n the summer of 2000 I traveled to South Africa to offer a workshop at the International AIDS conference. The conference was held in the city of Durban, which is in the center of one of the most severely HIV/AIDS infected regions in the world.

My workshop at the conference was on the benefits of the ancient Hindu spiritual practice of Yoga and how it can be used to learn about the body’s ability to heal itself and manage the stress that accompanies a chronic disease such as HIV/AIDS.

Michael McColly meeting with P.Kousawla, president of Positive Women Network of Madras, India

Yoga is not a cure for HIV or the many opportunistic illnesses that befall those with this disease. Yet, it offers like all forms of spiritual practice a practical means to face a chronic health condition such as HIV/AIDS. How we respond to suffering determines how we live with suffering.

Since its discovery, people have been fighting AIDS, combating HIV and trying to eradicate the social “evils” that they believe have caused and spread this pandemic. Yet, after twenty years, billions of dollars and the efforts of multitudes of people, we are seeing HIV/AIDS spread faster and into more and more communities than ever before, devastating those most vulnerable--women, young people, and the poor.

Perhaps it is time to be more realistic and recognize that we can’t “fight” a virus, eradicate kinds of human behavior or rely solely on medical and technical solutions to save us from AIDS. Perhaps it is time to begin to spend our energies helping people survive where they are with what means and beliefs they have.

Yoga reinforces a simple but important message in public health: that health begins with taking responsibility and protecting one’s own body. It also reinforces the basic spiritual foundations of all major world religions, emphasizing the intelligence of human compassion, respect for the dignity of all life, and the transformative power of faith in the divine creation.

Listening to them was in itself like medicine, and I began to understand how to incorporate suffering and the lessons learned from living with HIV/AIDS to transform myself.

But it wasn’t what I taught at the conference, it was what people there taught me that has had a lasting influence on my work as writer living with HIV. In talking with HIV positive people and activists from around the world working in community based organizations I heard stories that inspired me for their courage, ingenuity, and spirit.

AIDS had transformed their lives even under the most tragic of conditions. Listening to them was in itself like medicine, and I began to understand how to incorporate suffering and the lessons learned from living with HIV/AIDS to transform myself. The more I listened, the more I wanted to get involved with what they were doing and learn how they were trying to survive in places that no longer seemed so distant from where I lived in Chicago.

Since returning from South Africa I have tried to devote myself to write about the people who are living in the midst of this social and spiritual crisis. In the course of the last two years I have traveled to South Africa, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Senegal as well as through out my own community of Chicago to learn about how AIDS activists, doctors, religious and community leaders, and people living with HIV are helping their communities change in order to survive this public health crisis.

Through this website and the essays that I have written, my intent is fourfold:

• To make more people aware of the benefits of Yoga and other spiritual disciplines in living with the emotional and physical suffering that accompanies HIV or any chronic illness.
  
  
• To highlight the many effective programs I have witnessed around the world and the creative and courageous people behind them who are defying the popular image of the AIDS pandemic by showing that it need not be a devastating plague but rather an empowering agency of change for individuals and communities.
  
  
• To describe via essays, photographs and letters what I have observed in my travels, conversations and interviews with people living with HIV. And by telling a collective story--both theirs and mine, I want to give a more human and realistic account of how people from diverse communities, religions, and histories are living and trying to survive life with HIV.
  
  
• To provide a forum for discussion on concerns for people living with HIV as well as helpful links to organizations small and large through out the world that are doing some of the best work in helping communities and individuals living with HIV/AIDS. I will continue to add addresses, links, forum topics, photographs, and essays as I continue my research and complete a book on this geographical and spiritual journey.