34 Weeks Pregnant: Commitments to my Daughter

February 9– February 15: 34 Weeks 0 Days – 34 Weeks 6 Days.

I nearly titled this post, “Commitments to my Future Daughter,” but “future” doesn’t seem to apply any more. She has grown big and strong, has visible and frequent movements, and even responds to Richard’s voice. On Monday, I read BabyCenter’s 34 Week Pregnant blurb, which included the following:

…you’ll be happy to know that babies born between 34 and 37 weeks who have no other health problems generally do fine. They may need a short stay in the neonatal nursery and may have a few short-term health issues, but in the long run, they usually do as well as full-term babies.

The message I got: I could have a perfectly healthy baby tomorrow. Woah. I cried at least six times that day. It didn’t feel like “I’m not going to be able to do this” crying or “I don’t have enough support” crying. It felt like coming into acceptance crying.

34 weeks pregnant

Bump update: I finally grew into my “I ate a seed” shirt. Everything takes more energy now. On Sunday, I went for a swim, then took Foxy to the beach, then had to have a three-hour nap.

Yogic Musings

When I did my first yoga teacher training, the instructor was against having kids. Her opinion was that our evolutionary instinct to love our kids above all others and protect them at any cost destroys our spiritual practice. Instead of seeing all beings as equal, as the same as ourselves, as one, having a child pushes us to create division, strongly differentiate between yours and mine, and to even start wars. However, at the same time, this teacher had a beautiful view on how mindful romantic relationships can actually accentuate the spiritual practice. I like to think that having children can deepen the spiritual practice in a similar way.

Before Richard and I started trying to get pregnant, I did a stream-of-consciousness journaling exercise from The Four Desires by Rod Stryker. Through this, I unearthed what parenthood meant to me and what I hoped to get out of it. Here are my thoughts (as a mother-to-be with no real experience): I believe that children crack us open, unleashing overwhelming feelings of love, connection, and protectiveness that may have been inaccessible otherwise. I believe that children awaken a power and courage within us to become the people we want our little ones to have as role models.

If we can look past the haze of fear, defensiveness, and possessiveness, I believe that our children can be our windows into the universe; we begin to see our children in other people, inciting our deep seated love, compassion, and acceptance for our children to seep out beyond the confines of our families and embrace others. Through meditation we recognize that if we truly love our children unconditionally (right down to the point that we’ve peeled away all the transitory labels and only that which we all have in common is left), we must love all beings unconditionally.

This does not mean that we don’t give our children special treatment. Our children are our little pieces of the universe to tend to, and we have a duty and responsibility (not to mention an unshakable desire) to bathe them in care, security, attention, and affection. However, when we cultivate unconditional love for all beings, we bear in mind that although we care deeply for ours and our own, they do not inherently have any more worth than others. With this insight, we raise our children to be moral, responsible, generous, socially conscious, and ecological. We hold them accountable for hurtfulness, dishonesty, and apathy, and don’t completely shelter them from feeling the consequences of their actions.

I believe that as our children age, we recognize that through raising them, we have grown just as much ourselves. As our children become more independent and require less care, attention, and protection (or start to outright shirk it), we may take the energy we have radiated toward our children and the deep-seated love they have inspired us to cultivate, and redirect them to the rest of humanity. Parenthood ignites within us a potential, fierceness, and power that we can then harness to fulfill our life’s purpose. I don’t consider raising children to be my dharma (life’s purpose)—I consider it to be part of my moksha, my spiritual development, my pathway to freedom from the internal barriers, limitations, and misconceptions that may hold me back from my dharma.

Addendum: Having children obviously isn’t the only way to find this type of spiritual development. I totally support people who choose not to have children. Also, children are my moksha, but someone else’s children may be their dharma (purpose), artha (means to achieve life’s purpose), or kama (pleasure), which is amazing. For me, it helps to be clear on how my children fit into my life when thinking about things like my career.

Commitments To My Daughter

As the birth of the baby approaches—maybe tomorrow, maybe seven weeks from now—it has become strikingly apparent that there’s a piece missing from the musings above: they are all about what I hope to get out of parenting, but speak nothing to how I aspire to serve my daughter. When people get married, they recite commitments to treat each other with honor, respect, and love. If this ritual is important in a wedding between two consenting adults, I feel it’s a paramount part of birthing a helpless, vulnerable, unconsenting being into a lifelong relationship with her parents. When Richard and I wrote our wedding commitments, we called them “affirmations” rather than “vows,” and I use the same language here. This means that some of these commitments are loftier than they’d be if I had to pinky swear that I’d get it right on my first try, but they engender who I aspire to grow into as a mother.

