Local Author's Yoga Book Debuts on Amazon

What if healing were as simple as moving? This is the question writer and yoga student Anne Samit asks in her debut book, Unfold Your Mat, Unfold Yourself, Essays on Yoga’s Healing Truths and So Much More.

“I started practicing yoga with the sole intention to exercise, but I was surprised to find that it affected me on an emotional and spiritual level, too. I was not looking for that,” said Samit. “I didn’t know it would become a way of life, and that moving on a mat could be so transformative.”

Samit practices yoga almost daily, and her simple quest to exercise ignited a therapeutic journey of self-discovery. She blogs on the impact of her practice, and her book is a compilation of her essays. She says her writing is an outgrowth of her practice, and that one facilitates the other.

“Writing came about in much the same way as my practice,” said Samit. “I simply started, and then I couldn’t stop.”

Samit says that exercising was as new for her as the yoga practice itself, and that she found the movement to be energizing and healing. She began writing about the practice and, before she knew it, she was writing about herself. The essays in her book are divided into a framework of what she terms as “Healing Truths” and cover subjects such as perspective, self-belief, inhibition, anxiety, spirituality, inner power, courage and more. Each essay comprises a balance of revelations about both the practice and the author.

Studies on the benefits of mindfulness and movement have made their way to the forefront of today’s science. Most recently, an article in Forbes Magazine noted that neuroscience supports the link between mindfulness and the brain’s regions that regulate self-referential thoughts and emotions. It also noted the necessity of looking beyond neuroscience to trauma research, which supports how the body can store stress and trauma, and it hails movement as the technique to mitigate the effects of each.

Movement as medicine is an emerging concept that is already widespread throughout the yoga community. Samit said that she stumbled upon this concept once she started practicing and that, for her, it had proved true.

“I am stronger than I used to be,” said Samit, noting that it’s not just her body she is talking about. “There are many different kinds of yoga, and so it’s a practice that can strengthen anyone at any level at any time.”

With a Bachelor of Science in journalism from the University of Maryland and a background in public relations, Samit is currently an executive assistant at a health industry consulting company. She is a regular columnist for www.elephantjournal.com and her articles have appeared on the localized news sites, www.Patch.com, The Jewish Week and her own blog, www.Yoga-Speak.com. Her book is available on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle as an e-book.