The Book I Wrote Before I Knew What Practice Was

In 02025 my marriage went into crisis.

My husband and I worked hard to repair it. The work took more out of us than either of us expected. At the same time other trouble arrived in the house, the kind neither of us had chosen, and we had to hold both things at once: fixing the marriage, and clearing up what the other trouble left behind. Between the two of us there wasn't much left over.

By 02026 my body gave out first.

I would wake up after a full night's sleep and my head would still feel packed with something heavy. No energy anywhere in my body, all day. I couldn't look at my phone. The moment I did, the space between my eyebrows would clench, and I had to look away.

That year I was also dealing with a lawsuit, the tail end of the earlier trouble. Going through it kept pulling me back into memories I didn't want. I stopped eating well. I stopped sleeping well. Every time one of those memories surfaced, my whole body would ache, as if it had written the memory into itself.

I went looking for a way back.

There were people practicing tai chi in my neighborhood. I watched them, how loose and unhurried they looked, and thought it might help. I found instructional videos on YouTube and followed along until I'd learned the form, about a month in. It did help. I also picked up some Alexander Technique, trying to unlearn the tension my body had built into itself as a habit. Both loosened something. Neither gave me back my strength. My body stayed empty.

I kept asking why tai chi worked, and whether there was something more direct. I read what I could find, books and papers, and somewhere in that reading, meditation and the older Eastern disciplines, standing practice, stillness practice, sitting practice, started to interest me on their own terms. What is a person, actually. Is there science behind any of this. Why do people break down, and what do you do once you have. The questions kept getting bigger and the material kept piling up, until I decided to write a book out of it.

There's something I only understood afterward. I had not actually touched meditation. I had not actually practiced anything.

I wrote that book to work out why I had ended up in such bad shape. What's in it are the explanations I could find across different cultures, traditions, and scientific research. But those were still answers on paper. I hadn't practiced anything myself, so I had no first-hand experience of my own to test them against.

Finishing it left me a little better. The tai chi had done its work, and the exhaustion had eased. My shoulders, neck, and back had gotten worse instead, from those months of sitting and writing. It might be the strangest state I've been in: my mind coming back a little because of tai chi, my body running up a new debt at the same time. I've since wondered whether those years of running on empty also woke up the Hashimoto's that runs in my family. It had its own hand in dragging my mind down.

A few days after I finished the book, I finally had the energy to walk around my own apartment.

On a shelf I found a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi. I'd brought it back from Silicon Valley and never opened it. At the time I bought it, it was meant as a gift to myself. On that trip, I'd stood outside the house Steve Jobs used to live in, in front of the apple tree by his door. The place was plain, almost nothing there, and it moved me more than I expected. Back home I reread his biography and noticed, this time, that he'd recommended this book. So I bought it, gave it to myself, and never opened it. My idea of yoga was still the stretching class at the gym. It didn't interest me.

That day, for no reason I can name, I took it down and opened it. I couldn't stop reading. It described a practice called Kriya Yoga. My shoulders, neck, and back still hurt. I wanted, badly, to get back to some version of a clear, awake mind. I thought this might be what I'd been looking for.

I found the Self-Realization Fellowship's website. They run a preparatory course for Kriya Yoga, and I applied. I didn't expect much to come of it. The application was long, most of the fields optional. One of the required ones asked why I wanted to take the course. I thought about the months I'd just come through. I wasn't happy. I wanted to be. I wrote four words: try to be happy.

About a month later, an email came back. I'd been accepted.

The course covered ground the book never had: the reasoning behind the practice, some of the science behind that reasoning, and how to actually do it. I followed it. About a month in, my mind had come all the way back. The pain had mostly gone. I felt better than I had in my twenties.

I decided, from then on, to become a yogi.

That's why this site exists.

I want to keep a plain record of what this practice does, as it happens. I'm counting from June 2, 02026, the day the SRF acceptance email arrived, when I started learning the fundamentals and keeping a regular meditation practice. Nothing more than that. By the end of July, into August, my health had come all the way back.

I'll use this site to keep a full record of what happens in this practice, and in whatever else counts as practice besides yoga, written from the ground level of one person watching what changes in them. Alongside the practice, I also want to be someone who makes things. Whatever I make, I'll put here too.