To My Dear Daughter,

These are my affirmations to you:

I see you, hear you, and feel you for who you truly are so I can communicate love and support in a meaningful way. (This line is from Daddy and my wedding affirmations, so I guess it’s one of our family values now). In turn, I am authentic with you so you can genuinely know me.

I protect you when you are defenseless. As you grow and develop independence, I teach you courage, assertiveness, diplomacy, compassion and self-confidence to set you up to fight your own battles. When that time of independence comes, I support you with messages of trust and empowerment, and avoid interference.

I love you even when you hurt me, hate me, or make choices I don’t agree with. However, loving you doesn’t mean I enable destructive behavior. I have the insight and courage to discern between when you need support and compassion, and when the most powerful thing I can do is to step back.

I discipline you intentionally and consciously, not out of anger, resentment, or anxiety.

I care for my own physical, emotional, and mental health so I show can show up energetic, present, and joyful for you.

I instill in you acceptance, honor, and respect for your body, and stand against messages of shame. I hope that developing a positive body image will inspire healthy choices, especially when it comes to choosing partners when you’re older. I [do my best] to give you space to experiment, to fall head-over-heels in love, and even to experience profound heartbreak. I can’t make any promises about what Daddy will make space for.

I will probably dress you in frilly dresses and oversized floral headbands for as long as you’ll let me, but beyond this I treat you with gender-neutral respect, confidence, and expectations. Just as I don’t deny you anything simply because you’re a girl, I don’t give you special privileges just because you’re a girl. I [try to] keep Daddy from spoiling you, but I suspect he wont be able to help it—you are his dream-come-true.

I trust Daddy to take care of you in every way so that you two can have a strong, healthy bond. I make space for him to share his passions and interests with you.

I give you enough structure for you to develop security and trust, and enough freedom to explore, express your creativity, and make your own mistakes. I allow this balance to shift as you grow and develop.

Although I am responsible for you and care deeply for you, I hold onto no disillusion that I possess you, control you, or am entitled to anything from you. I cherish anything you offer me—whether it’s physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual—as a gift. I set you up to achieve my best understanding of a successful life, but ultimately trust your intuition about what success means to you.

As I get to know you, I’m sure these affirmations will evolve, and I’ll probably come up with many, many more. I am so excited to hold you in my arms and to see who you become.

Love,

Mommy

Write in a way that scares you

I had this post completely written well before Monday when I normally publish, but what I wrote definitely falls into the category of writing described above. It took me a few days to muster up the courage to make the final edits and share with the world.

32 Weeks Pregnant: Birth Prep Class

January 26 – February 1: 32 Weeks 0 Days – 32 Weeks 6 Days.

This week, Richard and I are starting to feel like we need to have everything ready to go for the baby’s arrival. I have a couple friends who’ve given birth six weeks before their due dates, and I think I subconsciously set 34 weeks as the time to have everything ready.

I finally bought the crib mattress. It’s a foam core mattress that is so light I can lift it effortlessly, which made me feel good about myself in the store. It was so exciting to get the crib all set up! It made it feel more real for Richard too, and on his suggestion we order several starter items for the nursery (wipes, diapers, butt cream, etc.)

Crib ready to go!

Woodland-themed everything ready to go for when baby arrives! Thank you Mindy for the mobile, Dad for the sheets, and Hope for the clothes.

The biggest milestone of the week was finishing our childbirth preparation class. Early on, a friend recommended I take a third-party birth prep class instead of the one the hospital offered to get less biased education. She also suggested a class that spanned several weeks instead of one packed all into one day so we would have time to digest the information and identify questions. Upon the suggestion of my doula, Richard and I chose to do Rachel Yellin’s 4-day childbirth preparation class, which focuses on the use of relaxation and hypnosis techniques during childbirth. Rachel’s class is definitely geared toward women hoping or an unmedicated birth, but more than that, it’s focused on empowered, conscious birth—on teaching couples about their options so they can make informed choices.

