Ally Hamilton - Yogas Healing Power: Looking Inward for Change, Growth, and Peace

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Yogas Healing Power: Looking Inward for Change, Growth & Peace 2016 by Ally Hamilton.

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First e-book edition 2016

E-book ISBN: 9780738748986

Cover design: Lisa Novak

Cover images: iStockphoto.com/29873472IS_ImageSource
iStockphoto.com/10685014skynesher

Cover photo of author: Josh Nelson

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hamilton, Ally, author.

Title: Yogas healing power : looking inward for change, growth, and peace /

by Ally Hamilton.

Description: FIRST EDITION. | Woodbury : Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd, 2016. |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016018664 (print) | LCCN 2016019817 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738747835 | ISBN 9780738748986 ()

Subjects: LCSH: Yoga.

Classification: LCC B132.Y6 H26 2016 (print) | LCC B132.Y6 (ebook) | DDC

204/.36dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016018664 Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publishers website for links to current author websites.

Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

Acknowledgments

Ive read countless books over the years, but I never realized how many people are involved in the birthing of a manuscript until I wrote one myself. I am forever grateful to my agent, Dana Newman, because without her enthusiasm and encouragement, I doubt this book would exist. It is a rare gift to find someone with so much knowledge who is also willing to be patient with a first-time author and is ready to walk through some fire on her behalf when necessary.

Id like to thank the amazing Angela Wix, whose insight and keen eye made this book stronger in many ways. The whole team at Llewellyn Worldwide, including Andrea Neff and Kat Sanborn, has been wonderful, supportive, and instrumental in helping me to create this book, which is such a huge part of my heart and is the reflection of a journey that began over twenty years ago in a sweaty yoga studio and continues to this day.

Id like to thank my ex-husband , the father of my kids, and my business partner, Dorian Cheah. Weve been on an incredible, exhausting, wild, challenging, and interesting adventure over the last decade, and I am amazed at all the beauty thats come out of it. Without it, there would be no website, no global community of yogis taking classes, no Facebook page, and no blog, which really set the wheels in motion for all this writing.

Id like to thank the blog readers, who always show up with enthusiasm, insight, honesty, and humor. Without a chorus of people screaming for me to write a book, I doubt I would have done it. I didnt know that a real community could grow out of a virtual world, and I am very grateful.

I want to thank a few key teachers along the way: Michael Trano, my seventh grade English teacher; Jayne Connell, my tenth grade AP English teacher; and Mary Gordon, whose class I took at Barnard College of Columbia University. The amount of power that teachers have to change a life is amazing, and I am astounded and thankful to have crossed paths with such incredible, insightful, and talented people, who encouraged and nurtured my writing.

Strangely and perfectly, I also find myself surrounded by brilliant writers who are also treasured friends. Dani Shapiro agreed through a text to write the foreword to this book, even though she was immersed in her own forthcoming book. I am so lucky to have such a giving, kind, funny, generous, and insightful friend in my life, who also happens to be an accomplished and phenomenal writer. Mark Sarvas, also working on his (second) novel, stopped frequently to talk me off the ledge and give me advice and support whenever I asked for it. And throughout the birthing of this book, Claire Bidwell Smith spent many afternoons at my house reassuring me, as our kids tore the place apart, that writing and motherhood can somehow messily and beautifully coexist.

Id also like to thank Dharma Mittra, Jorgen Christiansson, Bryan Kest, Ana Forrest, and Beryl Bender Birch for having such a huge and lasting effect on my yoga practice and for imparting so much wisdom over the years. Great teachers awaken the best in us and encourage us to feed it and share it, and I am grateful to count these people as my teachers.

Over the years, I have come to understand the importance of having friends in my life who are more like the family Ive chosen for myself. I want to thank Joshua Nelson, Anne Lilburn, Bob Demaa, Adam J. Smith, and Alex Karlin for being my unshakable crew over the last decade. I have to thank Beth Quayle, an amazing friend and therapist and, always, my first reader, for her thoughtful comments and compassionate delivery. Jessica Perez Bricke has to receive a public thank-you as well. Sometimes you meet someone and know youre going to be friends forever, whether they like it or not! If youre lucky, you have a handful of people who really get you and love you in full acknowledgment of your flaws and your gifts. I am so lucky to call these people my friends.