By Rachel Krentzman, PT, C-IAYT, MBA 

 Adapted from As Is: A Memoir on Healing the Past Through Yoga

As the dutiful daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, I led a very sheltered childhood. Then, my father was arrested for selling heroin to an undercover cop — and my life turned upside down.  

Most Sundays, I went to see him in jail. Each week, I drove to the unfamiliar area of Laval, Quebec, and stared up at the barbed wire fence surrounding the stale gray, lifeless building that was my father’s new home.

Every visit, I passed through the security check, waited for the buzzer to let me into a thin, rectangular waiting room with pasty light blue walls, and found my way to an empty plastic orange seat. 

The stench of warm skin and cigarette smoke hung in the air as I observed those around me. They were from all walks of life, most of which I had never been exposed to. Some wore jean vests with Hell’s Angels logos, others wore tattoos on their arms and legs, most bearing wrinkles and scars of a weathered life.

I looked at myself, a young, innocent religious girl, with my long skirt and T-shirt covering my elbows, and wondered how I found myself in the company of such people. As much as I hated to admit it, we were all there for the same reason. 

My father requested I bring him the same food each visit: a dozen bagels, potato knishes, and rugelach (small chocolate Danishes) from the Kosher Quality Bakery on Victoria Street. It wasn’t long before he asked me to smuggle in cigarettes and money, too.

He had smoked regularly for as long as I could remember, at last a pack a day. Benson & Hedges. The ones in the green box.

I was terrified of sneaking things inside, but more afraid of disobeying his wishes, so I did it anyway, each time more worried that I would get caught and be arrested myself. I often tucked a pack of cigarettes into my sleeve and placed a couple of twenty-dollar bills in the bottom of my socks, feeling folds of paper scratching the arch of my foot with each step.

Healing the Past Often Means Uncomfortable Moments in the Present

During those meetings, we sat awkwardly as he talked about his new friends in prison and the card games they played. 

“Joey has some great contacts on the outside.”

“I beat Jean-Paul at poker yesterday.”

On one particular prison visit, I came to a breaking point. We sat across from each other and, as he talked about some new guys he had met in jail, I spoke up.

“Dad, I need to tell you something.” My heart began to beat harder and faster, but I continued. “I need an explanation. Something. Anything.” 

He stared blankly at me. No.

I continued. The words came pouring out of me. Once the dam opened, there was no way to stop the rush.

“I have been coming in each week, and all we talk about is this person and that. I need more from our conversations. I need to know the truth about what happened. If I am going to continue driving down here, I need more from our time together.”

There, I said it.

In retrospect, what I really needed from him was to be seen.

I seemed to be doing and being what everyone else needed, but I was exhausted, scared, and drowning inside. I wanted him to see and to acknowledge—even for a moment—how hard it was for me. I had lost myself and was grasping for something to hold on to. A reason to keep pushing ahead. I needed to understand why I was still trying to please him. 

It wasn’t so much the words he said next, but the look in his eyes that wounded me. He was tall, with a stocky build and piercing dark eyes that I never dared disobey. He stared back at me, blank, without emotion: no regard, no concern, no pain, nothing. It was as if I didn’t exist, and he was talking to a ghost. 

The regulation beige jumpsuit made his skin look sallow as his shoulders slumped forward in defeat.

“Well, then,” he said, “I never want to see you again.”

Pain is a Doorway

I’ll never forget that moment. It shattered me. I left the prison in a haze, my body moving through the motions while my spirit felt numb and untethered. For months, I couldn’t talk about it. For years, I carried the invisible weight of that blank stare and those five words. They became a quiet truth I lived with: that I didn’t matter.

But pain has a strange way of becoming a doorway. At first, I didn’t even realize I had stepped through it. I just knew that the life I was living—the one built on approval, obedience, and self-sacrifice—was no longer sustainable. Slowly, tentatively, I began searching for something that could bring me back to myself.

Years later, yoga became that lifeline. It taught me how to feel again, how to sit with discomfort, how to reclaim my breath and my body. Therapy helped me untangle the patterns that had kept me frozen. Over time, I began to understand that my worth had never depended on my father’s ability—or inability—to love me.

Looking back now, I see that the prison visiting room was not just a place where I lost something; it was also where a seed of resilience was planted. That seed grew into the work I do today—helping others navigate their own ruptures, find their own breath, and come home to themselves after life has broken them open.

***

 Rachel Krentzman PT, C-IAYT, MBA is a practicing yoga and physical therapist and certified Hakomi psychotherapist. Born in Montreal to an Orthodox Jewish family, she experienced the trauma of her rabbi father’s arrest, shed her strict upbringing, and found herself. She specializes in personal healing through somatic, body-centered psychotherapy and yoga therapy. Afflicted with scoliosis and damaged discs, she created a powerful therapy that helps hundreds of students and patients around the world. She now lives with her husband, son, and two dogs in Israel. Her numerous books on yoga include Scoliosis, Yoga Therapy and the Art of Letting Go (2016). Learn more at happybackyoga.com.