"Stories from the Yogic Heart" is a labour of love that grew out of my life set-back with heavy metal poisoning from my family's indoor pesticide use and mercury dental fillings which were leaking.

The Multiple Chemical Sensitivity that resulted took my zest for life, and almost my life itself.

Out of tragedy are said to come blessings, and yoga was one of them. I began to live for yoga-it allowed me to feel the spirit within, the energy coursing through my body, my heart chakra opening, and my connection to all.

It also helped expand my soul's energy to allow room for it to not only survive but to greatly transform while housed in a body filled with the competing energy of some of the deadliest toxins known to mankind.

During the past three years, as part of my recovery, and as part of my love of journalism, I have compiled stories for a book that would inspire others to embark on the yoga journey, as yoga stories were what inspired me.

Below is my story. Thank you so much for reading it.
And namaste,
Alisa Cherry (editor)

MY STORY.....

"The only thing that we can be truly aware of is that we're aware," I recall my grade 4 teacher telling us one day. I do not recall what inspired his profound teaching, but he seemed to be an old soul whose great compassion and serenity always struck me as unique.

That particular day remains crystal clear in my mind. And, as the entire class seemed to exit in a daze, one girl tapped me on the shoulder, asking me the definition of "aware". "I think it means 'to see'", I told her, not sure how to even explain it to myself. I was still in another reality with the teacher's phrase reverberating in my mind, the world appearing as if in a fog; I believe it was my first encounter with the idea of consciousness.

What did the teacher mean? What does awareness have to do with my life? Did I miss something? His comment haunted me for years, in my piscean quest for answers to the mysticism of the universe. Yet, like the teacher, yoga would surrendipitously appear in my life. And the answers to my questions would, as well...

Fast forward to the year 2000. As the director of a charity, I was extremely stressed from fundraising, from trying to escape the brain fog of my chemical sensitivities, and in great need of escaping Toronto's thick, polluted summer air.

I also felt like I was losing my mind with my lead toxicity seething throughout my cells. One of my best friends (who had run out of advice for me) told me to try yoga. "I've heard that it changes your perspective," Debra said. Well, something had to change the record track in my head while I was detoxing, and my naturopath had recommended yoga to me for 20 years. So I decided to give it a try.

I decided to drive to a small resort north of the city and relax by the lake for the weekend. Fortunately, I had brought a yoga magazine that featured stories that month on how yoga had saved peoples' lives.

Sitting by the lake, blurring out the noise of jetskis roaring by, I was mesmerized by the amazing tales of transformations in health.

I had to drive back the next day, and due to my severe fatigue, I dreaded trying the yoga class at 6am.

The class was held in a small, musty room (I think they delegated the teacher to a storage space!), where my fellow yogis were a beraggled mother and her eight year old son. I assumed no one else wanted to awaken on their holiday either!

It was a very gentle class, and I thought nothing was happening to me, but by the end of it, I had so much energy and my head was so clear that I had no problem driving the two hours home.

All along the drive, I couldn't quell my amazement: I felt great. I was so hooked, I drove right home and to the Yoga Studio, downtown, and did another class that afternoon!

My only regret is that I never thanked the teacher to tell her that she had changed the course of my life.

Over progressive months and years, I'd experience things I never imagined would happen from my practice.

Abused by an alcoholic relative while growing up, I felt no sense of Self, like I was almost a blob, feeling that others controlled or had the right to control my body and mind. Life was a rollercoaster of fear alternating with numbness, devoid of deep empathy, feeling, or true compassion. And I lived in fear, in every cell of my body, whether I realized it or not.

It manifested itself in my career choices, relationships, and endless "busyness" that kept me from heeding my heart's calling, my intuition which tried to pull me to my senses when I would momentarily rest.

