I came to meditation at eighteen, not through postures, but through a torn copy of Chakras for Dummies handed to me by my best friend. That summer, I sat on a rock along the breakwall of Lake Erie, meditating as a way to survive. For years, meditation was my anchor, reaching beyond the shallow western interpretation that opened the door.
In my mid-twenties, yoga asana entered my life. Urban cycling and Muay Thai training with my now-husband had left me with seeking calmer ways to move, ways that could hold both strength and softness. One day my wandering brought me to a dusty aisle stacked with crooked piles of books. There, I found a used Iyengar Hatha yoga manual. Using a Ravi Shankar vinyl as my timer, I began to move, I practiced until I felt the readiness for meditation. Alone in my front room, I practiced almost every day, expanding my meditation, reshaping old samskaras (learned pathways) through abhyasa (steady practice), viveka (discernment between the real and the unreal), and vairagya (the quiet detachment born of wisdom). I had a lot to unlearn and a lifetime of work ahead.
Eventually, I gathered the courage to step into a shared space, conditioned by years of living in a cultural space promoting smallness for women while living in a bigger body, I had never felt at ease in traditional western yoga settings. Some of the first in-person classes I remember were prenatal sessions with my doula while my eldest daughter grew inside me. With cycling and boxing suddenly too dangerous, I switched gears to yoga-asana. After my daughter’s birth, I kept going to adult classes, brought her to kids’ classes, and started working at my studio. Eventually an opportunity came to attend a training and I became certified to teach kids and family yoga. I was able to lead all ages, family groups, and baby and me classes at a lovely non-profit studio in the heart of Buffalo New York.
Somewhere in the swirl of Muay Thai, falling in love, and new motherhood, I switched my major from art therapy to speech-language pathology. I was drawn to the science of human connection: how language develops, how communication shapes learning. Yoga and speech ran parallel for years. Both offered frameworks for attention, regulation, and care, but I didn’t yet know how to let them meet.
For my master’s thesis, I joined a research project that tried to quantify yoga, to break it into measurable outcomes. I felt an unnamed discomfort. What I did know was that something essential was missing: context, ethics, lineage. It felt extractive. I stepped back, keeping yoga personal and clinical work professional, leaving behind only a long, meandering literature review on yoga’s potential in speech therapy. I began to shift to lineage-based study, especially during COVID, when I sought South Asian teachers and scholars who challenged me to confront appropriation and deepen my understanding. I stopped asking, “How can I use yoga in therapy?” and began asking, “How can I practice yoga ethically, wherever I am?”
Then came years of therapy in Western New York and across the country as a travelling SLP in Colorado and Washington states. I worked in: skilled nursing, inpatient rehab, early intervention, public schools, private homes. I wanted to learn it all and I did! Slowly, yoga slipped in, not as a curriculum, but as presence. I taught breathwork to voice patients in skilled nursing, used rhythmic movement with preschoolers, and wove rest and sensory routines into school-based therapy. I realized I wasn’t merely applying techniques. I was living my practice. When I noticed teachers not understanding and causing dysregulation in their students, I sat on the floor and sang and breathed and held space for them.
Today I have practiced not only in my speech therapy practice, but in studios across the country, continued to offer small classes for families and young ones, added toddler jiu jitsu to my resume in Colorado, and this year I finally decided to bite the bullet and spend the time and money to obtain my 200-hour yoga teacher certificate.
Yoga is not a Western wellness tool. It is an ancient tradition rooted in South Asian spiritual and philosophical systems. What many educators and therapists call “yoga” is often just a sliver, mostly asana and pranayama, lifted from a much deeper lineage. That lineage includes the text I most closely try to follow through svyadyaya (self-study), Patanjali’s eight-limbed path: yama (ethical disciplines), niyama (personal observances), asana (postures), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (sense withdrawal), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (integration or absorption).
Gradually, I began to see the eight limbs not as abstract ideas but as daily commitments. They were already guiding my work: shaping how I wrote goals, entered classrooms, and regulated myself before co-regulating with a student. The path had never been separate.
The work and resources I hope to create in the future that integrates yogic techniques, mind-body work, and somatic practices isn’t a substitute for that lineage, nor can it replicate the full depth of traditional philosophy. But I believe we can adapt these tools with care and respect: naming their roots, refusing to flatten their meaning, and staying accountable to their principles.
Still, doubts linger. I’ve never been fully comfortable directing a group or standing at the center of attention. These aren’t natural skills for me, and I still rehearse them. But I’ve learned, especially with neurodivergent students, that leadership doesn’t have to be loud. Clarity can arise through presence, not performance. Safety is something we build in relationship, not demand through control. I am not on a stage, I am striving to facilitate a space and community for communication and connection.
I’m still learning. I still make mistakes. But I know now the question isn’t whether these practices belong together. It’s how we hold them, with care, context, and a commitment to do less harm.
Let the immense waves of gratitude to the lineage, all good-hearted teachers past and present, and to all those who may learn this way in the future, shine through the work that follows. To my lovely teachers: the inspirational Megan Callahan of Yoga Parkside, and the staff of now closed East Meets West (Sasha Bayba and Carrie Jacobson - Buffalo, NY), Sakshi Gupta (@SakshiGuptaYoga, India, thank you for your accessible online offerings across time zones), Buka Yoga (Castle Rock, CO), Yoga OM (Auburn, WA), BJJ Enumclaw (Enumclaw, WA), True Self Yoga (Olympia, WA), Firefly Yoga (Hawks Prairie, WA), Mandy Lawson (Costa Yoga), and most especially, my loving partner and children holding me through all things.