Recovery 2 0, p.24
RECOVERY 2.0, page 24
Kundalini Yoga offers a time-tested, advanced user’s manual for the human body-mind system. Its primary purpose is to help you reach your potential as a human being. From the Kundalini Yoga perspective we all have potential energy stored at the base of our spine. As we awaken that energy and distribute it through the main energy centers of the body, we awaken to a more wholehearted existence.
Through addictive behavior we weaken our nervous system and endocrine system. We turn off our intuition. Our physical body becomes weak and we are susceptible to dis-ease. Addiction robs us of our health, vitality, and power. It also disconnects us from our heart and spirit. It is no wonder that we come to be “powerless.” As we’ve discussed throughout this book, we are looking for more power. Kundalini Yoga strengthens us physically and mentally. It repairs and builds upon the capacities of all the systems of the body. It increases intuitive capabilities and ultimately connects us with our own divinity, giving us access to more power than we might have realized was possible.
Kundalini Yoga practice includes such elements as physical postures, pranayama (breath exercises), meditation, chanting, and deep relaxation. Like Vinyasa, it is taught in classes all over the world. I have found it to be a powerful complement to 12-Step work and helpful for anyone on a path of awakening. On the 12-Step path we practice certain rituals such as prayer and going to meetings in order to have “a daily reprieve” from our dis-ease. On the path of Kundalini Yoga, we build a daily spiritual practice known as our sadhana.
SADHANA—ATTUNE YOURSELF TO THE RIGHT FREQUENCY EVERY DAY
Sadhana (pronounced saad-nah) means daily spiritual practice. Its purpose is to “attune” you in such a way that you connect with your Highest Self, the part of you that is Divine in nature. You can then live your day from this place of reconnection. Once your thoughts descend, it becomes increasingly difficult to “meet yourself,” which is why people often practice their sadhana first thing in the morning.
Your sadhana will consist of elements that help you to maintain balance in your life, strengthen and detoxify your body, and calm your mind. Ultimately, when you do your sadhana you will feel great, have less or no pain in your body, increase mental clarity and intuition, and feel aligned with your highest purpose. Sadhana is an addiction buster! It will help you to attune yourself to the Frequency of Recovery.
Yogi Bhajan said, “The greatest reward of doing sadhana is that the person becomes incapable of being defeated. Sadhana is a self-victory.” He also expressed the power of doing sadhana in a group setting. “First, the isolation which can hit anybody and make them go totally crazy is defeated. Secondly, when all of you meditate on God, the total effect of your sadhana becomes multiplied by the number of people participating … If you have to do sadhana alone, imagine yourself surrounded by millions of people.”
Yogi Bhajan constantly stressed the importance of sadhana as a daily practice, particularly before the sun comes up, between the hours of 3:30 and 6:00 A.M. This time of day is referred to as the amrit vela, or ambrosial hours—the sweet hours of the day when fewer people in your area are awake. There is less psychic energy, more calmness. It is thought to be the most powerful time to meditate. Do not worry! I am not suggesting that you regularly wake up at 3:30 A.M. to meditate, nor do I feel it is a prerequisite for having a great life. That said, saints and sages have used these hours throughout history to get an edge in the effort to gain mastery over their minds. The times I have done yoga and meditation in community during the ambrosial hours have been powerful, transformational, and filled with joy. I suggest you try it sometime.
My sadhana consists of physical yoga practice to activate my body by bringing Prana, or life force, into my spine, organs, and tissues; meditation and chanting to help me gain mastery over my mind before it has a shot at mastering me; and prayer to help me connect with and express myself to my Higher Power.
So, any given morning you have a choice: get up and float through life, roll with its ups and downs, and try to manage your mind—or attune to the Frequency of your Highest Self, activate your creativity, and go through the day on purpose, guided by intuition. Having a steady morning sadhana is a recommended part of Recovery 2.0 life.
DESIGNING YOUR OWN SADHANA
Sadhana elements can include yoga, meditation, pranayama (breathwork), chanting, singing, dancing, journaling, reading spiritual literature, and anything else that connects you with your Highest Self. The elements of a great sadhana will vary from person to person depending upon spiritual beliefs, schedule, lifestyle, and needs. Sadhana can be short—even three minutes can make a huge difference. The main thing is to adopt a practice every day that you can manage. As with all new endeavors, a little bit of discipline goes a long way. You will come to love this practice so much that you will choose not to live life without it. All of this can be a little overwhelming at first, so in the Appendices of this book you will find a few suggestions to help you choose a sadhana that works for you.
HOW AND WHERE TO PRACTICE YOGA
All forms of yoga have something to offer. As with diets, lifestyles, and approaches to recovery, there is no one right yoga practice for everyone. Google yoga in your town. Connect with the owners of a yoga studio and ask them for some guidance. Go out and try a class. See how it feels. Do you feel safe, excited? Is it fun? Do you want to go back? That’s usually a good sign. If you hit a class that’s too easy (boring for you) or too hard (couldn’t catch your breath, thought you were going to die), try another one at a different level, perhaps with a different teacher. The teacher is key. You will surely find teachers with whom you resonate and others with whom you do not. You may also opt to have a few private lessons. These can be expensive, but you can learn a lot very quickly, and it’s a great way to jump-start a practice if you are nervous about going into a class environment. It’s also rewarding to tap into a yoga community, so make sure to get out to a class when you can. If you feel that yoga classes are too expensive, visit a donation-based yoga class in your town and drop what you can in the box on the way out.
