This is the first in a series this year we’re covering in my weekly Y12SR session (Tuesdays 7 pm ET). Each month, I explore one of the 12 Steps through my own experience as a Yoga practitioner. What I’ve noticed over the years is that even if we may not identify as a person in recovery from addiction (of any kind: substance, process, behavior) it is a useful framework for looking at any behavior from which we seek freedom.
“We admitted we were powerless over ___ and that our lives had become unmanageable.”
In Y12SR we say, “As humans we are a vessel… and addiction turns our vessel upside down.” The vessel is said to contain our vital energy, our prana, our innate embodied spirit. The ancients saw no difference, no separation between the physical, energetic, mental, character, and spiritual bodies. In addiction all of these are affected to larger and lesser degrees. What we have done to ourselves during the course of our addiction- whether to people, to behaviors, or to substances- damages many if not all these bodies at the worst- and at the least, causes separation and great pain. There’s often an inner war within ourselves- a split distancing us from the life we would deeply desire the most, and an outer war- from those who love us- and from spirit itself. In the first few steps we are beginning to right the vessel.
I invite you to let your vessel drop anchor, receive the grounding that is beneath you, beneath the turbulence. Breathe in, and breathe out.
Awareness of some fundamental, often uncomfortable truth is truly the key to the first step- awareness and the willingness to admit that truth to ourselves. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever witnessed is the truth a person expresses when she says, “I’ve never said this before, but I’m an alcoholic.” The reason it’s so beautiful is that I can see what sometimes they themselves cannot see, often through tears: the possibilities that lie ahead are beyond that which any of us can imagine. The freedom that becomes available to us when we admit the truth about ourselves is boundless- it’s empowering to admit powerlessness because it opens us up to healing, integration, and wholeness. I’ve been privileged over the years to sit in the presence of such beauty many, many times.
When I admitted powerlessness over alcohol I was invited to consider my life and the conditions I was arriving with. I was asked to consider what is the cost of my drinking? It had cost me a lot. What had I lost? I had lost a tremendous amount. What was it like? It was unimaginably painful and I could not find a way to live like that anymore. I was terrified to die and found myself living in fear. And yet, I was still afraid that without it, I couldn’t live either. I felt trapped. I was powerless over alcohol and my life had wired itself around it. I could not live without it and could not see a way to live one day longer with it. Life had become unmanageable.
While it was tempting as it often is to immediately consider all the reasons I had fallen into this predicament- in my case, society’s attitudes and permissibility toward alcohol, the shame and stigma around female alcoholism, my family history of alcoholism, generational trauma- for a time, I had to get very, very micro-focused, just looking at myself and my behavior, my actions, my life- the Serenity Prayer begins to come to mind. What could I look at, what could I imagine changing and what would I have to let go of, for now? There’s time later to focus on the macro causes and conditions in which addiction can thrive. For now, at this stage in Step 1, just focusing on the personal cost is enough, and often, an overwhelming task. (Fortunately, once we’ve admitted the truth in Step 1, Steps 2 and 3 come along to offer us support in getting our vessel upright in the water again.)
Some of us are starting out anew in the new year or at this point in our lives, and some of us are “branching out” and applying what we learned in recovery to other areas of our lives that we know are out of balance. Or perhaps we are playing the game of “whack-a-mole” and food, or shopping, or relationships have slipped in into the place of the addiction from which we’ve been recovering. And we can feel it. Perhaps that vessel has started to leak or to tilt and we want to right the ship.
An important part of this, for me, was learning the dignity in truth telling. There is dignity in sitting with uncomfortable truth. There is grace in admitting where we’ve gone off kilter. There is power in presence- the glow and the vitality that grows when we sit in the truth, let it wash over us, decide how we’re going to move forward and begin to talk about where we’re going next. Sitting in the presence of truth in meetings in the early days moved something in me, like the breath- I could feel the sensation inside, the tears, the lump in the throat, the tightness in the chest- today I say this was my higher power moving in my heart, opening me up to something very important, and I knew to pay attention. Those sensations, we learn, are information, vital information about ourselves, the truth that can only reveal itself when we are willing, when we let it. And once we know that truth, once we admit it, we are never really the same.
Sending love,
Dana
I’m currently creating some regularly scheduled Yoga, Writing and Recovery sessions and if you’re interested in meditating, moving and writing with me, sign up here.
