First There Is A Mountain is a tale of spiritual longing that brought a young American woman to the yoga institute of the renowned B.K.S. lyengar, the man who introduced yoga to a Western audience. Once there, She became a wayward protegee of this mercurial and demanding teacher, piecing together his life's vision of the ancient Hindu practice and finding her place within yoga as a Western aspirant. In the damp, musty practice rooms as the institute, her exhausted body hanging from ropes or propped up by wooden blocks, she found a spiritual discipline unlike any other. Under lyengar's tutelage Kadetsky learns the subtle wisdom of the body, leaving behind a discordant childhood and starvation diets to discover a kind of peace.