... where I became willing...

A few months after dumping my liquor, I haphazardly fell into meditation when I was invited to a Qigong (chee-gung) meditation class. Crying was still my only means of coping, so why not try it?

At first, I stuck with the practice to impress my boyfriend. I thought it made me seem cool. Over time, though, my racing mind slowed. I cried less. I wanted to engage in life more. Sitting became one of the few places where chaos didn’t reign. Meditation was like sleep for my soul.

Three years after discovering meditation, I discovered yoga. Practicing on a bath towel on the floor of the YMCA nursery, something shifted. I didn’t know what, but there was something new and transformative, something lovely, about moving my body and stilling my mind. I’d been used to numbing my body and moving my mind.

For the next several years, I practiced with another wise and jovial teacher, taking the same six-week beginner’s series over and over. Five years in, when I realized I didn’t have to look like the teacher, that my practice was for me and not her, another shift happened. I’d been re-introduced to myself. The numbness in my body slowly started to recede both on and off the mat.

But this was as far as I went.

Practicing yoga and meditation alone didn’t produce honesty or sobriety. I was hiding behind the illusion of enlightenment all the while flying into rages, scaring and angering the people I loved most.

. . .

Years later, the overwhelming obsession of relapse had replaced any yoga or meditation practice, and five months after I started treatment, another relapse was imminent. So, I did the most sensible thing I could. I googled yoga and addiction. Yoga and recovery was a thing! Invigorated, I stepped back into practice.

With treatment, honesty, acceptance, and community, yoga and meditation have once again become safe harbors from chaos.

Practice offers me a space to listen. To God. To others. To myself.

It offers me a place where honesty becomes a tool for change, and where my mind, body, and soul reunite.

I used to see everyday life as separate from yoga and meditation. Recovery? That was a foreign concept. Today, one isn’t separate from the other, and for the first time I’m not just surviving life but thriving within it.

You can also read the intro, part one, and part three to this series.