One Tuesday last April, I woke up knowing it would be a strange day. I felt unusual knots of tension in my solar plexus but knew that that as my day unfolded, I would find a way to dissipate the anxious energy. Leaving the house to teach a noon yoga class, I realized I had a near-flat tire, and that I'd have to get it fixed very soon.

What is wrong with me? Why do I feel so tense? I wondered while I sped along Denver's I-25. Breathe, I told myself. Within minutes I had arrived and ready to teach.

I assured my students that although they had come to class from a business-driven, high-tech environment, on that day I was offsetting stress as much as they. “This,” I told them emphatically, “ is a perfect day for yoga!” What I didn't know was that while my students and I were proceeding through rounds of Sun Salutation, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were opening fire on their school mates 20 miles away. On my way home I found a shop that could fix my tire. I grabbed a magazine and sat in the waiting room, where a TV blared. In less than a second, an inconceivable horror engulfed me. The telecast was airing live from the scene of the most devastating school shooting in history – happening now less than 10 miles away.

After watching awhile, I drove home in shock, yet deeply aware of what I must do.

I sat in silence for hours that day. I had plugged in a string of Christmas lights. While I fixed my gaze on the lights, my energy settled. My attention went to Columbine High School, and to the young spirits caught in a deadly rampage: hatred, pain, death, sorrow, confusion, and hope. At the same time, I felt the life force circulating through me. I experienced it quite simply as bright, healing light, like the light on which I gazed.

A heavenly sense filled my heart, blood, and bones. On the breath it cam in. On the breath it went out. There were moments of bliss interspersed with deep sadness. I became a body of light taking energy in, sending energy out. I felt profound empathy for those critically injured souls I'd never met. It seemed I could be fully present to the tragic outcome of this atrocity without being consumed by it. I was light, spreading out from the heart.

On the day Denver held a community memorial service, I conducted a previously scheduled meditation workshop. I'd intended it to honor the season of spring, yet nature delivered a bone-chilling day and a relentless snowfall. I asked my students to consciously send power to all those wounded by what had happened at Columbine High. “Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself,” I said, quoting the Sufi poet Rumi. For three hours we practiced hatha yoga, pranayama, and chakra awareness together. We went into the gardens of our hearts as beacons of light sending helpful, bright energy outward.

My practice has taught me that yoga, often defined as the union of body, mind, and spirit, is the gift of knowing how to merge the human Self with the Divine. One Saturday morning as weeks later, I asked my students to reflect on a concept: Body of Light. I reminded them that when we do yoga, we accomplish more than some thing good for ourselves; the peace we generate affects the world around us. What a blessing to know that, although the world is often filled with the tragic consequences of humanity's dark side, we can always embody and radiate light and thereby transform the darkness with grace.

Yoga teacher, poet, and performance artist, Roseanna Frechette founder of Inner City Yoga, creator of the audio tape “Refreshing Hatha Yoga,” and a member of YTOC.