If you follow my other blog, The Whinery, then you know that I suffer from mild depression and SAD or Season Affective Disorder.  Put the two together and life becomes very bleak and pale.  I wrote the following back in 2001:

Hello Darkness my old friend
Have you come to live with me again?
You’ve come early this year . . . but never fear
I’ve kept for you a room,
A place of sorrow and of gloom.
I see that on your wings
You carry the Muse that to my heart sings.
Sings the songs that hide deeply within my soul.

How long will you stay?
Have no fear, I’ll not chase you away
But you’ve come early this year.
Is it because I’ve shed a tear
For those who’ve gone before us beyond the night?
Surely you have seen that my strength is gone
And so you’ve come with your Siren’s song.

On Wednesday I penned (can one do that with a blog?) another drear entry.  I fully expected to be locked into depression for a long period of time, I had forgotten one very significant thing:  Wednesday night is Yoga night.  For the past eight weeks, I have spent each Wednesday night from shortly after 6 PM until 9:30 PM or so practicing Yoga with my teacher, JC Carter.  The course was offered through a local continuing education program and has been marvelous.  I have tried so many different ways of overcoming my depression and SAD:  Counseling, herbs, exercise, prayer, and even reveling in it (which worked better than most, oddly enough).  Nothing I have tried has done for me what Yoga did for me last night.  By the time class ended, my heart was light and the darkness had melted away.  It was as if sunlight were shining through the earth and right into my heart.