Dear Danielle,

Three years ago, you graduated from high school and prepared to embark on the classic and privileged college journey. Young, wide-eyed and totally naïve, you had no idea what you were in store for. You cared about women’s rights, the arts, and were a hopeless romantic without any relationship experience. You were a pushover, kind of a know-it-all, and you were way into deep, your first week of college. You wore your heart on your sleeve and helped others so much without taking care of yourself. Now, I am a rising senior and I’ve got one more year in this place called home. After finishing my third year, here are a few things I want to tell you.

I can talk about how you won’t be able to write a paper in a night ,anymore, or about how you are the only one doing your laundry from here on out. But I’d rather talk about something you and I both know is really on your mind. Love. Sex. You will fall in love -- hard -- and be completely broken. You will feel a churn in your stomach and an emptiness that will make you question your ability to ever find love again. You will be pushed and pulled and pressured to do things and acts that make you question your values and ability to say no. You will break down in tears after he leaves because you feel dirty. You will look in the mirror and question yourself. You want to make others around you feel empowered and happy…but why in the world do you feel like you perpetually have a cold or the flu? Your body aches and your heart constantly pounds -- and not in a good way, anymore. How could you look into his beautiful, soulful eyes and find any imperfection? You didn’t want to. You didn’t want to admit you were just a body to keep him warm when the snow started to fall. But I thank God every day that you finally did.

When you broke up with him, you started to run. Not just a mile or two, but six miles every damn day. It became an addiction. When he was with that gorgeous willowy girl, you pushed harder through each mile. It got to the point where your toenails fell off. I joke, now, that he didn’t break our heart, but rather our toenails. While running helped your heart from pounding in pain, and your head from spinning out of control, your body still held onto serious emotional trauma.

Emotions integrate and motivate the body. The limbic system is involved with the emotional aspects of behavior related to survival, including pain, anger, rage, fear, sorrow, aggression, passivity, and sexual feelings. Honey, you were feeling a roller coaster of these your first year. Experientially, we feel signals such as heat flashes, sweating palms, tense muscles or cold feet. Do you remember when your hamstrings were so tight you could barely walk up Bosler’s steps to French class? Or how about when your back ached so much you could barely sleep for days? The body has specific places where our emotional traumas are held: the shoulders, the stomach, the lower back, and the jaw are common areas. Do you see, Danielle, that your unexpressed emotions continued to be stored in your body, despite how far, or how fast, you ran?

You were literally running in circles of depression and manic anxiety until you found something magical. Yoga. When we started to move our body in an intentional way, we released our stored emotions and opened our mind to new possibilities. We initiated the release of tension in the body and expanded your potential for health and movement. You learned to let go. Because emotions manifest as physical sensations in the body, we learned to use yoga as experiential work to navigate and guide our emotional awareness. As we felt sensations register in our body, we made choices with power.

You still wear your heart on your sleeve and always lend a helping hand. But now you know how to take care of yourself, by yourself. Oh, and if you’re curious, of course, you became civil friends with him. Life is too short to hold onto the past. You let your light shine and warm others around you, even the ones who hurt you. It’s just in your nature.