"I fully expected to be dead before I saw thirty. When I decided on my 27th birthday that I wanted to live I had not seen a sober day in twelve years
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My name is Adam Frydenlund @adamnyogi I’m an alcoholic, I share this #yogasavedmylife story because maybe somebody out there needs to hear it
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I always felt like something was missing & I spent a lot of years using drugs & alcohol to avoid that feeling. Often it felt like the chemicals were the solution, they seemed to fill that spiritual void. In reality they were only making it worse. Many of us addicts chase that solution right to the edge of the abyss & some never find their way back... I nearly didn’t
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During my stay in rehab I spent most of my free time alone in the woods. Walking in the woods one day when it hit me. I sat down in the dirt & the pine needles, the feeling washed over me that everything was going to be ok. For the first time in my adult life I felt hope. More than hope, I felt a deep abiding sense of wholeness, the opposite of emptiness. (Today I call these extremes Dukkha and Ananda, but that’s beside the point really.)
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That feeling of wholeness was fleeting. A few months out of rehab & I was struggling. I was broken. Lost. Scared
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My friend brought me to my first yoga class & I got another taste of that wholeness, the sense that I had everything I needed, that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing
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For the next year my yoga mat was my life raft. Over the following nine years it remained, side by side with the 12 step program that also saved my life, the foundation of my spiritual practice
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I came to my mat badly broken by all the years seeking outside myself for a way to fill the void.
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As we settle into our practice we discover that we have been going about it all wrong. What we are seeking has been inside each of us all along. Yoga teaches us how to look. Yoga taught me how to look inside & begin to heal, to find peace, to become whole, & that is something worth sharing. I’m excited to be on this journey with all of you
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Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu 🙏