Two years ago a student shuffled into my office at the San Francisco Bay Club, medical dossier in hand. He asked if yoga could help him minimize or cope with his troubles. Fairly grounded realist that I am, I didn’t want to oversell optimism just yet, so I said, "Well, maybe . . . I’m not sure . . . I suppose that it depends on a lot of factors, such as the nature and degree of your problem." He slid his Excel spreadsheet of medical history since 1989 (the year of the Loma Prieta Earthquake for you history buffs) across the desk, and asked me to take a look. I, of course, thought that walking around with a pocket-sized pain and medication ledger was a tad overboard. But, during our conversation I realized that, this gentleman was not totally crazed. Instead, he’s been in severe pain for almost two decades and this document was a way to organize, understand, and manage the difficulties. I also realized that he’d seen such an array of specialists over the past 16 years that he’d started to feel like a broken record . . . "I have had two lumbar surgeries . . . I suffer from acute sacroilliac pain and severe sciatica . . . I have substantial nerve degeneration in my legs . . ." and so on.

I gave him his traveling files back and asked him, "Why yoga? Why now?" A long, heartfelt conversation followed. Afterward, I answered his question about whether I could use yoga to help him: I told him, quite simply, that we could try. That was it—no miracles, no claims of grandeur, no quick store-bought solutions, no medical advice.

That was enough. He decided to use yoga to cultivate greater well-being, manage his pain, and develop a deeper kinesthetic and emotional understanding of his injuries and flare-ups. Two years later we still work together three days a week. Some weeks he feels good and other weeks, well, not so much. But our practice is always an honest revelation and a sincere investigation of what is happening inside his body and mind. And, as a yoga teacher whose had his fair share of exciting teaching occasions—teaching at seven Yoga Journal conferences to date, traveling extensively with Rodney Yee, being on staff at several teacher trainings, and having excellent students in public classes—this is the most satisfying thing I can imagine: Working sincerely and deeply with individuals in an effort to help them understand their physical and psychological patterns and cultivate more optimal ways of being—or to practice contentment with what is without needing to change.

This is the spirit I meet Edith, Mark, Leah, and the Yoga Journal Makeovers story with. Over the next six months, Edith, Mark, and Leah will use a tailored yoga practice to better understand their internal dynamics and address their specific needs. As I’ve gotten to know each of them fairly well I look forward to sharing their progress—and, yes, of course—their challenges with you.