The years of living in my paradise Soul Sanctuary and making the 30,000 decisions that go into a construction renovation project, involving adding another floor to an existing structure and teaching yoga there from 1985 to 2015 in Newton MA were extraordinary. All my life I’d searched for a place to live happily in the world and in my body. And I did it there. I discovered paradise in my own body free of the affliction of asthma. It was the first time in my life that my home became my paradise on earth.
There I shared the yoga I learned during my certification program at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, and wrote BodyLove®Yoga: A Manual for Bringing Trauma Sensitive Yoga to Diverse Populations (For Teachers, Administrators, Researchers and Grant Writers).
Once I learned that yoga began in Africa and travelled to India where it was codified I felt fully grounded in yoga.
“Here in this body are the sacred rivers: there are the sun and the moon, as well as the pilgrimage places. I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body.” ~ Saraha (circa 8th century CE)
The snowy winter of 2015 from Massachusetts to North Carolina began the next stage of my journey. I became a “pilgrim of love” and moved close to my family because they said: “Come and let us love you. ” And so began writing full time until the present. The final full draft of Paradise Lies: A Modern Slave Narrative will be completed on May 18, 2020 about 103,000 words. I’m now writing the synopsis and moving on to the next stage, working with my editor on submissions to literary agents and publishers.