Welcome to Chime's YTT series (that's Yoga Teacher Talk, not Yoga Teacher Training), where yoga teachers share their experiences as they continue to grow personally and professionally. This month, an inspiring group of teachers share their personal mission statements for teaching yoga.

Meet this month's YogaView guest, Melissa Zuena, an artist and yogini thriving in her recovery.

Guest contributor Allison Gold Russell shares how self-doubt and insecurity as a new yoga teacher led her back to her mat as a student and rekindled her passion for the practice.

Can you recall the last time you felt angst, agitation, anger, or another "hot button" reaction to someone or something? By hot button, I mean a feeling that causes a strong physical and emotional response.

Learn to defuse or lessen the charge of an emotion or feeling with a simple mindfulness technique. The intention is to redirect the hot button feeling to a more positive one.

Sometimes our own "stuff" makes a situation more stressful than it needs to be. As seen in Elephant Journal, my easy practice for sending good out and clearing away negative feelings.

I can't speak for others' intentions for posting yoga selfies on social media, but I want to share mine. 

Meet this month's YogaView guest, Erika Tenenbaum, a yoga therapist and skin care specialist. Erika tells her story of transformation, from wearing sneakers and chewing gum to her first yoga class to completing her 1,000-hour yoga therapy certification (and some juicy details in between).

Guest contributor Colleen Martell, PhD, an avid vinyasa practitioner, shares how yin yoga offered her "a sustained and rich experience of looking inward" during an emotionally draining time in her life. But first, she had to learn how to truly listen to her body.

Every Friday I post lessons I learned from parenting, teaching yoga, practicing on my mat, and life in general. I like to think of these posts as conversations about the stuff of life. You are invited to join the conversation and leave comments on my blog.