We ask, “As individuals are we enough to change the world?”  After much stress and struggle, I have come to believe that the answer to this fundamental question is as close, intimate, and universal as our breath.

Breath seems so simple, typical and mundane.

Before I began taking yoga classes to improve my flexibility, I never imagined that the discipline of yoga would lead to the discovery of personal tranquility and the creation of peace around me, let alone that it would be the pathway to rediscovering the power of my own breath.

When I was in junior high, I longed to be the person who was instrumental in crafting a way for the world to be at peace.  But I had a few problems.   I was just an adolescent, and moreover I was an adolescent with a disability.

In my haste to be born, I made my entry into the world a few weeks early and startled my folks in the middle of the night.  In the process of this unexpected occurrence, my umbilical cord kinked like a garden hose and I lost some oxygen.  As the result, I developed a pronounced speech impediment and a few coordination deficits.  Now, I see that these were just circumstances, opportunities around which I could create an exciting and productive life.  But in my youth, they appeared to be severe limitations, which meant I would be able to do little that would have a meaningful impact on world. I hadn’t yet recognized that great world leaders like Gandhi didn’t act as lone wolves.  Now I realize that their skill and gift to the planet was to inspire the community around them to make a stand for significant change.

For most of my life, I chose to believe that I had no business in a gym because of my disability.  However, I was encouraged to try yoga.  So in January of 2009, I walked into the Sioux Falls, SD YMCA with some hesitation and signed up for a monthly membership.  I believed at the time that the main benefit of yoga would be to improve my physical flexibility.

If you look at pictures of people doing yoga, you see images of them stretching in different poses.  From studying these pictures, you might conclude that practicing yoga helps people to touch their toes.

I learned yoga does much more.  The key to understanding how yoga impacted me, how it impacts my fellow students and how it has a peaceful influence upon the world is far less noticeable even than touching ones toes.  It is as simple as something we all do every minute of every day.   The secret is consciously paying attention to and working with ones breath, and through this exercise consciously entering into the commonality of breath that connects every person on the planet.

Before beginning yoga, I experienced a fairly high level of anxiety on a daily basis. I would often act in ways to reduce my anxiety, either by choosing to flee situations that were causing me stress or by attempting to control them.  I found that neither approach left the people around me feeling especially peaceful.

Moreover, from the vantage point of experiencing a great deal of stress, my disability looked like an enormous threat which I either needed to deny or manipulate.  In the midst of this personal struggle, I never stopped to imagine that I was the one who was making my physical circumstances into a disability.

I assumed that both my anxiety and my physical limitations were just part of life and became resigned to them.  I had no idea that my habit of breathing unconsciously and shallowly was related to my level of stress, or that my habitual breathing patterns were constricting my potential the way a dam constricts the water behind it.

In yoga class, I gradually noticed that cultivating a consistent deep breath changed both how I felt and how I viewed the world.

Attending countless yoga classes has taught me to become conscious of my breath and to subsequently develop the skill of breathing deeply on a consistent basis.  Now that I have a practical method to relax and create peace within myself, I have discovered that the physical circumstances of my speech impediment and minor coordination issues are, in fact, one of my greatest gifts.   These circumstances allow me to connect with a wide variety of people in a significant and meaningful way.  Before I began yoga, the possibility of giving a speech was an occasion I avoided.   Now I seek out opportunities to speak to audiences about journeying from limitations to achieving extraordinary results.

Gandhi famously said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world. ”   When I was a youth, I thought this change had to be something complex and gigantic, but what I have found is that this change can be far simpler, as simple as a deep breath.  This breath cascades through us with a magnificence of a waterfall, connecting us to every other person on the planet and gifts us, moment by moment, with the opportunity to be the change we wish to see.