I learned three weeks ago that September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. As a result, I’ve wanted to say something particularly meaningful about depression, but I just haven’t known what. I can’t pretend to understand anyone else’s experience of despair. Then, a couple weeks ago, I was emailing with a reader and friend who mentioned a line of poetry from Rebecca Hazelton, quoted as an epigraph in Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers, which I’m reading right now. “The world is a wonder,…

My yoga teacher surprised us yesterday by announcing that we wouldn’t be doing our traditional, Saturday morning primary series. Instead, we’d be doing 108 sun salutations. Here’s a quick explanation of some of the reasons that some yoga communities do 108 salutations at different points in the year. I’ve done it once before, when I was living in DC. I was twenty-nine at the time, a less experienced yogi but definitely in better shape than I am now. As soon as my teacher…

This week, I was reunited with my friend Christina. It had been a few years since we’d seen each other. We ought to do a better job of keeping in touch, but my clinical internship and her training in med school haven’t made it easy. Christina and I met just as I was finishing the final year of my post-bacc program. She was quiet and kept to herself, at least at first, but anytime we were called to get something done—in a lab,…

I found out last weekend that my yoga community had lost its physical home. I knew it was possible that this would happen if Covid kept studios closed for a long time. But I wasn’t prepared for how sad I’d feel, how sorry I’d be that I never got to say goodbye to the space as I knew it in person. It’s not that I fear for my own practice. I never do; yoga is one of the greatest constants in my life….