Being: Just The Way We Are

Sometimes I lead a body scan that I call: "This is what it's like, right now" suggesting that the students experience the body just as it is. We meditate to practice noting our internal world just as it is. 

What if I could combine these practices and view myself - just as I am- without criticism, without wanting to redo the past; without future-casting and planning how I will be in the future. What if I could accept myself just as I am, trusting that change IS happening where it needs to; silently, quietly in the background, without force, without negative internal dialogue, without haste. 

Today- and maybe just minute by minute, I am going to practice being fully and completely myself: just as I am.

When we speak of just sitting, we are not limiting ourselves to describing a particular posture or practice. We are describing a way of being in the world in which everything we encounter is fully and completely itself.

—Barry Magid, "Uselessness"

Kycz Hawy E-RYT 500 is a yoga teacher and author. Her most recent book is "Yogic Tools For Recovery: A Guide to Working the Steps". The workbook will be coming out May 15, 2018. Read more at yogarecovery.com

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