Sarah Lord Sasso 1966-2006

While I was teaching my class at Yoga Sutra yesterday, on the mantle/altar, I noticed a a card with Sarah's photo on it. It was about the same size as the cards Yoga Sutra prints up for workshops and kirtan events. Sarah was a Jivamukti-trained yoga teacher, and I remember her from my days as a student at Jivamukti.

My immediate reaction was to assume that Yoga Sutra was hosting Sarah in a workshop. Then my eyes drifted below the photo of the smiling, pretty blonde-haired young woman....there was her full name...and some numbers...no, not numbers, but dates...her birth date...followed by.......her date of death....?

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. I turned the card over, a lame attempt to keep myself from thinking bout it, and I continued to teach the class. But I couldn't stop my mind from spinning.

"Inhale your arms up over your head," I said as I turned the card over once again. "Exhale to fold forward into Uttanasana," I said as I let my eyes settle on the card once again. Sarah, who was a native of England, had died at her home in New York. She was only 39.

The card was an invitation to a celebration of Sarah's life, which was, held at the Beacon Hotel in NYC on January 21. It asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the National Brain Tumor Foundation and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, Hospice Care. So much information in so few words.

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. I turned the card over again.

"Inhale, look up. Lengthen your spine from the tailbone to the crown of your head."

But turning the card over didn't, couldn't, take away my shock and my confusion. A beautiful young person became ill. And now her life was over.

"Exhale, step or jump back into chatturanga...keep the gaze forward."

It just seemed so wrong.

It just seems so wrong.

YC