I wrote the first poem in "Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By" after returning from an eight-month trip to Tokyo that lasted 5 years. Life in Tokyo was extremely fast-paced, and I was your basic Type-A personality, never slowing down. When I came back to California, I was in culture shock and decided to try a yoga class at a local dance center. It is not an exaggeration to say that my whole life changed from that first yoga class.

As a writer, I spent a lot of time "in my head." After the first few yoga classes, I discovered I was an expatriate in my very own skin. I didn't really know myself. Yoga led me out of my thoughts and back into my physical body, which was like an unexplored world. Since I love to travel, I thought: here's my next trip! My bags were packed. In fact, the first line of the first yoga poem I wrote, Downward-Facing Dog, was "Within my body, there's a city." I found an undiscovered world within my body.

Yoga offers a way of Being rather than Doing. Yoga teaches us how fragile and complex the human body and heart are, teaches us to accept where we are, to breathe into difficulty, and to let go of willfulness. It allows us to open places where the energy and emotions are blocked, and teaches us that sometimes we limit ourselves in our own minds, with our habits and beliefs.

Practicing yoga was like holding up a mirror. When you do a yoga pose, your mind begins to wander. At first, you judge and compare, and eventually, you just release the judgments and go deep into the breath, into the here and now. Yoga is a moving meditation, but it's also the practice of surrender, which is an incredibly vulnerable, powerful action. If you can trust the unknown enough to fully surrender to what is, rather than looking toward a future of what *could be* or what *was* in the past, you begin to fully live in the moment. When you live in the moment, you realize how inter-connected everything in the universe is.

Through yoga, the heart opens, and your life begins to shift towards balance and acceptance. Yoga opens up enormous channels of creativity and teaches us how to embrace the 'process' rather than focusing on the 'goal'.

While stretching and twisting, breathing and calming my mind and body, I discovered places in my body that were very stiff-and I also discovered incredible reserves of strength, stamina and grace. As a child, I experienced physical and emotional traumas, which were stored in her body's cellular memory. As a result, I lived in a kind of subconscious fear, not even knowing it. Yoga taught me to trust, to step into the unknown. By discovering where emotions are stored in the body, we can work to accept them and not push them away. If we walk into the difficulty, we can breathe through it and release these emotions and traumas. That is one of the cornerstones of my studies and process--to explore whatever emotions and memories surface, and to embrace them, honor them, process them, and let them go.

Yoga helped open up deeper channels of creativity. When I started yoga, I'd already been writing for awhile, but I'd reached a plateau. So between writing periods, I'd go to yoga class to unwind. During my practice, the muse would speak and lines of poems would come. I wrote them down during practice, sometimes keeping a notepad on my mat!

The process was mysterious and wonderful. When I "got out of my own way" and stopped trying so hard to create, the poems began to flow, almost as if creating themselves. As a moving meditation, yoga lends itself to poetry, to creative exploration, to self-expression. Yoga poses have provocative names, often based on animal movements, and lend themselves to metaphor: Eagle, Cobra, Bridge, Tree, Monkey. Some of the poems are very personal and others are more universal, meditations on awakening. I used the 8 Limbs of Ashtanga yoga as the book's structure because these 8 limbs are a powerful blueprint for living an ethical, yogic life off the mat. I felt guided to live less for myself and more for others.

Yoga Poems is an expression of this evolution. The book was born out of this dance between will and surrender. I am grateful to my yoga teachers for creating a safe space for me to discover the wonders of yoga and the joys of marrying my two loves, poetry and yoga. I hope you will enjoy Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By and be inspired to write your own story. I am also grateful to the Japanese translators, Miyuki and Shogo, for bringing these words into Japanese.

◇『ヨガ・ポエム』愛読者コメント1
ヨガとポエム(詩)。一見かけ離れたもののように思えるかもしれないが、どちらもアートであり、心が介在するものという意味では同類である。この本は、アサナ(ヨガのポーズ)が単に体で形を作ることだけではなく、そこにいかに奥深い世界が広がっているかを探る入口の一つと言えるだろう。ヨガはマットを越えた場所にも存在する。その事実を改めて心に刻んでくれる貴重な一冊である。

◇『ヨガ・ポエム』愛読者コメント2
『ヨガ・ポエム』では、ポーズの名前の由来やイメージだけではなく、実際にヨガを練習していくなかで出逢った心の動きや感覚、感情などが、愛とやさしさ、力強さにあふれたことばで綴られています。ヨガをする人ならばたぶん経験したことのある、心や身体の変化。自分でことばにするのは難しいけれど、収められている詩にはそんな変化を生む愛や喜びや気づき、そして時には悩みが詰まっていて、読みながら「まるでわたしの心のなかを見ているみたい! 」と思うことが何度もありました。ヨガの練習、またヨガをとおしての経験を"旅"と表現することがあります。わたしにとっての『ヨガ・ポエム』は、その旅をより一層すばらしいものにしてくれる大切なパートナーです。

◇『ヨガ・ポエム』愛読者コメント3
ヨガを自分との向き合い、成長のパートナーだと考えている方には、『ヨガポエム』は、｢多様性」と「普遍性」を実感させてくれる素晴らしいヨガの友になると思います。 著者の個人的な経験や感情は、同一のポーズが与える感情や刺激が実に個性的であり、私たちが多様な存在だということを教えてくれます。また著者の詩の中に自分を感じる時には、多様でありながらも普遍的である、人と人の深い部分でのつながりを感じさせてくれます。『ヨガポエム』は、私に新しいヨガとの向き合い方、そして、今までとは異なるヨガの時間の深まりを与えてくれました。

◇『ヨガ・ポエム』愛読者コメント4
いつも何気なくやっているヨガの時間も、体の動きにとらわれすぎず心を開放すれば無限の世界が広がるのだと、この本を読んで気づかされました。ヨガ・ポエムは作者がヨガをやりながら自分に深く向き合って出来たとても個人的な作品だと思います。ヨガ・ポエムを読んでいると、作者の人生の旅にしばし便乗し、ジェットコースターで時空を駆け巡るような感覚を覚えます。そして、それはとても気持ちいいです。