Since I come from a family of mental instability, and I have suffered depression myself, I knew that living in shame is senseless and painful, and that by talking about it, I have come to peace with it. The stigma behind people's suffering needs to end. We as a community need to embrace these disorders, try to understand them (if only just to talk about them) so that we can cease being defined by them.

I really felt that I had to stay level, I had to control, I had to know what I was eating, I had to know what I was doing, I had to work out. All that stuff is very powerful and it really helps, but now I don't do it out of survival. At first, I was just trying to survive. I assumed at some point I'd be screwed otherwise.

We live in a society that is afraid of ways of being it doesn't understand.

I believe that everybody comes from pain and a certain amount of dysfunction.

Sometimes you can't see your way out. The "dark night of the soul" - it's a reality for many, many people.

I really believe that we all have the ability to come out of our story. But you have to tell your story first in order to come out of it.

Starting out in a beginner class and really understanding the fundamentals of yoga is really important.