My doula told me that Rachel’s class was experiential rather than just providing a bunch of information about birth, and this was definitely true of the first and last days of the course. We tried out several birthing techniques that involved breathing, relaxation, visualization, affirmation, and intimacy (I wont go into specifics and give away her trade secrets). I’d already read several books about childbirth, so doing a birth prep class that focused more on practice and experience than information and facts appealed to me. Her homework assignments involved bonding time between partners, listening to her hypnosis and relaxation audio program, and checking out other resources she provided. I’d previously been listening to the audio tracks from the Hypnobabies self-study course, and something about Rachel’s tracks was more soothing and relaxing for me. I think it’s partly because her dialog moves along more quickly (without feeling rushed), which makes it easier to follow when I’m feeling restless (That said, I love some of the Hypnobabies techniques and tracks, and hope to incorporate them during my birthing time). Richard enjoys Rachel’s tracks too. After falling asleep to the Relaxation and Affirmations for the Birth Partner track, he says he “inexplicably” wakes up in the morning feeling more affectionate toward me and wanting to help me out and support me in any way he can.

The middle two days were more informational. My favorite part of these days was hearing birth stories from Rachel’s years working as a doula. We also went over many of the interventions the hospital could do, the rationale behind their protocols, what the evidence had to say about these protocols, and what our options were. To some, it may seem overly cautious to question hospital’s protocols, but historically medicalized childbirth doesn’t have the best track record. It is well known that for many years doctors routinely performed episiotomies (cutting into the perineum to make the vaginal opening larger) because there was a theory that this would reduce tearing and other complications. Then they actually did some research and found out that in most cases episiotomies don’t prevent anything and often lead to a challenging recovery.

I’d read about the big ticket items like labor induction techniques and pain medication before, but I’d never thought about whether I’d want to automatically be fitted with an IV upon arrival at the hospital (instead of waiting to see if I’d actually need it) or if I should go along with routine hourly vaginal exams (which arguably aren’t that informative and increase risk of infection every time). Rachel also talked about the interventions hospitals do with babies. Finding out that I could opt out of these procedures was less interesting to me than hearing Rachel’s suggestions for making these procedures gentler and more comfortable for the baby (e.g. have hospital staff calibrate the scale with a blanket and cap so the baby doesn’t have to lie on a cold, hard, paper-covered plastic. Or, hold a warm washcloth over the baby’s foot before the PKU test to improve blood flow enough that the nurse doesn’t have to turn the baby’s heel into a pin cushion trying to get a blood sample).

Before taking this course, I certain things as completely out-of-my-control when there’s actually a chance some of them aren’t. For example, hospitals test for Group B Step (GBS) around 36 weeks (a strain of bacteria that’s benign in the mother, but may be harmful to the baby), and the hospital tells you that you either have it or you don’t, and you can’t do anything about it. It’s true that there isn’t definitive, hard evidence that you can do anything about GBS besides taking the antibiotics they’ll recommend during labor; however, there are other things you can try, like taking probiotics or eating yogurt.

Similarly, if the baby is spending a lot of time head-up in utero (not promising for vaginal birth in the hospital), there are some easy, harmless techniques you can attempt yourself to encourage the baby to turn head down before the hospital recommends medical interventions to try to flip the baby in the last month (like walking up stairs). As it turns out, I would have to put up a fuss at the hospital to officially find out which direction my baby is facing before 36 weeks, so I’ve chosen to pick my battles and wait. I often feel kicking under my ribs and hiccups in my lower belly, so I’m fairly certain the baby spends at least a chunk of her time head down.

Earlier in pregnancy, after reading through the manual for the Hypnobabies Self-Study course (reviewed here), I felt like if I didn’t have the ideal birth situation—with the baby head-down, facing my back, and a pitocin-free labor—I could no longer expect the techniques to be successful. The Hypnobabies affirmations are specific and concrete, relating mostly to that one ideal type of birth. I didn’t get this sense with Rachel’s course. Her affirmations are more vague and focus mostly on intuitively cultivating a healthy, powerful, relaxed internal state, regardless of what type of physical birth occurs. Although it was clear which choices Rachel would make if she were giving birth (which, of course, meant the information was a little biased), I didn’t feel obligated or even expected to agree with her. She seemed genuinely interested in giving parents-to-be the resources to make their own decisions for their bodies and babies.

