Recovery 2 0, p.23
RECOVERY 2.0, page 23
The inner heat I’ve had to generate to burn away the insanity of addiction has been considerable. I like to think I’ve sweated out the karmas of many lifetimes. It certainly has felt that way through my practice these past 20 years.
SVADYAYA
Svadyaya means self-study and also refers to the study of spiritual texts.
All spiritual paths require self-reflection and the study of what is actually taking place within. How will you manage your mind, thoughts, and emotions? How shall you conduct yourself to reach a deeper, clearer understanding of your purpose in this world? What are your beliefs? Why do you have them? What is your relationship with the seen and unseen parts of life?
Svadyaya is a central component of the 12-Step Path. At every step of the way we are asked to self-reflect and to contemplate our connection with a Higher Power. We are looking for a spiritual experience because we have been told that this is required to recover from alcoholism and addiction. I believe this is true. Without a connection to your spiritual side, I think true recovery from addiction is implausible, never mind recovery from the human condition. We only need to be open to looking at or studying what life throws our way and be in the questioning of it all. This is enough to move forward. Svadyaya encourages us to find the divine within. That might be an offensive idea to some religious people who think it blasphemous to consider themselves divine. Perhaps a better way to put it would be that svadyaya suggests that we have a piece of divinity within us, which is connected to the Infinite Divinity in all.
This concept of having the divine within is central to yoga philosophy but is not meant in the egotistical sense of “I am God”; there we get into a bit of trouble. Rather, the realization of having God within us can help us move beyond shame by understanding there is something inherently amazing in us. We are not inherently bad. We also have “God-like” capabilities to create our own reality. By this I mean that we are living in a participatory universe. Our beliefs, thoughts, words, and actions affect the way reality unfolds before us. We have that kind of power. It is best that we learn to use it to create rather than destroy.
ISHVARAPRANIDHANA
Ishvarapranidhana means surrender to the Supreme Being or God. I have said several times in this book that one does not have to believe in God to have a spiritual experience and that a spiritual experience is required to recover from addiction. By this point, I am hoping you are open to the idea of such a thing.
Today, I am open-minded about spirit and God. I subscribe to Yogi Bhajan’s statement that “if you can’t see God in all, then you can’t see God at all.” I have beliefs about God, but I do not know. I see the signs of God everywhere, but I cannot explain it. I didn’t always believe in God. Part of that is because I didn’t know a way of relating to it that worked for me. Once I found that way, my heart and mind opened to a greater “perception” of things.
There is a wonderful, beloved Kundalini Yoga teacher named Guru Singh. He has this to say: “How much more evidence must you accumulate before you surrender?” For me the evidence has been overwhelming. There is wisdom and strength in surrendering to a power greater than myself, even if that simply means living in awe of my own heartbeat and in reverence to the unseen power that gives me breath.
Guruprem talks about “the thrill of the subtle.” He describes it as a sense of excitement for subtler experiences that we often gain as we mature along the path of yoga. As I have developed sensitivity to the spiritual side of myself, I have felt what he is talking about. The practice of Ishvarapranidhana and the entire 12-Step process are there to facilitate a spiritual experience through which we become more aware of and thrilled by the subtle.
Here is what makes sense to me: God is formless, beyond description. We can relate to It through a form that makes sense to us. God, in my book, is an aware and conscious force field threaded through all reality. It cannot be seen as you might see with the eyes. It cannot be touched as you might touch with your hands. It can take any form and, in fact, it takes every form. God reveals Itself to each person in Its own way. You have heard several examples in this book of times I have felt the undeniable presence of my Higher Power. It was undeniable to me and me alone. This simply means I can’t make you feel or know what has been made known to me, but hopefully, I can encourage you to take on the practice of yoga, which will help you to observe your life with greater sensitivity and awareness.
And do not worry if you don’t believe in a Higher Power or God or anything. Remember: I was the one who refused to say the Lord’s Prayer at Hazelden because it triggered my religious prejudices. I’m the one who balked at seeing a guru when it was suggested I go see Guruprem. I’m the one who questioned everything about the 12-Step path. If there were ever a person who was not cut out to get this thing and move beyond addiction, it would be me.
Go from where you are today and take one step forward and another and so on. The most important thing is to consider and ponder what life shows you rather than shutting out ideas without looking at them. With this approach you will find your way through any block.
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* To any readers who are part of the LGBTQ community, please forgive the heterosexual orientation of this teaching. I am coming from my own perspective. No offense is intended.
CHAPTER 16
PRACTICING YOGA
The path of yoga takes a person from darkness into light, from dis-ease toward ease, and ultimately to liberation from all suffering. Yoga does not discriminate. It is accessible to anyone who wants to grow along spiritual lines and, as I have stated, it is particularly relevant for those in recovery from addiction.
The purpose of yoga is described in classical texts as “the calming of the fluctuations of the mind,” which sums up the entire path of yoga. Since addiction is seated in the mind, this goal is precisely what we are after. We have to settle the disturbances of the mind so we can move beyond the suffering of addiction. We can achieve this through the physical, mental, and spiritual practice of yoga. Thus, yoga is an asset to anyone on a path of recovery.
