The Root of Our Problem Recovery 2.0 Interviews Nikki Myers

Transcription

1 !!! The Root of Our Problem Recovery 2.0 Interviews Nikki Myers Tommy Rosen: Welcome to the Recovery 2.0 Online Conference. I'm your host, Tommy Rosen. Today I'm just delighted to be speaking with Nikki Myers. Nikki is a Yoga Therapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and Certified Addictions Recovery Specialist. She is the founder of Y12SR, the Yoga of 12 Step Recovery, which was borne from her personal struggle with addiction. Based on its theme, the issues live in the tissues, Y12SR is a relapse prevention program that weaves the art and science of yoga with the practical tools of 12 step programs. Y12SR meetings are now available all over the United States and the curriculum is rapidly becoming a feature of addiction recovery treatment centers. Nikki is a co-founder of the annual Yoga, Meditation and Recovery Conferences at Esalen Institute and Kripalu Center. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Yoga Journal, Black Enterprise, The Huffington Post, Origin Magazine and more. Nikki, thank you for lending your voice once again to the Recovery 2.0 audience. Welcome. Nikki Myers: Hi Tommy! Of course, it's a delight always to be here. I've been in every one of these and can't wait to do them every time we get together. Tommy Rosen: Awesome. Nikki, it's been a big year. Nikki Myers: Yeah! I'll say. Tommy Rosen: Lots of stuff happening. I want to dive right into a topic that you and I actually haven't covered directly in all of our chats together as far as I can remember. That is specifically, I work with a lot of people in recovery as you do. So often, I hear somebody come to me and say, "Tommy, I want to figure out how to do this thing without the 12 steps. Can I take a yoga path alone? Can I get there?" I don't close out any possibility. I don't close out any conversation. I'm interested in whatever can get a person out of that darkness into the light. Nikki Myers: Yep! Tommy Rosen: There's an ongoing conversation, but I wanted to get your perspectives. I know you've had personal experience with this and this question. I want to get your perspectives on what does the path of yoga bring to the 12 steps? What do the 12 steps bring to the path of yoga? How do these wonderful paths come together? How can we better answer that question for people who ask it? Nikki Myers: I love it. What a great conversation. Absolutely great conversation. I hear that a lot, too. We've talked about that before. Very often when I hear that, I dig a little deeper.!

2 ! What I get to understand many times is it's not the 12 steps that there may be a little bit of concern about. It's the program, the fellowship, if you will, it's more related to people than it is to the 12 steps itself. Tommy Rosen: Yes, that's... Nikki Myers: My experience with the 12 steps is that they are absolutely brilliant. They are absolutely brilliant. They give a structure and they give a way to really be accountable to the things that we speak of very often theoretically in yoga. Right, they really really do. There really is a brilliance there, my experience is, when you really get at the root of it. There are things that I think about relative to Dr. Bob and Bill W. when they founded the 12 step programs. For example, one of the things that they'll talk about as the root of our problem, the absolute root of our problem, they say it's stinking thinking. Right? That that really is the root of our problem. That it is has to do with our perception and our thinking process and all of that. That that's really the root of addiction. If you think about it, Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras and really all the ancient texts of yoga, ultimate say the exact same things. Tommy Rosen: That's right. Nikki Myers: They say that the root of our problem is Avigna. That Vigna means knowledge when you put the "a" in front of it, it means not knowledge or misperception, or false understanding, or ignorance. Ignorance, not like stupid, but ignorance like not knowing. We don't know what we don't know. Right? When you really think about it, at the root, it's the exact same things. And like Dr. Bob and Bill W. talked about, and Patanjali says it as well, that Avigna manifests in several forms. It manifests in several forms. The way Dr. Bob and Bill W. talked about it, it's in our self-centeredness that we think the whole world revolves around us and our interpretation of a situation is "The Interpretation." All of those things. Both of them said the same thing, that this is the root of our problem. Tommy Rosen: Now this specific questions about, just yoga or just the 12 steps or how they come together, this is played out in your life directly? Nikki Myers: Yes. Tommy Rosen: Can you share a little bit about that experience that you've had? How this came so clear for you? Nikki Myers: Absolutely. I came to the 12 step program after, the phrase I used for it is that, "I paid a very high price to live a very low life." By the time I got to the 12 program in 1987, the throes of addiction, I was ravaged by all of that stuff like many of us were when we come into the rooms. By the grace of something bigger than me, I found the 12 step program and it really did save my life. I found a group of people there that really did love me til I could learn how to love myself. For that I am so deeply, deeply grateful. I spent the first eight years in recovery just at the basics and really finding life again. I went back to school. I got my kids back. Through various and sundry things, my family had been separated. I got my kids back, all of those things. In going back to school, I finished my undergrad degree and the story I always tell about it is I finished that with straight A's. Then I went back and I got my graduate degree and I finished that with one B. I recognized that I had still some little brights going on up there. That's a good thing. I started regaining my life back.