18 Weeks Pregnant: Pregnancy Firsts

October 20 – October 26: 18 Weeks 0 Days – 18 Weeks 6 Days.

My eighteenth week of pregnancy was a week of firsts:

First Round Ligament Pain

Unknowingly at the time, Jane Austin‘s Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training was one of the best things I did to prepare for pregnancy. I took it years ago, but it permanently shifted my perception of pregnancy and birth from unknown and scary to natural and empowering. We read books like Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth and watched videos of real labors and births (which can be completely different from what we see on TV and in movies). We also came to understand the changes that occur in a pregnant woman’s body so we could form sequences of yoga poses that could help alleviate discomfort and prepare women for labor and birth. A piece of this training came back to me in the middle of the night this week.

I woke up uncomfortable (which is getting to be a usual occurrence), and as I rolled over and yelped as I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in my right lower abdomen. My first thought was, Oh my God, I have a hernia. My intestines definitely just burst through my abdominal wall. I worriedly palpated my abdomen, but didn’t feel any odd bulges. My second thought was, Wait, didn’t Jane Austin say something about pain in the ligaments that support the uterus? That’s one of the reasons pregnant women aren’t suppose to sit straight up… I reached for my phone, Googled “uterus ligament pain pregnancy,” and was displayed a list of websites about round ligament pain naming the exact symptoms I’d just experienced. Unless the pain persists, it’s relatively harmless.

I’m so grateful that tidbit of information from Jane’s training stuck, or I’d have been up all night worrying (and probably Googling much scarier things).

First Baby Kick!

While I was teaching yoga, I demoed supta baddha konasana (reclined butterfly pose). As my knees opened and my lower abdomen broadened, I felt a little pop below my belly button. It wasn’t painful, it felt like a little tiny fist without much strength behind it had socked me from the inside. It was pretty neat, and made the baby immediately seem more real. When I went to my appointment later in the week, the midwife heard a kick on the fetal heart rate monitor, so I’m pretty sure that what I felt while teaching yoga was indeed the baby. I haven’t felt much else since, but chances are the baby’s movements are such an unfamiliar sensations that I don’t recognize them yet.

First Group Prenatal Session

Saint Luke’s, the hospital I plan to give birth at, has the option of doing prenatal sessions individually or in a group of women with similar due dates. This week was my first group prenatal session, and I loved it! At the begin, we recorded our own weight and blood pressure, which I enjoyed as a subtle way to take ownership or my own health and body. Then, we each got a couple minutes of one-on-one time with a midwife off to the side to listen to our baby’s heartbeat and ask personal questions. The rest of the session was in a group setting, wherein we discussed the discomforts of pregnancy (we focus on a different topic every time). It was great to get the midwife’s professional opinions on information from articles and books I’d read and to discuss solutions with other women experiencing the similar changes. I’m looking forward to my next sessions!

First Week Fending for Myself

Richard has been reading The Birth Partner, and has been taking its advice to heart. Already, he’s been trying to support me in any way I need, which usually means making me snacks. That made it especially lonely when he was away on business the whole week. It wasn’t that hard to be alone, but it accented what a wonderful luxury it is to have a supportive partner who will cut up mangoes for me, rub cocoa butter on my belly, and voluntarily carry my purse and all the shopping bags for me when I’m tired. Needless to say, I glad to have him back and I’m trying not to use up all his goodwill before I really need it.

18 Weeks

Eighteen weeks pregnant. I’m wearing a maternity shirt, but I still don’t have much of a bump to fill it out.

(I love the shirt I’m wearing above because it’s got a peek-a-boob feature so it can double as a nursing top when the baby arrives. I’m much more willing to spend money on something that I can wear for more than just a few months! Here’s the link to the Etsy store I bought it from, if anyone is interested).

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om Mani Padme Hum  is one of my favorite mantras. Translated directly, it means something like: the jewel is in the lotus flower. One of my teachers explained this metaphor to me: if we peel away the layers of our identity (much as one might peel away the many petals of a lotus flower), we reveal our true nature (the jewel inside). If we let go of the transient labels we by which define ourselves (and they’re all transient), we uncover our inner light. We can find moksha, freedom.

