Fourteen years ago, my 73-year-old mother embraced yoga. Today, she is living her best life.

Now more than ever, nothing is more important than your health and creating space in your life for self-care. Your health and the future of your health is a choice that you get to make every day. This choice takes commitment and when we commit to healthy living, as my mother, Cynthia Pierce, (pictured at the top of this article) discovered, the body rewards us with vitality, peace, clarity of the mind, energy, connection and ultimately deep love. Your health is your wealth and your wealth is your legacy.

Mom struggled with her health. She worked on construction sites staining concrete floors for custom homes and had arthritis and vertigo, plus her spine was beginning to curve and slump her over. She drank to take the pain away. Needless to say, her outlook on life was bleak.

Yet, she made the commitment to healthy living—admittedly spurred by wanting to support my then fledgling business, Breath and Body Yoga. (In the early days, she was often my only student.) Her rewards today include a life without medications and being able to move her body with grace and ease. Ask her the secret to life and she will say, “It’s the yoga. I owe my life to yoga.”

Ready to start? Here are your simple steps for a healthy life.

1. Commit to your health right now.

2. Carve out the same time for yourself each day—at least 30 minutes. Wake up earlier, if necessary.

3. Sit and breathe.

4. Fuel your body with water, plant-based foods, seeds, fruits, veggies.

5. Move your body.
Take a walk and look at the flowers, sky and the beauty with which we live. And online live yoga classes can be found all over the web.

Any place works for yoga, just start focusing on what is important. Your equipment is your determination and focus. There are so many different types of yoga: power, slow flow, yoga with weights, chair yoga, family yoga, pre-natal, hatha, hot yoga, bowspring. Look for a local studio in your city and support your community.

Yes, we live in unknown times but when you have the toolbox to deal with life’s challenges, you prevail, you thrive in life and that is life’s purpose.

Cover photo courtesy Breath and Body Yoga.

Desirae Pierce is the Founder and Director of Austin’s Breath and Body Yoga.