The brain has ways of coping with and reversing the effects of psychological and physical maltreatment, but a number of factors influence how well and how quickly people bounce back. One of those factors is the individual's support system.

Practicing yoga has changed me, made me calmer, less anxious, more equanimous. It's given me a physiological way to deal with trauma that was otherwise unavailable to me, and as a teacher, I now have some tools that I can share with others who've experienced trauma.

"The emotional connection for yoga service is the human connection. Sharing yoga is another way of saying "I love you" to total strangers. We're using our bodies to find that common ground and language of love, and nothing is lost in translation."

Trauma is ubiquitous in our world. Sometimes, however, its magnitude is so profound or persistent that, while recovery is possible, a person's life is forever changed.

It just so happened that the theme for the lesson was interconnectedness. We would spend the time exploring partner poses, designed to build community and interdependence within the class. I told the students that this would be a chance to lighten the load that we'd all been carrying the past few days.

I am doing this so that the public can witness the trauma that follows war. Witness. Because this trauma is as much yours as it is ours. Witness and own it. Witnessing breaks the isolation trauma creates. Witnessing furthers the healing of individuals and of our society.

Aurora, Tuscon, Newtown, and now Boston. In light of so many terrorizing incidences, from a psychological standpoint, it's normal -- and healthy -- to feel fear.

So give us a brief time to cry, to grieve. Something really bad happened. Let us work through our emotions. Then after that, spit in the eye of fate and the madmen, be proud of our cities and our nationality, and gain revenge in normality.

Emotional and psychological trauma is the direct result of very unusually stressful events that tend to fracture our sense of safety and security. These events, like the tragic bombings in Boston this week, leave us feeling vulnerable and scared.

Let us stay united. Because next year the cheers will be louder. Next year even more of the world's everyday heroes will come together to overcome those 26.2 miles. And together we can overcome this tragedy.

Having run two marathons in the past, I know firsthand the dedication and inner fortitude it requires to train for and complete a marathon. What marathon runners know about suffering can help us all learn how to cope with this tragedy and rise above it.

While I'd like to think that I'd never intentionally hurt anyone, I know I have done so, more than I'll ever know. I believe that if each of us follow Martin Richard's plea -- "no more hurting people" -- at a whole new level, the world will be a safer place.

Obviously, we live in violent, anxious, fragmented times. If we can't disarm our heart and root out the seeds of anger, hatred, fear and greed, we will inevitably have more senseless killing in front of us. If we don't pull together, we'll be pulled apart.

We are all innocent bystanders to tragedy now. Americans live in era of terrible violence, which finds us in our movie theaters and our schools and our streets full of joyful citizens. Those who do such terrible deeds seem to have forgotten what it means to be human. But we don't have to.

Many of the women thought yoga was just for the thin, or the super-athletic, or suburban housewives. Once they realize yoga is available to everyone, they get excited.