We can begin to peel away these layers in meditation by questioning the pieces of our identity: Who would I be if I lost my job title? Who would I be if I lost a leg? Who would I be on mood-altering drugs? Who would I be if went through gender reassignment surgery? You may find that even after you’ve whittled down to the bare bones of your identity, there’s still a conscious observer who can ask the question, Who am I now? Once you can’t think of any more pieces to dismiss from your identity, ask yourself, How is who I am different from who anyone else is? Underneath all of the layers that separate us, you will find that which connects us all.

Om Mani Padme Hum came to my mind today while I was reading fellow students’ tributes to one of my most influential and beloved teachers, Jacques-Andre Larrivée, who recently passed away. One person’s tribute quoted something that he always used to say:

Qui es-tu pour penser que tu peux changer le monde?
Qui es-tu pour penser que tu peux changer?
Qui es-tu pour penser?
Qui es-tu?
Qui?

Who are you to think you can change the world?
Who are you to think you can change?
Who are you to think?
Who are you?
Who?

This same peeling away of ayers as we can do in meditation, as described above. But in this case we deconstruct a dharma, a purpose: changing the world. The amazing thing about this deconstruction is that if we get to the point that we can answer, “Who?” (independent even of identity) we unearth our enormous power:

Who? The continuity of the universe,…
Who are you? —a significant and dynamic scope of it—
Who are you to think? …expressed as an intelligent system…
Who are you to think you can change? …whose identity is more a matter of perspective than one of reality…
Who are you to think you can change the world? …and who simultaneously takes part in the world, contains the world, and is the world.

That’s who you are to think you can change the world.

Om mani padme hum.

Why Yoga Bootcamp?

After ten years teaching fitness and yoga and seven years studying Kinesiology and Cognitive Science I’m finally putting it all together: In January, I’m teaching Yoga EMPOWER Bootcamp at Thriveability in San Francisco. This four-week transformational series combines yoga and meditation with fitness and goal-setting to provide students safe, fun, and motivating, complete mental, physical, and spiritual workout. Here’s why I’m so hyped up about it:

Why Yoga?

Side Plank with Tree

Side Plank with Tree (Photo Credit: Faye Chao)

Yoga is the foundation. It is the ultimate system for letting go of what no longer serves us, coming into acceptance of who we truly are, and realizing our divine purpose. Without the work we do in yoga (or other systems that guide us to develop in the same way), any action we take or goal we set is directionless and purposeless. The present moment awareness that yoga cultivates provides us a springboard from which we can take mindful, intentional action. Also, yoga helps us develop body awareness and flexibility, feels amazing, and is just plain fun.

Why Not Just Yoga?

As with any other type of paradigm that involves physical activity, there are common patterns of muscle imbalance that can arise when yoga is our only form of regimented movement (these imbalances often aren’t from the yoga, we come in with them and can reinforce them in yoga if we’re not careful). Even if we have yoga teachers who enforce alignment meticulously, it doesn’t mean we will rehabilitate these imbalances; often, it means we are discouraged from going into positions where our body shows signs of that imbalance. Yoga is not supposed to be about ego or goals, so we should be content with backing off and taking it easy, right? This is great for avoiding injuries on the mat, but it avoids problems rather than addressing them, so it allows us to retain imbalances that may lead to injury off the mat during our day-to-day movements.

It’s so amazing and healing to be able to think to yourself, it’s okay that I can’t do handstand. I’m perfect the way I am. But, without losing touch with that thought, it’s also worthwhile to question, why can’t I do handstand? Where am I losing the energy that is supposed to be holding me up? If the energetic bottleneck is something physical, it’s doesn’t really make sense to address it only with the spiritual practice of yoga (especially if you’ve been doing yoga for years and nothings changed). Drawing on the extensive knowledge of kinesiologists, exercise specialists, fitness instructors, and physical therapists would be much more directed and intentional.

Why Fitness?

Core Twist

Core Twist (Photo Credit: Faye Chao)

Fitness helps us fill in the gaps of our yoga practice so we can maintain strong, healthy, functional, injury-free bodies. Developing body awareness, stability, strength, endurance, and power using fitness allows us to practice a broader range of poses safely. Often, the physically challenging poses offered as options in yoga classes will only ever be available to those who already have the fitness to do them (or who gain that fitness outside of yoga). Regular yoga classes often don’t provide the frequency, intensity, and type of movements to elicit the significant training effects needed to build the strength for a challenging pose like handstand.

