While yoga evolved many centuries ago in India as a spiritual practice, it is has gained popularity all over the world as a source of emotional and physical exercise. Words like harmony, balance and healing are often referred to in the practice of yoga, so it is easy to understand its broad appeal.

Since addiction often results in profound physical and emotional stress, many inpatient and outpatient treatment facilities have included the practice of yoga in their adjunct therapies, as a way to cope with negative emotions, depression and anxiety that many recovering individuals are experiencing. In addition to promoting energy and a more positive outlook, the physical benefits of yoga have been shown to produce lasting changes, thus encouraging a healthier lifestyle — a critical component to recovery from addiction.

For more than 10 years, YogaFit® founder, Beth Shaw, has been training instructors in her own unique brand of vinyasa style Hatha yoga (linking several poses together to enhance strength, flexibility, endurance and balance). Shaw developed her own user-friendly brand of yoga based on the traditional methods — warm-up, work and cool down — which can be tailored to meet the needs of persons with a variety of body types, skill levels and personalities.

Recently, I attended a YogaFit® training session, where I gained some firsthand knowledge (as well as some sore muscles). While maintaining much of the traditions yoga is known for — focusing on breathing, movement and pushing your body through the movements, while clearing your mind of stress — the YogaFit® teaching philosophy is unique for the transformational language used by the instructors. Rather than using typical cues, such as: “Don’t hunch your shoulders,”

YogaFit® instructors would say, “Relaxing our shoulders.” This less commanding tone of instruction relieves stress because it helps to eliminate any sense of competition class members might have with other members of the class or the instructor; and it also alleviates a lot of the anxiety that newcomers (like me) might feel over learning and performing new poses. As the instructor of my class pointed out, “The focus is not on how unskilled or unsuccessful you may be, but rather, focuses on what you are striving to be.”

The significance of her comment really struck me, since this is exactly what I imagine many people feel as they are in the beginning stages of recovery. It is all about healing, learning and growing a little more, each and every day.

As part of their training, YogaFit® instructors also are required to complete eight hours of community service — bringing yoga to groups who normally do not have the opportunity to experience its benefits, such as seniors in long-term care homes, cancer patients and survivors, disabled persons, incarcerated persons, terminally ill persons and mentally challenged individuals. My training class alone included a licensed marriage and family therapist and food addiction counselor and a woman whose father’s recovery from addiction had inspired her to bring yoga to recovering addicts and their families.

A self-proclaimed cardio junkie with a mind that never seems to stop racing with ideas and to-do lists, I had myself convinced that I could never attain the calm, quiet focus that  yoga devotees spoke about. I was so wrong! Even in the first session, I could feel the negative energy being expelled and the positive energy coming in, with each cleansing breath, as I focused on holding each pose and coordinating it with my breath. By the end of my first day of training, I had experienced the healing effects of yoga.

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