WEEKLY MEDITATION
Yoga does not just change the way we see things, it transforms the person who sees.
-B.K.S Iyengar
Recovering from our addictions is a process of transformation. Our addictions represent an attempt to transform our experience of life by soothing underlying patterns of emotional discomfort. In recovery we must learn to embrace these patterns instead of trying simply to circumvent them with the substances and behaviors that make up our addictions. In learning about the underlying reasons that our addictions developed in the first place, we begin to see things differently. When we can properly answer to the parts of us that we automatically catered to through our addictions, we begin to transform. If we are diligent, we transform into a person who no longer requires the desperate race to outrun emotional pain, and addiction is overcome. One does not need to practice yoga to recover from addiction, but changing the first word of today’s quotation to “recovery” makes an important point. We must transform, not primarily into an abstinent person, but into a person healed from the underlying need to sooth.
