What is recovery all about anyway? What does it mean to recover? What was lost in the first place that needs recovering? Webster’s online dictionary defines the word recover as to regain, as in, ‘to bring back to a normal position or condition’. This implies a movement back to a place of origin. What would this place of origin be for the person in recovery?
In a previous post, addiction was defined in part as a condition surviving in a space of separateness through which the individual has lost a sense of connection to self. (‘What is Addiction? March 21st, 2009) It is a dissociated state of being that exists suspended from the experience of being itself.
To be, means to exist. To exist, means to be present. What’s missing in the life of the person in active addiction is their undoctored present moment experience. How do we gain entry to our present moment experience? By paying attention to our experience in the here and now.
The Yoga tradition teaches through the vehicles of the breath and the body that we can become attuned to paying attention to our experience in the here and now. By watching, sensing, and feeling what is happening in the body, and by following the rhythm of the breath, we can leave the experience of separateness in a bygone moment. In so doing, we become better able to re-connect with our authentic experience in the present, no matter what it may contain. For the person in recovery, coming back to our place of origin implies coming back into our authentic experience in the here and now.