Is That All There Is?

It is everything and it is only a part.  AA is my rock and my foundation, and I have an amazing castle of life to build; turrets, flying butresses, widow walks, and balconies from which to view the panorama of my life.

I would not be able to build as high and as elaborate (or sturdy) a life as I have now without the fundamentals. I also don't let fear or a strange superstition tell me that AA (or any 12 step program) is the only resource for me.  Recovery has given me a life and I intent to LIVE IT; with Yoga, with activism, with meditation, with many communities of healing, and communities of wild investigation.

As I will will practice "gazing at a mountain AS a mountain, and not as a reflection of myself" I hope that the 12 Step Programs can do the same: avoiding the thought that the variety of resources to recovery are in anyway a comment on AA as an answer to recovery.

For Today:

“The oft-heard cry ‘A.A. is all you need’ has the
hollow ring of fear – fear that if any member
dissents from the belief that A.A. is the one and
only, the total and complete answer to all the
alcoholic’s ills, then all the other members will
perish with him.”

A Member’s Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 23
World Services pamphlet P-41

Kyczy Hawk 500RYT, 200E-RYT is a yoga teacher and author. She has recently published "Life in Bite Sized Morsels". "Yoga And The Twelve Step Path" was released in 2012. Join her Sundays 7am PT online for the Yoga Recovery meeting on In The Rooms

The founder of S.O.A.R.™ Success Over Addiction and Relapse, she teaches recovery oriented yoga online and in person. Kyczy also leads recovery infused yoga classes online with Studio Live TV. 

Read more on her website: www.yogarecovery.com 

Turning Into Difficulties

TURNING INTO DIFFICULTIES WILL TEACH YOU WHAT YOU NEED.

While I remain thoroughly and completely powerless over my substance of addiction, I am not powerless in my life.  I dont' control what comes down my path, but I CAN be mindful about facing it.  What hurts me teaches me. It can be hurt for others or myself. Some things may be very small touching only me. It may be an event or experience others might not see or understand.

The importance does not lie in the event itself but how I acknowledge it and how I respond.  Both nicks and stabs, trips and falls show me the way. BE BRAVE, see, accept, learn and heal. 

Finding a way through the pain is our gift to ourselves and can be our gift to the world.

Feeling alarm or devastation can guide us to a deep sanity, reminding us of who we are and what we need. Our power to act, our power to take part in the healing of our world, our power to bring things back into balance, comes from the same source as that devastation. Our pain for the world, and our power to take part in the healing of our world, both come from the same place.- Joanna Macy, "Allegiance to Life"

Kyczy Hawk 500RYT, 200E-RYT is a yoga teacher and author. She has recently published "Life in Bite Sized Morsels". "Yoga And The Twelve Step Path" was released in 2012.

The founder of S.O.A.R.™ Success Over Addiction and Relapse, she teaches recovery oriented yoga online and in person. Kyczy also leads recovery infused yoga classes online with Studio Live TV. 

Read more on her website: www.yogarecovery.com 

How to Resist Cravings

Nibbana (Nirvana, not the band, but another word for that place of non- suffering, non- attachment, release from the past and all cycles of life - bliss).  

Craving is suffering, it is attachment, it is the past, and it can be the future. How do we release its hold?  Looking into it, looking into the feeling that is UNDER the craving and addressing that.

Are you lonely, are you tired, are you unsettled, unhappy, unfed?  Do you need to be nurtured in an emotional, physical or spiritual way?  Is the object of your craving (a person, a substance, an activity) really a cover for something that is more difficult to address or perhaps more elusive.

Take five minutes. Investigate your feelings, the condition of your body mind and spirit. It is with practice that we disconnect from the illusion that the object of our craving can help us. IT CANNOT; IT SEEKS ONLY TO SATISFY ITSELF!  Once you 'give in" to the craving - it will ask for more and the pain remains.

How can we address craving?  Not by ignoring it, but by delving deeper and beyond.  After that there is bliss.

Try looking into how feeling gives rise to craving. It's because we want pleasant feelings that craving whispers—whispers right there to the feeling. If you observe carefully, you will see that this is very important. This is where the paths and fruitions leading to nibbana are attained. If we extinguish the craving in feeling, that's nibbana. —Upasika Kee Nanayon, “A Glob of Tar”

Kyczy Hawk 500RYT, 200E-RYT is a yoga teacher and author. She has recently published "Life in Bite Sized Morsels". "Yoga And The Twelve Step Path" was released in 2012.

The founder of S.O.A.R.™ Success Over Addiction and Relapse, she teaches recovery oriented yoga online and in person. Kyczy also leads recovery infused yoga classes online with Studio Live TV. 

Read more on her website: www.yogarecovery.com