Rolf Gates - Daily Reflections on Addiction, Yoga, and Getting Well

Praise for Daily Reflections on Addiction, Yoga, and Getting Well

A meaningful book on the role of spirituality in recovering from addiction and finding freedom. If you or anyone you love struggles to create that essential connection, this is a must-read.

Elena Brower, best-selling author of Practice You

Rolf provides accessible tools and reflective resources to support readers in staying curious, open, and calm. His decades of sobriety, study, and dedication are evident in every lesson of this book.

Melody Moore, Ph.D., founder and Executive Director of Embody Love Movement Foundation

Rolf Gates has broken new ground through the skillful, timely, and necessary integration of classical yoga philosophy, Buddhist meditation teachings, and the 12-step approach to overcoming addiction. This powerful trinity is a perfect salve for this exact moment in history.

Tommy Rosen, founder of Recovery 2.0 and author of RECOVERY 2.0

Combining heartfelt stories and insights with prompts for personal inquiry, Gates guides and supports the reader to navigate and transcend their own stories and limitations. Rolfs book is a gem that opens the realm of infinite possibilities through mindfulness, introspection, and application.

Melanie Klein, empowerment coach, professor of Sociology and Womens Studies, and author of Yoga Rising

Rolf Gates offers his whole self to those seeking healing and truth, providing a pathway to freedom through reflective self-inquiry, daily inspiration, and the practice of non-judgmental awareness. Using the wisdom traditions of yoga and Buddhism, Rolf elevates the field and offers tools that help so many others build capacity for self-regulation, resilience, and real happiness.

David Lipsius, president and CEO of Yoga Alliance and Yoga Alliance Foundation

Full of wisdom, wit, humility, and brilliance, Daily Reflections on Addiction, Yoga, and Getting Well expands and deepens insight and the practice of Buddhism, yoga, and the 12-step program. This book is an important contribution to the addiction recovery community.

Nikki Myers, founder of Yoga of 12-Step Recovery

Rolf Gates lives yoga, dharma and recovery, both on and off the mat. This book is sure to provide guidance to the inner refuge we all seek. Read it, embody the practice, and join us in the spiritual revolution!

Noah Levine, author of Refuge Recovery

ALSO BY ROLF GATES

Meditations on Intention and Being

Meditations from the Mat

Copyright 2018 by Rolf Gates

Published in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com Published in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au Published in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Cover design: Kathleen Lynch Interior design: Joe Bernier

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior written permission of the publisher.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress

Tradepaper ISBN: 978-1-4019-5396-6
e-book ISBN: 978-1-4019-5397-3

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
1st edition, September 2018

Printed in the United States of America

To Wendy and Jude

Contents

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
Rumi

Learning Separation

We are born innocent. There is no desire to find or to cause pain in some corner of our hopes and dreams. We make our first connections from a place of wonder. The smell of grass, the way the earth feels under our feet after a rain, the sound of snow whispering down through a nighttime skyall are verses from the song in our hearts. Watching clouds pass through a summer sky, we are neither judging nor wishing things were different. Then we are taught to separate this from that, you from me. Before we know what has happened, we are labeling things and reacting to our labels. Penny is a cat, Max is a dog, Steve is a boy, you are a girl. The smells, the sounds, the breeze on our skin belong to a world we must find ourselves in. A blissful we becomes an anxious me.

I became an anxious me before my first memory. I have had to reflect, to put the pieces together, to understand what it was like to have an unfiltered experience. I have no memory of a time before the adults around me were filled with fear and anger. Lifes beauty was something I glimpsed like the sky through prison bars. Our country was in a war of unimaginable ugliness. Our society had been driven mad by the belief that some people were black and others were white, my parents were trapped in a life that didnt work, and as if these challenges werent enough I had been adopted into an alien culture that was not sure I was really human. There was no peace, no belonging, no time when there would be.

I had a place where I could go to escape the overwhelming feelings that filled my days. When I watched television, I entered a world that welcomed me unconditionally. The characters I met there became the charming friends my heart ached for. The heroes offered a different sort of grown-up. These grown-ups lived without fear, often with great kindness. I found a home for myself in this world. I chose my relationship to TV over homework, friendship, family. There were consequences, but whatever trouble I found myself in faded into the background as I entered a world of laughter and adventure.

There is a scene in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, one of my childrens favorite movies, in which the heroes find themselves in the mythic land of the lotus-eaters. Our heroes are in Las Vegas. The casino they end up in is actually owned and operated by the lotus-eaters. For several days they dance and gamble in timeless bliss. One of them gets wise to the situation and alerts the others. As they wake up, they are faced with a dilemma: Is reality really better than an endless party? As a child, I did not have to spend any time on that one. On TV, there was always a place for me.

People like me find people like me. I sat in the back of the class with the other boys who had wounds they would never talk about or heal from. We did not listen, we did not cooperate, we did not care. In fourth grade during standardized testing, I got some questions wrong on purpose because I did not want to lose my identity. The wounded children were my tribe. Eventually they let me know they were smoking pot. One of my best friends started in sixth grade; I started in eighth. The first few times I got high, the experience was okay, but what I really loved was what the process gave me. From the start, getting high made me a part of something. I had found my way.