3 As the story goes, I was working for a computer software company. I had an aptitude for software. I ended up on a business trip into Germany and got there hungry, angry, lonely and tired, all of the above, and made really an ultimate error there. I walked back into addiction again. By the time I got there, the only thing that was being left that was being served was dessert, which happened to be orange sherbet served in champagne. I made the decision to go ahead and go for that. A really long story short, I ended up back in my room that night, a room that had a beautiful little mini bar in it, and I drank. I drank myself silly that night. I got up, I drank everything in the whole fridge, like Denzel Washington at the end of the movie "Flight". I finished the conference, got up the next day, did what I needed to do. But instead of flying back home to the states, I ended up taking a flight to Amsterdam. There, after eight years clean, I knew exactly what to do, exactly where to go, exactly how to talk, exactly who to become to get my drug of choice in a foreign country. That always blows my mind. It blows my mind after eight years clean, I did that. That reminds me, of course, of what the Yoga Sutras speak about, this thing we call Samskara, these patterns, these habits, this conditioning, that we can't forget is always there. That I can't forget that is always there. I say, maybe for an enlightened one, maybe a Jesus or a Buddha or some enlightened being, that stuff goes away, maybe it does. I often say I can't bank on that. I can't bank on that. Number one, you know me, I use the F word far too much to ever think I'm going to be enlightened. One of my favorite words, right? I got to keep coming back. This is what both the program and the studies have been able to teach me. I keep coming back to my mat. I keep coming back to my practices. I keep coming back, because if I don't, right, if I don't have that vigilance, what I noticed about me is that I fall back into those habits, those old habits, to those old patterns. Tommy: Nikki, when you get home from that Amsterdam trip, what's the next move? Nikki: I go back into the rooms of the 12 step program. Tommy: You re just aware, it's like, I know where this leads, I have to go back? Nikki: Right, and I stayed out. I stayed out for about 6 months on that shot, and then, I knew the spiral I was going down. I recognized, again, that pattern, that habit, the hole that I was continuing to fall into, and it was the same one that had happened 8 years before. 8 years previous. I didn't want to go back there. I did not want to go back there. I found my way back to the 12 step program. I found my way back into the rooms, and it was not terribly long after that, probably about 2 years after coming back that I found yoga again. I'd been introduced to yoga early on. I was introduced to yoga in the 70s, and I knew there was something there, but after this... I strayed away from it. Men, and sex, and drugs, and all that were the distractions at that point and time, but I came back to it after about 2 years in after that relapse, and was really really blown away by yoga and the philosophy, and the practices, and all that. It brought me back into my body in a way that I hadn't been in before. A totally new relationship with body, and I really started studying yoga philosophy at that point and time. It was then I started seeing all these connections. One of the very first books I read was the Heart of Yoga, by TKV Desikachar, who we just lost.

