I quietly began yoga on my own in 1971 when in St. Louis. I was 16. Yogic awareness brought me back to my body after the anguish of losing my mother in a car crash and crushing my neck. It helped me listen to deep-down impulses and be brave enough to follow an unconventional path of healing work throughout the world.

In Australia in 1989, the same teacher that threw Simon into teaching yoga threw me (kicking and screaming) into it also. Years of leading a much-loved yoga school ripened my talents and skills, and going to Africa in 2000 unexpectedly threw me headlong into another new and compelling life. The yogic impulse to integrity and to make things whole drives me to want to help Guineans build composting toilets in place of open sewers.

Synergy Yoga for me is the teaching I have received from Simon for 26 years. Quiet, profound strength, the connection between the poses, moving like water rippling on a pond. Doing it without gripping the pelvic floor, breathing pure oxygen into the cells by not breathing. Finding the connection between breaths and between yourself and the world you live in. Finding where your love can flow.

Yoga isn’t about perfection, or fitness. It’s about function. And function allows flow. Flow is release. Flow is power. When Simon says ‘breathe less, stretch less, tense less, think less and eat less’, for me it is about letting go. Letting go of the internal vice grip that living in fear and tensing in life promotes. Letting go is bliss. Letting go is healing. Healing is life. Yoga is about finding our place in this world that needs us so much. Letting go into our true strength, which is pure pleasure. Letting go is life. Letting go is the breath of life in our bodies. I wouldn’t have survived without yoga – that is the truth. It is a lifeline to health and sanity, and I am happy to throw this lifeline to others, with joy.