Provided you have the right attitude and the right teachers, the comfort and ease you have been waiting for are available to you every single day through this practice. You will breathe better. You will move better. The systems of your body will heal, making it easier for you to be comfortable in your own skin. You will get physically stronger and mentally clearer. You will be challenged in the ways you want and need to be. Yoga is a lifelong process. No matter how much you practice, there will always be more to experience one day at a time. Strangely, you will find that through the physical practice of yoga, other areas of life such as your relationships with people, food, and money will improve. And you will get to experience the bliss of being free from your mind and getting to know yourself much better.
There are many different forms of yoga. These include Ashtanga, Iyengar, Kundalini, Tantra, Bhakti, Sivananda, Viniyoga, and Power Yoga, to name but a few. These are all wonderful styles that complement one another and benefit all. The important thing is for you to find a practice that resonates with you. Kundalini and Vinyasa are the two main styles of yoga I have practiced these past 23 years, and I will focus on these in the pages that follow. But no matter what form of yoga attracts you, they all have one thing in common: all yoga begins with a connection to the breath.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BREATH
One day early on in our teachings together, Guruprem told me that he knew how I was going to die. Somewhat cynically, I said, “Okay, Guruprem, tell me. How am I going to die?”
“On an exhale,” he plainly stated. My mind quickly ran through a number of death scenarios, and I found the statement to be true. There is only one way to go; we all will go that way and that is … on an exhale. He then followed this up with “And of course, you were born on an inhale like everyone else.”
This was Guruprem’s introduction for me to the importance of breath in our life. Our whole life sits between that first inhale and that final exhale. In the hierarchy of needs in the body, breath is number one. We can go without food for several months and water for several days, but to be without breath for even a few minutes is cause for dismissal. As it turns out, breath is one of the keys to healing from addiction. In fact, addiction cannot take root where there is conscious awareness of breath. The more we are aware of our breath and its importance, the closer we will be to ease and the further we will be from the dis-ease of addiction. Once you know how to manipulate your breath, you will even be able to change your emotional state at will.
Most people do not breathe very well. Their breaths are quite shallow and what little breathing they do causes their shoulders, spine, and heart to lift up on an inhale and drop down on an exhale. They look like they’re inflating and deflating with each breath. Of course, our lungs inflate and deflate, but our heart should remain lifted and supported by the navel, our diaphragm should drive our exhale, and our spine should remain in integrity throughout. The fact is that most people live in thoracic incarceration. They have not learned how to breathe, how to use their diaphragm, how to free up their rib cage, how to maintain a healthy spine, and how to strengthen their core muscles to support their heart. All of this can be fixed with practice and leads to much greater ease.
Our breath has five main purposes:
Brings in the goods—oxygen and Prana (life force)
Discards the waste—carbon dioxide and apana (eliminating force)
Carries our words (on our exhales)
Alters our mood and consciousness and helps us enter meditative states
Attunes the body-mind system to the Frequency of Recovery
Taking a look at this list, let’s pause for a moment to appreciate all the breath does for us. Our inhale draws in oxygen and Prana. It is our primary form of nourishment. People who become disconnected from their breath (almost everyone) lack something pretty significant from their lives, namely ease and comfort. I am suggesting here that most people in the world are disconnected from their breathing and that if they focused more on their breath, they would have more energy, be more contented, and have less reason to look outside of themselves to try to feel better.
With our exhale, we get to release what no longer serves us: carbon dioxide and other waste products. Of course, most people are not aware that our exhale is capable of carrying a lot more than just waste. It carries our words. There are few things we possess that are as powerful as our words, whether we think them, write them, or speak them. They are one of the main ways we relate to each other. They can destroy or heal, denounce or uplift. In yoga we pay a lot of attention to this particular use of the exhale as we try to develop greater awareness and compassion around our speech. I saw a great T-shirt recently that read, “Exhale only Love.” I thought, What a difficult practice that is. All your words would have to come from a place of love.
The ancient tradition of yoga emphasizes the connection between our breath and our thinking. If we can control our breath, we can control our mind. The better we get at doing this, the better our life will be. After all, we are slaves to our mind. We get identified with our thoughts and, as we have seen, this is where addiction really takes off. If learning some breathing techniques can calm my mind’s chatter, sign me up. Learning how to use the breath to focus and control my mind has been a huge part of my recovery, and I have included a number of breath exercises and meditations in the Appendices at the back of this book.
The breath is also one of the keys to changing your emotional state. When you are anxious, angry, or depressed, your breath becomes shallow. This sends a signal to your body that your primary needs are not being met. This, in turn, creates a chain reaction in the body, resulting in lower energy and higher stress. By deepening your breath and applying certain techniques, you can reverse this and create relaxation and calmness. You can have control over your reactions to various emotions, and in wielding the breath, you can even shift them.
