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september podcast: jason crandell on contemporary vinyasa practice

Jason Crandell has been named by Yoga Journal as one of the next generation of teachers shaping yoga’s future. In this edition of Kripalu Perspectives, Jason offers fresh insights on keeping the senses soft, the breath deep, and the body grounded—enlivening and invigorating your vinyasa practice time and again.

September 2010 podcast Contemporary Vinyasa Practice (listen now, download an mp3, or subscribe via iTunes or RSS feed). Jason Crandell is teaching at Kripalu September 10–12.

prescription for health and happiness?

What if a well-known psychiatrist recommended regular doses of non-ordinary states of consciousness to cure what ails you? Stanislav Grof, considered the father of transpersonal psychology, is just such a psychiatrist—and was one of the first people to offer a reliable practice, Holotropic Breathwork™, for entering altered states for healing and personal growth purposes.

As always, Stan’s work promises to be groundbreaking, reality-shifting, and deeply integrating. The Adventure of Self-Discovery: A Holotropic Breathwork Experience, September 24–26.

evolution through yoga

Ready to inject deep purpose and meaning into your yoga practice? Combine introspection with celebration in this experiential program with wise and compassionate guides Don and Amba Stapleton, directors of Nosara Yoga Institute in Costa Rica.

Come learn how yoga can bring you closer to your deepest self in Yoga Retreat: Evolving Through Your Yoga Practice, October 8–10.

Read “Coming Home to Ourselves,” an excerpt from Don Stapleton’s book Self-Awakening Yoga.

ancient chinese secret

The Mayo Clinic’s 2009 Special Report on Yoga and Tai Chi: Pathways to Health and Wholeness includes great information on benefits, getting started, and basic Taoist philosophy. (Reprinted with permission.)

Want to experience tai chi—and its related art, qigong—for yourself? Check out these upcoming programs at Kripalu:

Deborah Davis offers simple yet profound exercises designed to maintain agility, health, and grace as women age in Women’s Qigong for Vitality and Self-Healing, November 7–12. Renowned qigong master Ken Cohen teaches a rare method of qigong healing exercise called Taoist Taiji Ruler in Taoist Qigong: The Alchemy of Transformation, October 1–3. Experience the benefits of both forms in Master Yang Yang’s Evidence-Based Traditional Taiji (Tai Chi) and Qigong: Nurturing Mind, Body, and Spirit, November 26–28.

ready to write a memoir?

If you’ve got a life story that you’ve been longing to tell, join us at Kripalu this fall to delve into your self and your memories and get your pen moving. Whether you are looking to reconnect with your writing practice or start from square one, we’ve got programs to help your creativity flow. Leading teachers including Dani Shapiro, Marge Piercy, and Natalie Goldberg will guide you in expressing yourself, connecting with and uncovering your unique story, and exploring the golden (and gory) details of your life.

Find out more about upcoming memoir-writing and other writing programs.

the next step for yoga teachers

Calling all yoga teachers! Deepen your teaching and your personal practice in Kripalu’s 500-hour teacher-certification modules. Experience the Kripalu methodology of teaching from your source as you hone your ability to deliver transformational classes and workshops, tap into the lineage of Kripalu Yoga, and learn what modern science has to say about the effects of contemplative practice.

Check out upcoming 500-hour certification modules Tools for Transformational Teaching, September 24–October 3, and Yogic Philosophy, Meditation, and Pranayama: Applying Ancient Teachings to the Modern Lifestyle, November 12–21.

from the archives

Kripalu is the go-to destination for everything yoga. Never tried yoga? No problem! Yoga is for everybody, as Maya Breuer beautifully puts it in this article. Happy reading!

Read “Yoga Is for Everybody.”

healthy living recipes

It’s back-to-school time, which means packing lunchboxes and preparing afternoon snacks. But you don’t have to be a kid or a parent to appreciate Executive Chef Deb Morgan’s yummy and portable treats, packed with nutrient-dense ingredients like barley and sunflowers.

