Dear CommUnity,
Thank you for your consideration in applying for our Yoga of Recovery Program as to be considered receiving a Scholarship to our launch of Yoga and Recovery at our studio.
There are 2 offerings: We are offering a Scholarship for our 400 hour Yoga Teacher Training that begins June 5th.
We are asking and looking for someone that has been through a Recovery Program such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Al Anon or one you personally experienced.
We are doing this because we would like to grow our Yoga of Recovery CommUnity as a vital service to our New Orleans community. We feel this segue is vital and currently underserved.
Our plan is to offer various workshops related to Yoga and Recovery but we need someone with vivid experience that has they themselves gone through the Recovery process in such a bold way as to be willing to speak about it publicly as to serve others in their process of addiction.
This person must be stable, reliable, honest and willing to do the work necessary to build this with us together as a vital union of these sacred arts. If you are uncertain, please keep this scholarship open to someone serious!
No current experience with yoga is necessary. That is what your 400 hour Swan School grant will do to prepare you.
The 400 hour Teacher Training, called Swan School which begins June 5, 2019. Swan School 2019
To apply:
- Writing, recording, or videoing a 2 page paper or 15 minute presentation as to why you would like the chance to serve others going through Recovery or those hoping to serve in teaching Yoga of Recovery Teacher Trainings
- Please include 1 personal reference and 1 professional reference.
Please send all submissions to our General Manager, Deb Pela.
Email: deb@swanriveryoga.com
We are building to host a Yoga and Recovery Teacher Training. We need those of service, having been through this to do so. Please help us spread the word.
Namaste, Swan Michelle
Enjoy an essay I have written on Addiction. Here is an excerpt. For the full article go to Swan Talks – Swan Michelle
Addiction And Feeling The Pain Body
“One year ago, when I attended an Ayurveda and Yoga Nidra Teacher Training, parallel to our school time was an Addiction and Yoga Recovery Conference at a Yoga Ashram. Numerous beings spoke from many different holistic backgrounds, with an emphasis on Ayurveda, the yoga of natural medicine from India and Kundalini Yoga, created by Yogi Bhajan in the psychedelic 60’s era. Every day I did 5 hour Yoga Nidra courses while lots of other beings in recovery attended support groups and trainings for healing a disease epidemic, the sickness of addiction.
I hadn’t planned on attending the Addiction lectures since I wasn’t addicted to anything. I didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, which has indeed been a long journey of slow and steady renunciations for me. Yet, I could hear the addiction and recovery seminars at night after my class from my tent. That’s when it hit me. I too was addicted and there were very few beings in that enlightened ashram that were not.
Addiction:
Webster Definition: the fact or condition to being addicted to a particular thing, substance or activity to the point of destruction and lack of self control.
Synonyms: uncontrollable craving, habit, weakness, compulsion, fixation, enslavement
Alcoholics Anonymous Definition: (paraphrased from the AA of Maryland Addiction and Recovery Center)
1. Physical Allergy- physically making someone sick, setting off a phenomena of craving
2. Mental Obsession-not seeing what something does to us but what it does FOR us,
blocking out all reasoning
3. Spiritual Malady- A total ignoring of feelings, emotions and connectivity to a Source greater
than them
The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, founded in 1935, is a singular in purpose list with non- governed tenets of admittance and direction still active today around the world. I’ve seen it used in small villages in Asia to Ritzy Villas In the French Riviera. The original tenets of AA provide a restoration of sanity and reminder of an ultimate higher purpose, Spirit.
Numerous potent beings that I respect speak about various organized groups similar to or about AA. One medical healer, Dr. David R Hawkins PhD, the creator of muscle testing in kinesiology and writer of “Power Versus Force” stated the 12 Steps and Tenets of AA has a very high calibration, nearly up there in conscious intent if living it’s principles with the Bhagavad Gita or chanting “OM”.
Marianne Williamson mentions The 12 steps numerous times as an enlightened intent with crucial spiritual principles that draw mutual conclusions to A Course In Miracles.
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She says “Weʼre becoming a sedated nation when instead we should be an awakening one. You donʼt have to be addicted to a substance or to a particular behavior to be at the effect of the addictive global-mind. The eleventh step of AA—to seek through prayer and meditation a conscious contact with God—is something A Course in Miracles helps accomplish.”
Melody Beattie, the well known author of Codependent No More speaks to the praises of Al Anon, a fellowship that offers recovery to the families affected by addiction and helped redefine codependency in psychotherapy.
Noah Levine, author of “Dharma Punx” and son of meditation and buddhist teacher Steven Levine, an American Buddhist, himself recovered, became involved in the straight edge hardcore punk rock scene, inspiring thousands of students.
Buddhism and Addiction:
The Buddhist 4 Noble Truths by Gautama Buddha lends towards the nature of addiction. Many Addiction and Recovery organizations reference this Buddhist teaching:
“I teach suffering, its origin, its cessation and path.” Buddha.
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“We must do away with any shred of denial, minimization, justification, or rationalization. To
recover, we must completely and totally understand and accept the truth that addiction creates
suffering.” ― Noah Levine, Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction
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First Noble Truth – there is suffering
Second Noble Truth – suffering is caused by attachment and cravings (to things that are
impermanent and don’t exist in the way we think they do)
Third Noble Truth – there is a way to overcome attachment
Forth Noble Truth – the path to overcoming cravings is made up of eight parts – right view,
right action, right intention, right understanding, right concentration, right livelihood, right effort,
and right mindfulness
In our evening Satsang at the Ashram, a list was read that helped me to understand I was also
an addict to more things than I thought. Addiction is not just substance abuse, physical, or verbal. Itʼs not just over indulging in alcohol, nicotine, narcotics, gambling, food, sugar, coffee, video games or our cell phone.Thereʼs also uncontrollable and disproportionate attractions to hurting others, obsessing, attraction to conflict, cruelty, emotional abuse, attention, infidelity, gas lighting, perfectionism, youth, sex, work, busyness, lying, being right, being needed or needing success that end up being destructive or something we get high from, temporarily.” Written by Swan Michelle