The poems arranged before the yoga poems are about staying in touch with language during a difficult period in my life. In these early poems I tried different voices in order to arrive at change in myself. In the end I learned that all I'd done was to hide from myself and others, even those closest to me, because of a fear of commitment. The self-irony I used, while revealing some truth about myself, became a self-protective shield that not only thwarted my attempts at self-recognition but also denied my deepest desire for wholeness. While practicing Yoga, I learned that the stretching exercises I did not only disciplined my body, mind and spirit, but also challenged my imagination to apprehend points of view far different than mine. I began to wonder what it was really like to stand like a stork, or drink like a cat in the wild, or be a fish looking up out of water, or rise like a cobra. My imaginings led me far into the past, my own and the world's, and taught me to experience compassion in a new way and to accept and fully appreciate the ordinary events of my life.