September Healthy Living Recipes
Wheat-Free Vegan Blueberry Muffins
Carrot-Sunflower Spread

desktop wallpaper

Enjoy the beauty of the Berkshires every day with Kripalu’s desktop wallpaper. Available with and without a calendar.

Easy to download.

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Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization whose mission is to teach the art and science of yoga to produce thriving and health in individuals and society.

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welcome

If summer is a wild waterslide, then September is the gentle pool at the bottom of the ride. Rhythms return as we begin to take stock and undertake new projects and challenges. For some of us, this may include facing an addiction, and we hope this month’s feature article provides support and encouragement. It’s a good time to break old habits—according to the Ayurvedic system of holistic health, the characteristics of vata (air and space) are emphasized in the fall, enhancing mental alertness, clarity of purpose, and creativity. Practicing yoga postures and eating foods that warm and ground you will help nurture you through whatever large and small changes you initiate this fall.

breaking the cycle: how yoga and meditation can help heal addiction

by Laura Didyk

What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop.
—Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

While there are a range of ways that people break the cycle of addiction, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and its Twelve-Step approach has become one of the most well known, accessible, and affordable ways (it’s free) to get clean and sober, and has come to signify the Western approach to recovery. It’s more than the promise of abstinence, however, that attracts people to the Twelve Steps.

“Addiction itself can be a misguided spiritual search,” says Kevin Griffin, author of One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps and cofounder of the Buddhist Recovery Network (BRN). “Many people who don’t see themselves as particularly spiritual find that when they get sober they have some longing in them, and that their addiction, in one form or another, has been a longing for connection. This is a very common experience.”

Though there is no spiritual or religious requirement to practice the Twelve Steps, at the heart of any Twelve-Step recovery program is the importance of adopting a spiritual approach to life. “The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines,” states the bible of Alcoholics Anonymous (a.k.a. the Big Book). First published in 1939, this main text offers detailed instructions for prayer and, to a lesser degree, meditation, but it doesn’t address, in any significant way, the role that a bodymind connection can play in the healing process.

Aruni Nan Futuronsky, a Kripalu Yoga teacher and life coach who teaches Yoga and Recovery: 12-Step Spirituality, says that the complementary relationship between the Twelve Steps and yoga is a perfect marriage for healing. “Addiction is the ultimate checking out of the moment … Yoga, on and off the mat, is the checking in to reality,” she says. “Brilliantly, yoga and recovery programs work together to cover all bases.”

Bodymind practices aside, there are many parallels between the benefits reaped from Eastern practices, like yoga and meditation, and the benefits produced as a result of working the Twelve Steps—self-acceptance for one, the importance of staying in the moment another. In his workshop One Breath at a Time, Griffin connects Buddhism’s Eightfold Path directly with the Twelve Steps. The First Noble Truth “is that there is suffering. The Second Noble Truth is that the cause of suffering is clinging, or craving,” he says. “And if [meditation] practice works with suffering, with clinging and craving, it’s going to help with addiction. And it does.”

The Big Book promises that anyone can get and stay clean if they practice “rigorous honesty.” “Mindfulness,” says Griffin, a member of a Twelve-Step group himself, “is a form of existential honesty. What is true in this moment? Both the Steps and meditation really demand a presence and a willingness to look at what is real and true.”

Although he has stopped assuming there is any one way to get and stay sober, Griffin will still encourage attendance at Twelve-Step meetings to students who are initially resistant, and will also refer them to the BRN, which “supports the use of Buddhist teachings, traditions, and practices to help people recover from the suffering caused by addictive behaviors.” BRN meetings are not affiliated with any Twelve-Step program, but as Griffin points out, they have some similarities to a Twelve-Step meeting. “There’s sharing. There’s someone who leads. You meditate together as a group. [Even] if you don’t want to do Twelve-Step, you still need support.”