I have spoken a lot about the Frequency of Addiction. The breath, as it turns out, is a major catalyst when it comes to changing our attunement. This is important to understand. If we use certain breath techniques regularly and become better at breathing in general, we will benefit from our primary source of nourishment. We will become stronger and clearer in thought, and we will break free of the Frequency of Addiction by re-attuning ourselves to the Frequency of Recovery. This is why I call the breath a game changer: it literally changes everything in your experience once you start to practice.
VINYASA YOGA
The physical practice of yoga is one of the great blessings in my life. In most yoga classes across the United States, you will find a teacher leading students through a series of physical movements with an emphasis on connecting the breath with each movement. This is the practice of Vinyasa Yoga, which simply means movement coordinated with breath. If you are looking to experience freedom, bliss, strength, peace, self-love, and progress, start to practice Vinyasa Yoga.
In our addictions, we have undergone great stress and trauma. We have weakened ourselves. Vinyasa is particularly important for people in recovery because of its strengthening and detoxifying capabilities. Vinyasa will make you very strong from the inside out. If you are of the opinion that yoga is a mellow workout and could not possibly get you into “real shape,” you only need to step into a moderate-level Vinyasa class and your opinion will change in fewer than ten minutes. Through the physical challenge, you will sweat and detox. By focusing on the breath you will develop presence and mental acuity.
Remember, too, that addiction is rooted in trauma and that unprocessed emotions get stuck in the tissues of the body. Well, Vinyasa Yoga is one way to get deep enough into the tissues to release and process those stuck energies out. Sometimes people will burst out laughing or crying in their practice. When questioned about what happened to create that response, very often they will tell you that they have no idea. It didn’t seem to be connected to any particular thought at all—it just came out of them. This is the release of stuck energy. I hope you have an opportunity to experience it for yourself.
KUNDALINI YOGA
In addition to Vinyasa Yoga, I practice and teach Kundalini Yoga, which was brought to the West by Yogi Bhajan in the late 1960s. Yogi Bhajan was a master of Kundalini Yoga, deemed so by his teacher when he was just 16 years old. As the story goes, he had become a customs officer at the New Delhi Airport and was watching thousands of Westerners come to his country searching for wholeness in their lives and looking in all the wrong places: drugs, alcohol, and sex. He would see these young people arrive in India and then see them leave some time later with less vitality and less connection than they’d had when they arrived. He decided to come to the West to teach Kundalini Yoga. This form of yoga had never been taught publicly in groups before. Upon hearing that Yogi Bhajan was teaching Westerners Kundalini, his peers cursed him and said, “If you keep teaching this yoga, you’ll be dead within one year.” Guru Singh was one of Yogi Bhajan’s first students and was there when Yogi Bhajan reached his one-year anniversary of teaching in the United States. He reports that in reference to the curse that had been placed upon him, Yogi Bhajan said, “Guru Singh, I knew it was bullshit.”
In the early years, Yogi Bhajan taught many people who struggled with drugs and alcohol. It was the early 1970s, and there was a lot of that going on. He formed a rehabilitation center in Tucson that was one part ashram and one part primary-care facility for recovering addicts. It was a powerful combination. People got sober in an atmosphere where everyone was meditating, chanting, practicing yoga, and eating a vegetarian diet. It helped many people over the years, but as the insurance landscape shifted, it ultimately ended up closing for financial reasons.
Yogi Bhajan would build an entire society around his yogic teachings over the next 35 years until his death in 2004. From day one, he continually told his followers, “I am not here to gather students. I am here to create teachers.” The 12 Steps are built upon a similar idea. Really, we get sober to help others get sober. This is a bit of a simplification, but it expresses that same idea of passing on the teachings so that the maximum number of people can benefit from them.
So what’s the big deal here? Why the need to create teachers? Why the pointed effort to spread the teachings of Kundalini Yoga or the 12 Steps? The reason is simple: we are in trouble.
Yogi Bhajan correctly prophesied that in the 21st century, life on earth was going to become overwhelming and unmanageable for most of its inhabitants. There would be great suffering and higher and higher levels of stress, addiction, and dis-ease. His intention was to raise the consciousness of his students as quickly as possible so they would be able to show people how to manage the coming challenges. He referred to Kundalini Yoga as a technology. It would be powerful enough to heal a person from their addictions, their neuroses, and their pain. It would take a person fated to hardship and elevate them onto their “destiny path” so they could live out their life’s mission guided closely by intuition and in service to others. This is the effect these teachings have had upon me.
I never met Yogi Bhajan. He died just as I was getting turned on to Kundalini Yoga by one of his students … Guruprem.
You’ve heard a bit about my awakening over the five-year period visiting with Guruprem. We practiced Kundalini Yoga and talked about life. I cherish the memory of that time as my body and mind released the patterns that no longer served me. I practiced challenging postures, and when we were done I felt a sense of total release. It was as if the tension in my body had dissolved straight out the bottoms of my feet. Over time, I started to move more freely. I was actually changing the way my body moved in physical space. The joy of this is indescribable. While the practice of yoga was integral, our discussions were no less important. I had some terribly misguided ways of looking at the world. The perspectives Guruprem shared with me make up much of the philosophical foundation of the Recovery 2.0 approach to life.
