I do not believe adolescence ends until one is twenty five years old. That’s when the brain is fully developed and we can truly see how our actions will affect us for the rest of our lives. When I became twenty five I made a number of significant changes in my life, including making a lifelong commitment to myself to do something for my mind, body, emotions and spirit every day of the week, with the understanding that it is ok to miss one or two days a week in any of those categories. So at age twenty five I began to take an adult ballet class every day after work and on Saturday mornings. When I moved to San Francisco (from New York City where I was born and raised), I started taking my daily ballet class at Dance Spectrum, which was located on 22nd Street and Mission Street.  I had no intention of performing but I did wind up as a member of the corp de ballet for Dance Spectrum when they needed a lot of extra dancers for a large performance. I also danced with the Gilbert Chun Dance Company that performed mostly at nursing homes and senior residences.  That lasted until I was forty. At that time, my work schedule changed and I could no longer attend daily ballet class. So instead I joined a local gym and began weight training since I could do that on my schedule.

That lasted for thirty years, until I was seventy years old. By that time I had grown tired of weight training and decided I needed to do something else to stay limber and in shape. When I was twenty five I had taken a couple of Yoga classes at the Integral Yoga Institute in New York City. Over the years I used a number of the asanas I earned there as my warmup exercises before ballet class and before weight training. The gym where I had membership has a full schedule of exercise and Yoga classes at their various locations. So early in 2016 I began taking Yoga classes. For the first year of practice it was usually about two classes a week. Then in the second year of practice, it was more like three classes a week. I continued to do some light weight training on the other days of the week. 

On New Year’s Day in 2016 I finished a Yoga class and on my way back to my car, I was thinking about the Yoga classes I had taken and made a commitment to myself to take a Yoga class every day, again with the understanding that it would be ok to miss a day or two a week. I chuckled inside thinking this was on New Year’s Day and I had just made a “New Year’s Resolution.”  It was a matter of coincidence since I don’t really believe in New Year’s Resolutions. And for the next two years I remained committed to that schedule.  

Then last year in March the pandemic hit.  The shelter in place order for senior citizens was issued by Mayor Breed about March 7th. I remember saying to my Yoga teacher that this would be the last class until further notice and that I would try to take my daily class via Youtube. So that is what I started doing. I have also been a member of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav (located on Dolores Street and 16th Street, just down the hill from IYI). The rabbi, Mychal Copeland, in addition to being a rabbi also happened to be a yogi and a certified Yoga instructor. She had been holding a once a month Yoga class I had been attending on Saturday mornings. But with the pandemic, that quickly changed to a zoom Yoga class. After the first zoom Yoga class with Rabbi Copeland, several of us were chatting online, including myself and Stuart Dick. I mentioned the difficulty I was having with the Youtube Yoga classes and Stuart let me know that the Integral Yoga Institute of San Francisco was also doing Zoom Yoga classes.  So I checked the IYI website and started attending classes through IYI.

Now when I was attending in person Yoga classes I usually had to miss one or two days a week. Given travel time I had to have a three hour block of time free to attend an in person Yoga class.  With the Zoom classes I realized that was no longer a factor. So I began to have a daily practice through the zoom classes every morning at IYI. I had not any plan to set any sort of record but sometime after a few months, I realized that I had not missed a day’s Yoga class. Almost all of the classes were with IYI but I also attended Zoom Yoga classes through my synagogue and a few other places. When Thanksgiving came around and IYI took the day off, I attended a private Yoga class given by a Yoga teacher in Berkeley.  On Christmas and New Year’s Day when IYI was again closed, I took a Yoga class through Youtube, one given by Swami Satchidananda and another Hatha Yoga class I found on Youtube.  Then in March of this year I realized I had gone more than 365 days practicing Yoga in a row.

In a lot of ways, my life has been about commitment. I realized that all the good things in my life that I have  came through patience and commitment.  In addition to my commitment to a daily Yoga practice, I was a marriage and family therapist in private practice for most of my adult life until retirement.  I have also been married to my husband now for thirty five years. When I was 53 years old I began to study and play the conga drums in Latin jazz ensembles. I also practice on the drums daily. It is difficult for me to say what are the results of this commitment to a daily practice since I do not know what my life would be like had I not made this commitment. But I have faith that my life has improved mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually because of this daily practice of Yoga. And I would not have been able to do it without the daily Zoom classes through the Integral Yoga Institute of San Francisco. For that I am exceedingly grateful.