you’ve still taken care of yourself.’ To me, that’s what yoga is about — taking time to focus on yourself, because we don’t do that. In this fast-paced world of ours, we put ourselves last. It’s nice to take an hour or what have you and do nothing else — just breathe.”