In 2007, after a horrific night spent screaming “no,” this Air Force servicewoman was determined to confide to her commanding officer that she had been raped. When she walked into his office, he opened by asking her if the rumors he’d heard about her “slutty behavior” were true. She swallowed the pain. Three years later, when the Air Force was insisting on deploying her just six weeks after giving birth, she decided to leave the military. Broke, troubled, raising two boys with her ex-husband, Jessica began to confront the demons from her sexual assault and filed a claim with the VA. It took eleven months for the claim to come back: denied. Her problems, the rejection said, were from the stress related to her divorce. Feeling a panic attack coming, she turned to the breathing she had begun in yoga and re-read the spoken word poetry she had been working on. Low on cash and feeling suicidal, Jessica attended yoga training “If this doesn’t work, I have nothing left,” she said. “Yoga saved my life” isn’t a bumper sticker for Jessica; she means it. And now she’s teaching it to other veterans. Demystifying some of yoga’s complexities and removing a perceived stigma, Jessica has begun to connect wounded warriors to the practical tool of their breath for the real-life situations in which they may panic. She sees adrenaline sports as another way to avoid the pain; this is a way of addressing it and working through it, as she continues to do. We follow Jessica and her two boys as she celebrates the CD release of her spoken word album, guides veterans on their mats through physical and mental pain, and continues to breathe her way through the frustrating second appeal for her sexual assault claim – one of thousands like it. .