This post features a Q&A with one of my favorite yoga teachers, Donna Amrita Davidge.

I love a vigorous yoga practice as much as anyone on this green earth. For years I believed I'd never be fit or athletic or strong, so discovering that I can hold a handstand for two seconds has been a revelation.

After all, two seconds feels like a long time when you’re upside down.

Five days a week, I practice yoga at my gym, where the classes are sweaty and challenging and packed with conspicuously beautiful people. (Seriously, where do these people come from? They make suburban New Jersey look like a music video.) Together, the beautiful people and I power our way through a million chaturangas and some til-death-do-us-part forearm planks, pouring sweat onto the hardwood floor.

After a particularly challenging class, as I weave my way through the gym's main level—past the giant TVs playing infomericals, past the gazelle-like women on the elliptical machines and the beautiful, intense souls who are bracing themselves to lift a giant barbell yet again—I congratulate myself for having survived. 

Some days, though, I need a yoga practice that soothes my soul. I need something more spiritual, more meditative. That's where kundalini yoga comes in.