Toronto, Canada

I just returned from an incredible two week yoga therapeutics training in Toronto, Canada that, even after almost twenty years of yoga practice, has profoundly shifted my life. Frustrated by the limitations of working as a therapist in a hospital setting, I've been searching for a long time for a way to help people get out of pain and back to into their lives. And I have found it.

I was one of a few Americans at the training, the only person from New Mexico. I never would have known about this work if it wasn't for a book I discovered at the tiny bookstore next to the Hanuman temple at the top of Mount Madonna in California, a stop along the way on my road trip. I couldn't have known then that this book, a tiny seed, a single gem, would later become a wish fulfilling jewel.

I adored Toronto. I'd never been there before and had no idea it was such a lovely city filled with amazing food, art, independent bookstores, street cars, coffee shops, and parks. I am hoping someone from Canada will adopt me. I felt the same way when I visited and fell in love with Halifax, Nova Scotia many years ago. I had no idea, I said to a Canadian classmate, to which she responded, "Yes, we are so much more than the purple stripe at the top of your map!"

My roommates walk toward class in the early morning light, a woman passes by the photographs of Guy Laliberte on display in the Distillery District, an artist paints on the sidewalk, blue glass and rain at our rental house, Krishna gazes from the window of BluGod Tattoo on Yonge Street.