On June 15, 2018, I successfully held camel pose for the first time since I’d begun taking yoga classes 3 months earlier. For those unfamiliar with the peak posture in the traditional Bikram series, camel is a full backbend performed with the yogi down on both knees. Lead with the heart my instructor said, and I bowed backward: sternum arching upward, collarbone stretching into a smile, thighs straining forward, upper back softening, bending, supple as a willow bough. On a warm Friday morning in June during the sacred hour before sunrise, my heart split itself open toward the sky, reaching up with the same primitive instinct of all rooted seedlings, hungry for the sun.

At 8 a.m., an hour after I left the yoga studio and clocked into work, my law firm laid off the first person in a string of what would become 32 total people let go from the company before the end of the day. And my heart split itself open in a different kind of way. For 7 hours that day I listened to phones ring across the office and prayed mine wouldn’t be next. I was 25 years old, 3 years into my first professional job, and that Friday I felt my life shift into new and unexplored territory. By the end of the day, barely hanging on by a thread as the office grew quieter and quieter, I felt shaken and jet-lagged, uncertain as to what the coming weeks would bring.

For weeks after the layoffs I couldn’t sleep. I would wake up at 4 a.m. and begin organizing a to-do list for the day. When my frightened co-workers asked the office manager how we would handle being so understaffed, she said we would absorb the extra work. And absorb it we did. I absorbed and absorbed right down to my very bones – my hips ached when I sat at my desk, my jawline felt lit on fire by the end of the workday. I developed tension headaches before lunch that would last until I went to bed at night. Sometimes I would cry in the car on the way home, for no reason other than to release the stress swelling and tenting against my skin.

I began going to yoga every morning, instead of 2 days a week, for the blissful hour of the day that was mine alone. Only in the studio could I leave it all on the mat. Extend your energy all the way through your fingertips my instructor said, and I let it bleed and drip out and away. I practiced tightening my hips, unfurling my collarbone, and easing back into full camel.

Some people hate performing camel because the pose is a backbend and a heart-opener. In camel and in life, heart-openers stir up feelings of fear, dizziness, vulnerability. For a long time I never attempted full camel in class, because I was afraid of hurting myself. I was afraid of collapsing under the weight of my heart held high. For a long time I never attempted full heart-openers in life, either.

At the time of the layoffs my life felt stagnant and tepid, but safe. My job at the law firm required no real writing, but it was easy. I filled in templates, populated canned legal jargon, and followed directions. I struggled with the feeling that my inability to find another job, one in copywriting, was due to my lack of talent as a writer. After a few long, lonely years living by myself after college, I had finally found amazing friends at the firm. I convinced myself that the comfort of seeing them every day could make up for the fact that I was unhappy at work. And I convinced myself too that I was lucky to have such a good friend in Adam. Adam, who had started working at the law firm a few weeks after me. Adam, who made me laugh and who listened to me when I talked and who always complimented my earrings. Adam, whose face I had started to picture in places it shouldn’t have been – my favorite bookstore, my hometown, my bed. Yes, there was safety in my job, safety in having my support group so close, and safety in my friendship with Adam – and now my safety had boxed me into its own kind of prison.

But on June 15 the ground under my feet shifted and I realized my world would continue to move regardless of how still I stood within it. Adam was laid off from the firm, along with other good friends of mine. My closest friend at the firm quit that afternoon and accepted another job offer she had been considering. I spent the next few months working myself to the bone with little support, assistance, acknowledgement, or thanks. I lived in constant fear of losing my job. I spent a lot of time feeling angry about circumstances I couldn’t control.

But as the year wound to a close in June 2019, I found myself in awe of how much I had grown and changed in such a short period of time. In its peak state, when the mind releases its fears and anxieties, camel also awakens feelings of flight. Exhilaration. Ecstasy. I was shocked and humbled to realize my biggest heartbreaks had become my biggest heart-openers. Move with the current that already exists in your body my instructor said, and finally, finally I was moving.

I fell in love. Once Adam and I were no longer co-workers, we had the freedom to become so much more. With Adam, I didn’t let myself pull away when I got scared. The things I still couldn’t say out loud, I wrote down for him to read instead. As it turned out, loving him is the easiest thing I’ve done all year. My friends and I learned how to be apart, and then we re-learned how to be together. The conversations are longer (and louder) now that we all have different stories to share.

Even before the layoffs, my employers had treated me like I was disposable for so long I had started to treat myself that way as well. It hurt me to realize how much confidence I had lost in myself and in my abilities. But once my safety was broken, I learned how to channel my rage at myself into rage on my behalf. I asked for a well-deserved raise at work, and then I ground down my heels and asked a second time when my first request was brushed off. I started applying for jobs with cover letters I handcrafted for each position. I opened up and wrote honestly about the experiences that shaped my path, work ethic, and passion for writing. These love letters were therapeutic for me, even when I received no responses from employers. In the end, there was only 1 response I needed, and I blinked back tears on the day I accepted a copywriter position for an amazing company. It was the first time in a long time I felt proud of myself – I conquered a month-long process involving 3 interviews and 2 writing samples to emerge victorious.

As a heart-opener, camel requires a special element of trust, both in the universe and in the self. It demands a willingness to be vulnerable, to bare the throat and let it hang long and loose. It demands a willingness to expose the heart, to set it free and trust it to fly without fleeing the body. It demands a willingness to bend, not inward but into – into the strength of the body as bow, into the curve of the universe as cradle. Change too demands this trust of us. As does love. We can learn a lot about the practice of life when we learn the practice of backbends:

Look back.

Lean back.

Fall back.

Lead with the heart.