I'm inspired by how miraculous some of the simplest and most natural aspects of life can be the greatest sources of healing and transformation.

I had never done any sort of yoga before, and this epiphany was a little more esoteric. I walked into the yoga room and there was a voice from my soul that said out loud, This is it! I just knew. I just knew in that moment - I couldn't even straighten my legs. I couldn't sit cross-legged on the floor. I couldn't put my legs up the wall in the most gentle, restorative yoga pose, and yet, I knew.

I was charging forward too hard, into too many war zones, working too long, drinking too heavily, pushing forward, pushing forward. And who knows, had this not happened, maybe I would have been one of the casualties as a journalist covering the war. Who knows, maybe I would have been captured and tortured somewhere along the line, because I always pushed things to the limit.

I remind myself that I don't have the ability to completely manipulate reality to be exactly what I want it to be. So now that reality is antithetical to what I want, how I can feel into it and act skillfully rather than react? How can I choose my best course of action while not pretending I don't have the pain, or running away from the pain, or blaming someone else for the circumstances of my life?

Emotional pain rarely comes up for me now. When it does, for sure, I feel it. But then, fortunately, through my life experience and my practices, I'm able to see it for what it is, and I'm able to use the techniques that yoga and Ayurveda have to offer us.

I don't think I can put my finger exactly on when remission occurred, because from that moment on, I left Western medicine and never looked back. I practiced every day for ten to twelve hours a day - spiritual studies, meditation, pranayama, yoga postures, Ayurvedic studies, deep, deep, powerful cleansings and fasting.

I think, in a way, I've returned to who I used to be as a global correspondent whose life was devoted to really making a difference, illuminating what's happening in the world, always drawn toward the suffering of peoples and cultures and exposing exploitation and injustice; but now I'm the same person in a much, much softer iteration.