Second semester of college. Anxiety and stress rearing their all too familiar ugly heads. I walk down to the gym. The basic dance class was too full by the time freshmen got to register, but hope sprung eternal that someone would drop.

Honestly, I don’t remember the particulars of the class. It’s after class that stuck. The walk back out into the January New England gray. The world dropped back onto my shoulders like the proverbial ton of bricks. Cliché, I know, but true enough that I remember it now, more than a quarter century (gasp) later.

Because I noticed.

I noticed that the worries of my world had disappeared for 90 minutes. I was in my body, not my head. The choreography was just enough to concentrate on that the workload/campus politics/burgeoning relationships/late teen angst was lost in rhythm, breath and movement.

It’d be another 15 years before I found my way into a yoga studio.