Yoga and med

When "the crisis" unfolded several years ago, I went to my family doctor and asked him to give me something to help me get through this. I got Paxil. At first I was grateful for it making my mind less like a stuck record, endlessly obsessing about how awful life must be for Chris. I gained a lot of weight, but I also gained a certain distance from my own thoughts. I could maintain a stoicism that I didn't feel I otherwise posessed. In the interim, I needed this crutch.

When I then tried to get off the Paxil, the haunting fears came rushing back. I thought I was going to be a "lifer" on an antidepressant because I obviously couldn't handle life as it was. To make a long story short, I found a homeopath, took some natural products and weaned myself off the Paxil very slowly. (The weight loss was more stubborn.) I also took up yoga and meditation. That was three years ago. Yoga is the first "hobby" that Ian and I have done together in our close to thirty years of marriage. Ian and I are no spring chickens, we were both overweight and I couldn't move one arm above my head for some mysterious reason.

The yoga was both wonderful and difficult. We knew it was the answer to our stress, so we perservered. Doing yoga is like letting the air out of our psychic balloon. Sometimes tears would roll down my face, not from the exercise, but from the spiritual release. The music in combination with the poses got to me in ways that organized religion up to that point had not been able to, regular church goer that I am. Ian and I also dabbled a bit in meditation, althogh not as consistently as the yoga. Today, I feel I can handle whatever it was that I couldn't manage before. I understand spirituality better because I feel I have lived it. I am at peace.