It manifested in my not breathing, or my breathing very shallow, until the low oxygen level signalled my brain to take a deep breath. At one point, I even visited a biofeedback clinic to discover when I stopped breathing. "You don't stop breathing!," the flabbergasted clinician told me. "You'd be dead if you stopped," he said, curtly. "But I'm not breathing," I protested. He either thought I was crazy or he didn't understand and wouldn't do the test.

Years later, when I found yoga, I rediscovered my breath. Immediately. It returned like a lost child who found her home. My lungs instinctlively expanded to fill my deep inhales and instinctively rebounded from the deep yogic exhales. With deep gratitude, I immersed from my first class and walked off the elevator with a thunderbolt epiphany that I was breathing. On my own. In and out. In and out. I felt like a fish thrown back into the ocean, gratefully in its element once again, oxygen permeating every cell of my being, my rhythms in sync with those of the universe.

Eventually, with yoga, I also began to feel taller, like I had a body, then felt what I can only describe as a body within my body--an energy or my soul. And both the fear and my "dualistic thinking" --my safety valve--melted away.

With this came a wisdom which whispered in my ears as I meditated or did my asanas, a wisdom beyond my consciousness, a "knowing" which opened my mind to how we're connected to eachother, to G-d, and on some level to even knowing how the universe herself works. An understanding of what Thich Nhat Hanh calls "no death, no fear."

I wasn't looking for this, it just came, and I felt for the first time in my life a safety, an inner peace, a happiness because I finally understood life and my soul's place in it.

My energies were now unblocking, a kundalini awakending, letting information channel in. letting feelings flow. As Einstein said, "thoughts are things", and as bitter memories floated from my body as I did various poses, they seemed to leave room for the higher energy of wisdom to enter.

I found I could be more open to others, able to feel my feelings where I could previously not, able to finally experience forgiveness and compassion even for my relative whose upbringing had much to be desired, as well.

Later, I was drawn to books about yoga, such as "The Quest for True Self", by Stephen Cope, or "The Heart of Yoga", by TKV Desikachar to see if I was just imagining the phenomena I was experiencing.

Not only was I not imagining this, I found, but I also discovered that I had started yoga several years ago--through chanting. The vibrational energy of the chant "nam myoho renge kyo" (of Nichiren Daishonin buddhism) had been in my life for about five years. Yogis have been using sound for time immemorial--to connect themselves to the greater consciousness, as sound is the basis of life, the vibration of energy, of which we are all made.

And I'd been meditating for years to still my mind and hear the wisdom of my higher self. With the physical yoga, more of my chakras were about to unwind. And the results were beyond my wildest dreams. I recognized drishtis (the third eye, heart chakra and other portals) which, when gazed at gently, helps open the energy channels and lead to the feeling of union) which I was guided to through intuition.

My teachers didn't understand these, but books confirmed my experiences, ones which I would never have believed by reading about them beforehand. Yoga, as they say, is union, and is about feeling one with G-d. Only by practicing would I have believed it and I was grateful I went that route first.

I was blessed to have a dream one night, in which I was doing yoga teacher-training, and a glowing, angelic woman, about seven feet tall, gently approached me as I sat meditating in the grand, taj mahal-like hall.

She leaned over, and gently asked that I follow her into the next room. I paused, then hesitantly stood up and followed.

Standing in front of me with her long, flowing gown, she motioned to her heart chakra with both hands, and slowly opened and closed them like flower buds in spring. "Do yoga every day and it will open your heart," she said telepathically. "It will change your life.

And it was doing that, in ways that no therapist had been able to do for me before. Old emotions and memories were just releasing while I practised.

"Yoga is about the mind...just do yoga and you will heal the mind," TKV Desikachar told me during a workshop a couple years ago.

I used to think the mind was over-rated and that we should be more concerned with work and achievement, but inner peace can never be over-rated. For through that state comes wisdom, compassion, a connection with one's soul, and a "knowing" and understanding of oneself, one's path, and the universe whose consciousness connects with our own.

This was always my deepest desire, and it came to me through the grace of yoga. Just like our grade 4 teacher taught us, an awareness beyond words.