Nikki Myers, who teaches Yoga of Twelve-Step Recovery with her husband, Nate Rush, notes that she often comes across recovering addicts who only want to do yoga and not go to Twelve-Step meetings. With a history of relapse in her own recovery, Myers knows what awaits some people who go down that path. “I replaced meetings and [Twelve-Step] program work with yoga. The relapse proved the ineffectiveness of that path for me. I had the realization that it takes both, and that brought me to a more integrated recovery approach.” Myers and Rush use models from the Yoga Sutras, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and other sacred texts to help expand their students’ awareness. “A Twelve-Step program approaches addiction at a cognitive level,” says Myers, “and yoga includes a somatic approach. The combining of the two creates a model that truly addresses addiction as the physical, mental, and spiritual dis-ease that it is.”

A recovering alcoholic, sober for nine years, who asked to remain anonymous, explained her experience of being on the verge of relapse, and how adding the bodymind approach helped her turn a tough corner. “Four years into my recovery,” she says, “I started to question whether or not the Twelve Steps worked at all and if it was even worth it to be sober. I wasn’t drinking, but my addictive tendencies were making the rounds in different areas of my life, so I still felt crazy and restless and unhappy. At the suggestion of a fellow recovering alcoholic, I signed up for a yoga class. In yoga postures, I got introduced to how frenetic and negative my thinking was, and I knew that that’s where the change needed to happen. Abstinence from alcohol wasn’t enough. Eventually I started a meditation practice, which is where I get to both observe and train my mind.”

The Eastern perspective on addiction is that it’s not a separate ailment, but rather a condition on the continuum of human suffering. Rolf Gates, master yoga teacher, addictions counselor, and author of Meditations from the Mat, puts it this way: “In the Western medical model, addiction is treated as something outside of the ordinary. In the Eastern approach to suffering, attachment to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant is seen as a constant, and so addiction is just an extreme manifestation of an ordinary attachment to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant.”

The difference in perspective, however, doesn’t change the structure of the approach to healing. “The Western approach to addiction generally falls into what is called cognitive behavioral therapy,” Gates adds, “which focuses one’s attention on the problem and supports a person in the practice of new behaviors. A yoga or meditation teacher draws one’s attention to the cause of suffering and supports the student in practicing new behaviors. As a result, the Eastern and Western approaches to treatment are almost identical.”

Whether it’s found through therapy, the Twelve Steps, a bodymind approach, or a combination of all three, the experience of spiritual well-being seems to be the key to helping many people break the cycle of addiction in their lives. “A longing for something lurks at the bottom of the issue of addiction,” Futuronsky says, echoing Griffin’s observation. “Aren’t all addicts seekers, wanting something extraordinary, something magical, to soothe them?” And what better magic to add to the path of clean living than yoga and meditation?

A person in recovery, or anyone hungry for spiritual connection, is wise to take what Rolf Gates says to heart: “It is my understanding that the Buddha told his students that there is only one mistake you can make on the path to awakening, and that is to stop.”

For more information about recovery, check out Alcoholics Anonymous, The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, Buddhist Recovery Network, and the feature documentary Addiction, Recovery, and Yoga.

Laura Didyk, MFA, is the writer of Off the Mat, a former Kripalu Online column. Her work has also been published in magazines throughout the country. She lives and writes in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Don’t miss Kevin Griffin at Kripalu, leading One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps, September 17–19.

spreading the word…

Yoga and Addiction Retreat at Esalen
Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, is holding a groundbreaking retreat this November. Yoga and Addiction Recovery: A Celebration of Healing brings together a dynamic collection of teachers and healers to focus on the tools and practices of yoga as a way to deepen the journey of recovery.

Take a look.

Zen Peacemakers
The Zen Peacemakers bring Zen practice into the worlds of social service, business, and the environment. Founded by Bernie Glassman in 1980, the organization now has members who feed hundreds of immigrants every week at a Paris soup kitchen, provide hospice care in New York, work for prison reform in Colorado, offer a broad range of services to various impoverished American inner cities and rural areas, and serve as leaders of socially engaged Buddhism in the West.

Learn more.

quote of the month

By embracing your mother wound as your yoga, you transform what has been a hindrance in your life into a teacher of the heart.
—Phillip Moffitt, Buddhist meditation teacher, author, and president of the Life Balance Institute

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Corrections We make every effort to ensure the accuracy of our information; however, errors do occasionally occur.