I think that growth and spiritual awareness come in slow increments. Sometimes you don't know it's happening.

What I wasn't prepared for were the feelings of anxiety that it stirred in me. I wasn't prepared for the initial feeling of I don't want to have to do that again. I was scared.

A lot of exercise is mindless; you can have music or the radio on and not be aware. But if you're aware in anything you do - and it doesn't have to be yoga - it changes you. Being present changes you.

Self-Realization Fellowship seemed like training. It was the training ground for finding a sense of peace in myself. Because that's my job. It's no one else's.

Living a simpler life has turned out to be one of the keys to being more awake and healthy.

For me, first, it's finding quiet in my life - and I do that through yoga and meditation. It's also been a matter of changing the way I eat, because I think what we eat can inform who we are; food is a chemical and a drug to a certain extent.

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.