It was Sunday morning, and I was cozy in bed with my sweet Boston Terrier next to me. Sundays are usually when Mala (my dog) and I go on our long hike. I set my alarm to wake up later than usual, and hit the snooze button – a few times. I rolled over, and my dog snored in my ear. Until that woke me up… I could have stayed in bed all day.

More often than we would like to admit, it is our mind that keeps us sick and tired. When we say it’s too hard to cook. Or we tell ourselves I don’t have time to exercise. The thoughts and underlying beliefs behind those statements hold us back from our desired goal – more energy, losing weights, being healthy.

For the first 36 years of my life, I was raised in a fundamentalist religion, where I was indoctrinated by zealots, frequently abused by the leaders of my religion, and oppressed when I expressed dissenting beliefs.

My religion was medicine, and I’ve now learned that much of what I was taught was patently untrue.

My life and my view of the world changed when I started to connect with my breathing. That may sound funny but I never thought about how much I held my breath or if it was deep in my diaphragm or way up in my chest. In fact, the only reference I ever had to breathing was what my mom taught me when we would go through the Harbor Tunnel in Baltimore; “ Hold your breath, close your eyes and your wishes will come true? Hmmmm? Hold my breath and my wishes will come true?