Kyczy Hawk - Yoga and the Twelve-Step Path

Praise for Yoga and the Twelve-Step Path

You dont need to be a yogi for your recovery to benefit from this wonderful book. Kyczy Hawk shares practical strategies gleaned from years of yoga study and recovery. You will want to read, study, and practice these techniques and then share them with others in recovery. This book will deepen your recovery and sense of serenity, as it has mine.

Rosemary Tisch , Director, Prevention Partnership International Lead Author, Celebrating Families!

Yoga and the Twelve-Step Path is both an invitation and a profound gift. For anyone struggling with addiction, this book could be life-saving and certainly soul-saving. Conscious and cautionary, Ms. Hawk speaks to us as an authentic and powerful teacher who offers up her own compelling story in service to others. With quiet grace, clear direction, and the wisdom of experience, she gently guides the reader along a logical path to health, wellness, and spiritual awakening.

Mary Lynn Fitton , Founder, The Art of Yoga Project

Kyczy Hawk has made an important contribution to the field of yoga and addiction recovery. The work and practices laid out in Yoga and the Twelve-Step Path offer supports to anyone suffering from addiction or anyone who knows someone who is. This book is highly recommended on the journey to recovery.

Rolf Gates , Teacher and Author, Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga

Kyczy Hawk speaks compassionately from her own experience with addiction as she explores the parallels between yoga and the twelve-step path, weaving together a practical guide for enhanced healing. This is a wonderful, life affirming resource! This book offers a comprehensive understanding of yogic concepts, practices, and philosophy, including the eight limbs of raja yoga, which endorse the ideals presented in recovery meetings, and Ayurveda medicine as it relates to addiction. Thank you, Kyzcy, for creating a bridge for those in recovery to discover yoga and those in yoga to understand addiction.

Annalisa Cunningham , Author, Healing Addiction with Yoga

Coming from the depths of her own experience of addiction, and her practice and study of yoga, Kyczy has written an eminently practical book showing how the application of an integrated yoga practice complements, enhances, and enables recovery through the twelve-step approach. In a culture where addiction is endemic, this warm and heartfelt work will be helpful for those battling addiction, as well as students and teachers of yoga.

Bidyut K. Bose, PhD , Executive Director, Niroga Institute

Central Recovery Press

Central Recovery Press (CRP) is committed to publishing exceptional materials addressing addiction treatment, recovery, and behavioral healthcare topics, including original and quality books, audio/visual communications, and web-based new media. Through a diverse selection of titles, we seek to contribute a broad range of unique resources for professionals, recovering individuals and their families, and the general public.

For more information, visit www.centralrecoverypress.com.

Central Recovery Press, Las Vegas, NV 89129

2012 by Kyczy Hawk

All rights reserved. Published 2012. Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Publisher: Central Recovery Press

3321 N. Buffalo Drive

Las Vegas, NV 89129

18 17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-1-936290-80-2 (trade paper)

ISBN-10: 1-936290-80-4

ISBN-13: 978-1-936290-88-8 (e-book)

ISBN-10: 1-936290-88-X

Cover design, interior design and layout by Sara Streifel, Think Creative Design

Author photo by Susan Stojanovich

Yoga illustrations/photos by Della Calfee

The brief excerpts from AA materials are reprinted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (AAWS). Permission to reprint these brief excerpts does not mean that AAWS has reviewed or approved the contents of this publication, or that AAWS necessarily agrees with the views expressed therein. AA is a program of recovery from alcoholism onlyuse of these excerpts in connection with programs and activities that are patterned after AA but that address other problems, or in any other non-AA context, does not imply otherwise.

to my seminal teachers shasta and shannon.

to my friend and husband bill.

namaste.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

There is a Sanskrit word, guru , which means teacher, or, in a more specific sense, someone who takes you from dark to light. There have been many people in my life who have taken me from dark to light personally, in one facet of my life or in many. There are people, too, who have taken this project from dark to light, and I would like to thank them here.

My recovery meetings provide me with the quiet voices of struggle and success, and I love my home group, the In the Solution Group, here in San Jose, California. I am grateful to my sponsors, Mary H. (deceased) for having helped me bring my family back into my life, and Bonnie R. for her support and teaching me about compassion. My adjunct guide, Susan Montana, has been with me the whole time, giving me encouragement and challenging my assumptions about life. Thank you. My sponsees teach me more about myself and the pain of becoming real than any other source. Thank you.

I have a group of yoga teachers who have contributed to both the questions and the answers in my yoga practice and to the information contained in this book. Some laid the groundwork, some enhanced the quest, and others provided resources and structure for this material. Sarla Walter and Kate Walsh gave me my foundation in the yoga practice and principles. Annalisa Cunningham started me on my journey in putting the road of recovery and the path of yoga together. Durga Leela, a teacher and true guru, gave me so much information about taking the tools of ayurveda in concert with yoga and recovery to create a self-soothing plan of personal care and enlightenment. Nikki Myer is amazing and generous. She has never held back in offering her help, her wisdom, and the tools she has developed for reaching those who suffer from addiction. Kent Bond has enhanced my physical practice immeasurably, and the quiet weekly talks have helped me discover how the principles of yoga and my recovery program can really be applied to all facets of life. Bonnie Maeda has been my guru and my friend for many decades. She has walked down a complicated and challenging road in life and has shared the process with an open heart. She was the first to expose me to lessons from the mat including the importance of a private practice and the benefits of meditation. She did this all by example. I love you and thank you all.

To my students, from those whom I have met only once to those who have met with me for the last several years, I have learned so much from you. Together we have explored the physical, emotional, and spiritual quest of total recovery one day at a time, on one mat at a time. In the cafeterias, meeting halls, basements, and studios you have taught me with your enthusiasm that the benefits of a yoga and breath practice are real, that each step lives in each pose, and that all the principles of yoga do live in a recovery program. Thank you for showing up and showing me the way.