Of course, these days there is also a ton of yoga available online. We are fortunate to have this kind of access to so many teachers and styles of yoga. Nothing is holding you back.
CHAPTER 17
MEDITATION
The classical path of yoga leads to meditation, which is the means by which we achieve true freedom. From the perspective of the ancients, yoga and meditation are not separate from each other. In fact, the physical practice of yoga was traditionally used to ready the body to sit comfortably in meditation for long periods of time.
I cannot overstate the extent to which I have needed meditation in my life. The signs have been everywhere. One day I was in a New Age bookshop and came upon a book called The Secret Language of Birthdays. It breaks down your life horoscope not just by your astrological sign, but, more precisely, by the actual day of your birthday. I was born on May 31, which is referred to as “The Day of the Cutting Edge” in this thick tome. There on the page in plain black print it states, “All forms of escape pose grave dangers to the health of May 31 people…. Those born on this day have a marked tendency to seek solace in alcohol and drugs …” This hit a little too close to home to just blow off as astrological nonsense. The rest of the page was filled with other interesting tidbits, which I also found bizarrely relevant to my life, and then there at the bottom of the page it offered the following: “The most successful May 31 people learn to bring the extremes of their personality into harmony with each other… If not successful at this, they appear as souls in torment, constantly struggling against frustration and unhappiness. Neither the oblivion of ceaseless activity, nor temporary escape from problems gives them rest in the long run.” This rang completely true for me, and the words that came into my mind were Tommy, you have to meditate.
Meditation is a universe unto itself with countless forms, practices, and goals. For our purposes here, I define meditation as a practice of focused concentration or of mindfulness that leads to a clear, calm state of mind, the development of contentment and compassion, and ultimately liberation. As we have discussed, the 12 Steps do not offer much in the way of meditation instruction, but they do encourage us to seek outside help where necessary.
EVERYTHING IS CREATED IN THE MIND FIRST
Everything in the world is created twice. First it is “seen” in the mind, and then it is made manifest on the physical plane here on earth. Think about an architect’s process when she is hired to build a concert hall. She first has to envision the space and the materials. What will it look like inside and outside? How will people access it? How can the right acoustics be achieved? She directs her mind to imagine possibilities. Her power of imagination is of course a central component of her ability to create.
All human beings have the ability to create, whether they have developed that ability or not. When we get inspiration or vision, it comes from our “creative ability” or, put another way, our ability to tap into the “great mainframe.” My writing this book right now is happening like that. I’m sitting and writing what comes into my head. I’m focusing on the topic at hand and words are showing up, but it does not originate with me.
People struggling in addiction are like our architect, only in their case, their imagination leads to the creation of dis-ease. Addicts have incredible minds, amazingly powerful imaginations. They are very creative people. Their creativity is skewed in ways that lead them toward pain and suffering rather than toward harmony and bliss. They are disconnected from the great mainframe. They are not creating concert halls in their mind. They are creating their next shot of alcohol, hit of crack, or codependent relationship.
It is encouraging that the classical path of yoga recognizes and addresses the issue, which all addicts know to be the issue: the mind. We know that a conscious approach to the 12 Steps treats the condition of addiction and reconnects us with the great mainframe. Then, through meditation, we can forever build upon our connection, develop focus and compassion, transform our thinking, and teach others to do the same. When our thinking transforms, we transform and our world transforms.
MEDITATION, ADDICTION, AND TIME
We live in a world that is constantly gearing up and going faster, and for most people this leads to stressful relationships with time. We may be caught in resentments, which draw us back into the past, or we may be anxious or worried about the future. All people who struggle with addiction seem to have a strange relationship with time. Recently, a sponsee told me, “I cannot wait for the future to get here. Time is not passing quick enough, but I also feel like I’m behind. I’m thirty-eight years old and I feel like I’m running out of time.” My sponsee is not alone in this feeling. I believe most people can relate to it. And what do we do about it? Well, we do everything we can to get time to pass. The problem is that if we always press for another experience that gives us the illusion of time passing more quickly or more pleasurably, our life depends upon constant action, constant movement. Something will always have to be there to help us pass the time. So addicts, who rely upon addictive behaviors to move things along, have truly lost the ability to pass time well (if they ever had it at all).
Guruprem is constantly reminding me that we are searching for the comfortable seat and that the real action is found in the “subtle.” Well, there is not too much that is comfortable or subtle about the way addicts think and behave. One of our main characteristics is to be extreme in almost everything we do. Yet this is not necessary. We can develop into human beings from our current state as “human doings.” We can find the present moment and the bliss that comes along with living in it. The more present we become, the more we will be able to find true compassion and contentment.
In recovery, we must reclaim and cultivate the ability to be still and live in the present moment. Meditation holds the key to overcoming the beliefs, thought patterns, and behaviors that undermine this process.
