Don't Turn Your Back On Yourself

Feelings are not permanent- they DO deserve acknowledgment as they arise. To refute, refuse or dismiss them is to turn your back on yourself.

Joy, sorrow, frustration, resentment, happy anticipation, celebration: they all are temporary. Feelings have an energy in our emotional body and in our physical body. Letting them BE is the way to let them through. While I want to cling to the positive and avoid the negative; there is no neurological way to put a gate, a filter on feelings. I block one I block them all.

This difficulty with ANY feeling is how I respond to it; if I crave for more, if I dampen or resist. In fact, the feelings themselves can nourish me- I am alive, I have people whom I love and whose absence makes me sad. I am rich with this feeling. I am alive, I have people I anticipate seeing whose presence lifts me up. I I have work to do that allows me to experience curiosity and challenge. Feelings flow and the sensations witness the life in me. They sustain me.

I am human; I have preferences. It is being open to them all, however, without gripping or turning my back that helps me stay in the REAL feeling and not the rage, the depression, the hysteria or the anxiety. I am able to have my feelings, and acknowledge them in health. Acceptance.

When we open to our feelings as they arise, we create the causes and conditions of mental and physical health. This is what acceptance-based inner awareness entails; it is not a practice to put off, any more than breathing, sleeping, or consuming nourishment.- Josh Korda, "Flowing Feelings"

Kyczy Hawk is the author of “Life in Bite Sized Morsels” (2015), “Yoga and the Twelve Step Path” (2012) as well a several short books and manuals. She is the creator of S.O.A.R.™ (Success Over Addiction and Relapse) teacher certification program. Her students have gone on to create recovery oriented classes and workshops to serve this population across America and around the world.  

In her third decade of recovery she has faced many situations that have called on her abilities to face adversity while maintaining sobriety. Those that have come in her recent years

Ms. Hawk lives in Silicon Valley, California sharing her time between her family, practicing and teaching yoga, writing and pottery.  www.yogarecovery.com

Sustaining ability with universal intentions

What keeps me going when things are difficult? What allows me to stand firm when speaking my truth? What gives me steadfast allegiance to a compassionate heart when I DO speak my truth?
Harm and sharpness and criticism often come from the place of fear. When I come from fear, insecurity, or pain I am often unskilled, "unlovely" in my thoughts, speech or actions.
When I have faith, when I have reaffirmed my good intentions (not the intentions that come from self will or a controlling spirit), when I have realigned realigned my efforts in companionship with my higher power I can find the courage to be my best, and to do what is right.

For Today: “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.” Step By Step, pg. 97Step Nine

Kyczy Hawk RYT E-500

Author “Yoga and the Twelve Step Path” and “Life in Bite-Sized Morsels” and “From Burnout to Balance” among others. She is the founder of S.O.A.R.(™) Success Over Addiction and Relapse

You can join Kyczy and a host of other people in recovery every Sunday morning at 7am PT (10 am ET) on In The Rooms for the Yoga Recovery meeting.

Kyczy has been teaching recovery focused yoga classes since 2008.  A leader of Y12SR (Yoga of 12 Step Recovery) classes for nearly five years and a devoted teacher to people in treatment centers and in jail- Kyczy created a teacher training program for others who wish to work in this field.  Trauma sensitivity and the somatics of moving home into your body are some of the basics taught in S.O.A.R.(™) Success Over Addiction and Relapse

More about her work can be found at www.yogarecovery.com.