4 Tommy: He just died, I know. Nikki: Just lost him, yeah, yeah. My teacher's teacher and, you know, God, you know. Reading that book, I just started to notice, you know, reading this page, damn, that sounds like the 12 step program. Damn, that sounds like the 12 step program. I started noticing how many similarities there actually were and really got deep into yoga philosophy at that point in time. Four years in now, after that last relapse, I make the decision that if yoga philosophy was the root of this, this was all I needed, that I didn't need to go back and hear the same old freaking stories that I heard over and over again in the rooms of the 12 step program, I didn't need all of that stuff, all I needed was yoga. After 4 years, what happened was, I relapsed again. I relapsed again, and, you know, what I discovered, for someone like me, at least for an addict like me, is that I needed both. I needed both these things. That for me... and that they needed to be connected. That yoga can be in one box, and the 12 step program in another box, that I needed this cognitive, and... because the 12 step program does a great job at a lot of the cognitive work. You know, yoga brings in the body, it brings in a deeper level of meditation and connection with something bigger, and most importantly for me, it speaks about the really, the connection between all those things. What is the connection between those? For someone like me, I just needed these two things together, that they couldn't be separated, or put in separate boxes, and I'm seeing many others that are just like me. I'm seeing others, and I'm also seeing that the 12 step program adds a lot. It's not just what yoga does for the 12 steps. That the 12 step program also adds a lot for yogis. We talked the stuff about the principles and the yamas, and niyamas, but the 12 step program really gives us a structured way to look at how these are for real for real showing up in our lives. Tommy: Yes, thank you. You spoke a little bit, I know that this integration piece is so important, and you have spoken many times in places where I've been with you lecturing, or teaching, about, you quote the Guest House, which is that beautiful roomy poem talking about integrating all aspects of yourself, not hiding any parts of yourself. That's obviously, that's work on the path of recovery. We're in this process of integration you would say? Nikki: Absolutely, absolutely, and work on the path of yoga. For me, it's the exact same thing. One of the things that yoga invites us to do is move beyond our dual thinking, our dualistic thinking. It invites us to transcend, right? We can't do away with the ego, we got, you know, it's what keeps us here. We understand that, but there is a transcendence that yoga invites, and really that the 12 step program is doing the exact same thing. It's inviting us to move beyond the dualistic thinking that, you know, that characterizes us. Good, bad, right, wrong, pleasant, unpleasant, and the invitation is that you know, particularly for me, was to integrate all parts of myself. That there was no part that was good or bad. There was no, because I wanted to make parts of myself, particularly all the things in my addictive behavior, I wanted to make that bad, awful, and wrong. I wanted to make that girl bad, awful and wrong, and what happened was, she would come out sideways. It would come out. It's energy right? The nature of energy is to move.

5 Tommy: It s going to come out somewhere at some point. Nikki: It's got to come out somewhere at some point. Tommy: Yes. Nikki: This process has been bringing it all in and reintegrating all parts of ourselves. Tommy: Nikki, I want to dig in here a little bit in this piece of integration. I want to look at the things that get in the way. The things that underlie addiction in the first place, and that when we put down our primary addictive behaviors, the things that sort of come up to the surface, you know, in our personality and in our day to day existence, and I'm referring to the kleshas. This term in yoga that means the hindrances or the things that are in our way. You mentioned earlier, avidya. Nikki: Yes. Tommy: Let s begin with avidya, and we'll go from there through the kleshas, if you don't mind. Nikki: Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love that avidya in the yoga-sutras is spoken of as the root of all suffering. It say, avidya is the source of duka, and duka is exactly what it sounds like. It's exactly what it sounds like right? This is the source of all suffering and you know, what the yoga-sutras say is anytime there's a sense of suffering in our lives, or in the world, in the bigger world, that at it's root, is avidya. Again, avidya is this misperception, it's false understanding. It's false understanding. It's ignorance, again, not like stupid, but like not knowing, and again, I assert that the most dangerous person in the world is one who don't know they don't know, right? It manifests in so many different ways. I heard this quote one time, it was from a yoga teacher that I studied with a long time ago, actually, one you'll know. It was a quote that I got from TS Little, from doing some study with TS Little, and TS always had these greats coins and quotes, and this was years ago, and he gave this quote in shavasana, and I've never forgotten it. The quote is, I am content to see a mountain as a mountain, and not as a comment on my life. That's a beautiful quote, and what it's saying is that, I see everything through the veil or of the filter of me and my ego. When I see a mountain I say big, but really, it's only big in relationship to me, right? It's only big... I see everything through the veil of me, right? The beauty of all that is once I admit that, like step one in the twelve-step program, once I recognize that, that I'm seeing everything through this filter or veil of me and there's much more than me, once I admit that and accept that, a whole world of possibility opens up for me to see things from a different perspective. It's that acknowledging it, just like step one in the twelve-step program, acknowledging that and admitting that opens up a world of empowerment. It opens up a world of possibility. Does that make sense? Tommy: Oh my God. It's so much the story of my life. I'm not talking about my life when I was using. I'm talking about my life today. Nikki: I understand. I do.