For example, in yoga we do moderate-intensity core work as part of our warm-up or prep-work to bring awareness and circulation into the core and prime these vital muscles for the rest of class. It makes the core more able to contract properly in the short term. In fitness, we do high-intensity core work toward the end of class. The goal in this case is to fatigue the muscles, which is essential for improving strength and endurance over time. However, it makes the core less able to contract in the moment, which is why it’s safer to do at the end of class.

Personal Experience: After doing both yoga and fitness for years, I cancelled my gym membership and started doing vinyasa yoga almost exclusively. It only took a year of this for me to developed some painful imbalances and hypermobilities in my body that kept getting worse the more I practiced yoga. Everyone told me to stick to gentle classes, but the gentle poses made me feel worse than anything else. It wasn’t until I started doing Pilates and rehabilitative exercises that my body finally started recovering. Not only was I in less pain, as I strengthened my glutes, my hip flexibility increased instead of decreasing. Once my body was more stable it was safer for it to open up. As I strengthened my core to support my aching spine, a side effect was that poses that had never been accessible to me before started showing up. All of a sudden I could stick a handstand–if only for a couple seconds. I began to see poses like handstand not as an end goal, but as a check-in on stability, integrity, balance, and body awareness.

Doing fitness is not only about the physical benefits, there’s a philosophical aspect to it, too. It’s one thing to have a vision and a purpose, and even to clearly see your path (yoga and meditation are phenomenal forms of self-study that allow you to establish these things). It’s another thing to have the drive and know-how to follow the path toward your intention. In one of my college classes, we learned that will power is like a muscle: if you overuse it, it becomes burnt out; but if you practice it regularly without exhausting it, you’ll slowly build its strength and endurance. By adding fitness into our weekly practice, which–unlike yoga–is goal-oriented, we develop our tenacity, our determination, our perseverance, and our will. When we experience ourselves achieving our what we said we would achieve (especially if the goal was audacious), we begin to trust our own words, and our intentions become more powerful.

Why Inversions and Arm Balances?

Eka Pada Galavasana

Eka Pada Galavasana (Photo Credit: Faye Chao)

1. They’re fun.

2. They are informative. If you wanted know where you tend to collapse in your body, do handstand and you’ll find out immediately. While many other poses whisper bits and pieces of feedback that are easy to miss, arm balances and, even more so, inversions give you a full presentation on a loudspeaker with PowerPoint slides.

3. They are empowering. The first time we see an inversion or an arm balance, our immediate reaction is, I can’t. But then (after a little work, perseverence, and guidance), it turns out we can, it helps us re-evaluate other possibilities in your life we’ve dismissed. Very few things are impossible. It just takes practice to identify and diligently follow the path to your wildest dreams.

Why So Often? Why so long? Why so early?

I want Yoga EMPOWER Bootcamp to remind you how powerful you and inspire you to tap into that power to achieve your divine purpose. The program is 5-days-a-week (Monday to Friday) at 6am for 4 weeks. To make radical changes in our lives, we must practice new habits regularly and for a sustained period. We alternate what we do everyday so we never end up with overworked or fatigued, and we take weekends off to we can recharge our will power and maintain balance in our lives. As with any program for improving fitness, it takes six weeks to see significant results, and I wouldn’t want you to miss out on experiencing what your capable of by cutting the program any shorter. However, for now, we’re offering a trial version of the program that’s only four weeks long, which is a little easier to commit to. Stay tuned for the full six-week version.

Down dog on the Wall with Leg Lift

Down dog on the Wall with Leg Lift (Photo Credit: Faye Chao)

6am is earlier than most of us have anything planned, so there aren’t many excuses for not showing up. It’s hard to get up that early for six whole weeks, but each of us knows we’re capable of it–it’s another way we will develop will power. Also, when we’re waking up that early every day, we start to feel the effects of our lifestyles. They’re amplified. If we pay a even an iota of attention to our energy levels, it will become painfully apparent which lifestyle choices allow us to get out of bed and do an intense workout first thing in the morning, and which leave us running late, groggy, and unable to harness our power.

See you bright and early on January 6th at Thriveability!

I am so excited to share this program with you. I truly, wholeheartedly believe it will help you realize your purpose, develop the skills to achieve it, and learn some fun poses along the way.