THE FALLACY OF IF-THEN THINKING
One of the thought patterns that many of us have to break out of is “if-then thinking.” This causes us to postpone our happiness, contentment, and joy until life arranges itself in a way that meets our demands. “If I get the right job and make the right money, then I’ll be happy. If I get the right girl or the right guy, then I can start living. Once I reach this goal or that goal, then I’ll relax.” The problem with if-then thinking is that we set ourselves up to miss the whole trip. The end seems to be the only place where we stand a chance at happiness. Of course, once we are “there,” we find that we have blocked our happiness with something else. The journey is the point. That is where our healing is. That is where our joy is. That is where our love is. Meditation has been the practice that has shown me how to break out of this destructive pattern. Meditation will help you to enjoy the journey as you live it.
THE SHITTY COMMITTEE
Another thought pattern that exerts control in our lives is what people in recovery often refer to as the “shitty committee,” that cacophony of heinous internal voices that makes life unpleasant. The first thing to understand about the shitty committee is that all people have a problem with it. We all have a thinking problem in that we are identified with and dominated by our thoughts, quite often negative and painful ones. To identify with a thought gives it weight and meaning. We follow the thought and perpetuate it, thus giving it power over us. Imagine you are thinking about eating an entire chocolate cake. The thought unto itself is not a problem. It has no basis in reality. It is just a thought. It has no power except the power you ascribe to it. If you start to think about the icing on the cake, for example, or the feeling you had when you first tried chocolate cake, the thought sticks around a bit and starts to gain weight (no pun intended). The more thought energy you throw at it, the more you become stuck to it. Now you enter the realm of temptation. Remember: you have the ability to take a thought and make it manifest here in reality. Suddenly, you are very tempted to demonstrate this ability. This is what plays out in the mind of the addict from nanosecond to nanosecond until he or she becomes overwhelmed by it.
For most of us, the shitty committee gets its start bright and early in the morning, and unless we take action (read: do our sadhana), we may be at its mercy for the rest of the day.
CHANGING YOUR MIND
Yoga and meditation teacher Anand Mehrotra tells us, “Sincere meditation practice is a responsibility for our planet. All we know of ourselves is as the mind. To be identified as mind we have no choices. Once we develop the capacity to tell the difference between our thoughts and our Selves then we begin to have choice.”1 This is a beautiful way of looking at it. In addiction we have no choice. We are compelled to do something, which feels out of our control. Anand suggests that with a strong meditation practice, we can restore our power of choice. So we see how the addictive mind is the opposite of the meditative mind.
Meditation builds our capacity to reflect and focus. It trains us to witness rather than react, and it builds our nervous system by teaching us to resist impulse and temptation. Through meditation we learn to delay the gratification of doing something about this thought or that.
Imagine you are sitting in meditation when a terribly uncomfortable thought comes into your head. Maybe you feel ashamed for having done something you know is against your principles. The thought comes to you and it’s difficult to bear. And it isn’t just one thought, is it? The first thought comes and you run with it. You envision the thing you’ve done over and over again until you are all but crawling out of your skin. You think, I’ve got to do something. This is awful. I can’t bear the thought of it. Meditation sucks! Yet if you sit there long enough, you will usually find that the thought passes. It will have shifted to something else and you will be stronger for having watched your mind and resisted the temptation to do anything about it.
The same is true of physical sensations in the body. Have you ever had a terrible itch during meditation that you tried not to scratch? What about when pain or tiredness comes into the picture? Do you observe the sensation or do you scratch, fidget, and move to try to get rid of it? If you can hold on, you may note that the pain or other sensation has moved, shifted, or gone away completely.
The main point here is that addiction is seated in the mind. Since we know that the mind is where the problem lies, adding a meditation practice to your daily recovery regimen is an excellent idea and a part of Recovery 2.0.
In my seeking, I have practiced various forms of Buddhist meditation as well as Kundalini meditation. These practices have brought about the most profound changes in me. The biggest difference I’ve noticed has been the development of my capacity to simply sit still, especially in the face of discomfort—whether mental or physical. Meditative stillness has further allowed me to cultivate intuition. Meditation has led me to a greater understanding of the addictive aspect of my mind. I can isolate it now and when it rears its head, I tell it, “I see you.” This has led to self-forgiveness and compassion.
KUNDALINI YOGA–BASED MEDITATION
Of all practices I’ve known, Kundalini meditation has been the most transformative for me. As I’ve said, being in the Frequency of Addiction causes you to attract certain thoughts into your mind. I envision a massive thought cloud in the sky and each of us draws down thoughts from it. Imagine that as you enter recovery, you begin the process of dealing with a lot of difficult thinking. As you move down your recovery path, the hard thoughts still come, but you deal with them better and better. Eventually, your thinking changes altogether. Not only are you an expert at dealing with the hard thoughts, but now fewer of them show up. What is coming down the “thought pipe” is more intuitive and aligned with your newly attuned self. Without knowing how to explain it any other way, I believe these Kundalini meditations break the Frequency of Addiction and give you access to ideas and intuition you might not have had otherwise.