6 ! Tommy: Yeah, it's an ongoing process. Nikki: Yes. Tommy: Avidya is sort of the root of these hindrances. What else do we have? Nikki: It says manifestations. Remembering that that's the root. The imagery I always love of this came from that book, "The Heart of Yoga." There it's pictured like a tree, right? Avidya is at the root. It's at the very base of the tree. It's shown as the root system of that tree, but then that branches from that tree. The first branch is asmita, which is ego. It's just what we were speaking to. Tommy: Asmita. Nikki: Just a few moments ago, yes. Ego, again, remembering... What we have to go back to is this non-duality. We're not speaking good, bad, right, wrong. Not saying ego bad, not saying ego good, right? Yogis teach us really it's not just good, bad, right, or wrong. That there's always that middle path, right? That equates for me, from the twelve-step program, it's the wisdom to know the difference, right? That's the basis of the wisdom to know the difference, right? Knowing that middle path. I love that. I love that connection there as well. Asmita says that this basis of ego, I usually talk about it how it kind of starts when we get to be maybe about two years old or so. About two years old, two words come into the vocabulary that changes our lives, change life for everybody. One of them, of course, is no, but the other one's mine. All of a sudden it becomes my milk, my toy, my mommy, my this, my that. You know suffering has happened because you take that object away and the kid throws a hissy fit, right? That's because they have now equated that object as an extension of them. It's like when you take the toy away, you've taken away an arm, right? You physically hurt them. Tommy: Yeah, I notice this doesn't seem to be limited to two-year-old children. Nikki: Isn't that something? The objects may change a little bit, but guess what? It's the same thing, right? It becomes my job, my career, my money, my this, my that, right? You take it away and my term I got from Seane Corn actually is I'm star-fished. I can't move. I can't move, right? Then it gets bigger. You start nationally. It's my oil, right? It becomes my water. It's personal, it's cultural, it's institutional. It's all those things. It's all those things. This stuff is at the basis of racism, sexism, all of those kinds of things. It's the same thing. It's all at the base of all that. Tommy: Yes. We talk about this root of the tree. We've got our avidya. It's the basic ignorance, misperception, misunderstanding. We see the branch of asmita, this I-ness, this mine, this possessiveness, this thing, which tends to continue our separation from each other, right? Nikki: Exactly. Tommy: What else? Nikki: The next one according to the ancients is what's called raga, right? Raga is attachment. These next two really is where we can clearly see where addiction lives.

7 Attachment, right? I want everything to pleasant all the time. I want it to always go my way. I'm attached to things going exactly the way that I want them to go. Do you understand that? If you just behave the way I want you to, Tommy, the world would be great. Tommy: It's going to be fine. Nikki: Yeah, it's going to be great. Just do what I want you to do and everything's going to be fine. Again, the twelve-step program talks about this same thing. It's the selfishness, that I want everything to go my way. In yoga, I will often ask myself and my students, what happens when things don't go your way? Watch your physiology change. Even at the level of physiology things start to change. Your heart rate becomes different, your color becomes different. What happens when things don't go your way? Just watch. I get attached to everything. I get attached to everything. I want it to all go my way all the time. Tommy: Yes. I recently heard a lecture by Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswatiji, a wonderful American-born teacher who lives in India. A very wise woman, I would say. She said the only true measure of success, it won't be the status that you attain, it won't be the money that you make, it will be how you behave when the universe doesn't behave the way you want it to. Nikki: Isn't that a trip? I love it. I love it. Tommy: It's such a high bar. Nikki: Right. I love it. I love it. Tommy: We're all in this together. This is part of the human condition is that we want to... Nikki: We want what we want when we want it, right? Tommy: Yeah, we want to recreate pleasure. Nikki: That's right. Tommy: That's really one of the ways I look at raga is I had a pleasurable experience once, I'd like to repeat it. Nikki: That's right. Tommy: Already I'm sort of manipulating reality to bring that experience. Nikki: That's right, like you ever could, you know what I mean? How could you ever... Again, my favorite phrase that I'm using for so many things now, we're standing on a rock that's spinning in space right now, right? Things are changing all the time. It's the delusion that they talk about in the twelve-step program that we're under... That we think that we could recreate any moment to be the same as it was the last moment, right? Tommy: Right, right. Nikki: It's a delusion.!

8 Tommy: Yes, and I believe the words in the [inaudible 00:27:39], it's a persistent delusion. Nikki: I love it. I love it. Tommy: Okay, so here we are trying to recreate pleasure and trying to control. What's the next one on our tree? Nikki: The flip side of that is we avoid what we have deemed unpleasurable, right? The flip side of that is dvesha and it's called, at its root, avoidance. It was I had a horrible time with whatever it was yesterday. I want to make sure, I'm going to do everything in my possible power, so that that doesn't happen ever to me again regardless of the possibility. One of the ways that I will often explain this, I'm really going to date myself here, but I think you may know. Do you remember Deon Warwick? Tommy: Of course. Nikki: Okay, just checking. Tommy: Oh, yeah. Nikki: Yeah. She had this song years ago and the lyrics were something like, "What do you get when you fall in love? You only get lies and pain and sorrow." The tagline of the song was, "I'll never fall in love again." She's saying, "I got hurt and it was awful and regardless of the possibilities, regardless of what's possible, I'm never going to fall in love again. I'm never going to." I'm going to throw out the baby with the bath water because it was bad. I'll never fall in love again. That's the basis of this one and what's funny is neurobiologically we've really got things to set up. We got these patterns, habits. There's a setup in the brain for this kind of stuff. Really, there really is. It's interesting to look at from many, many, many difference perspectives. Tommy: Yes. I think it's so valuable for any of us to understand ourself better to begin to get this thing called self-forgiveness. So important to understand compassion for self and then ultimately for other people. I think on the idea of being of service to another person, that you can see another person behave this way, and rather than judge, you can say, "Oh, I know what that is." Nikki: That's right. We've all got it. Tommy: We all do it. Nikki: We've all got it. That's why I love this. At the heart and some level, addiction, we are all affected by this. We are all affected by this. We all look to... We are all addicted to our way of thinking, of our way of processing reality. Again, like we were talking about, that's the [inaudible 00:30:37]. If I recognize that, if I recognize just like I did when I recognized I was addicted to alcohol and drugs. If I recognize that there is a world of possibility that opens up that's beyond it. Tommy: Yes, yes. It's just as much controlling to be trying to recreate pleasure as it is to try to avoid pain. Nikki: Absolutely.

9 Tommy: Just different sides of the same coin. Obviously we can all of us experience both of those things. Nikki: We are still looking to manipulate our reality. Tommy: Okay. Both the 12 steps through the process and the word would be surrender, grace, letting go. The path of yoga through the return to spontaneity. The establishment of presence, present time awareness is when we have released that manipulation. We have stopped trying to control. Nikki: That's right. That's right. That gets to the next one on here which is fear. It's called abhinivesa according to the ancients but it's basis is fear. The yogas will often talk about this in terms of fear of death. I always say if we fear death how do you fully live life. If we don't recognize that this is all a part of the cycle how do you fully... We are trying to avoid that inevitability because it is going to happen to all of us. This is where we don't recognize impermanence. When we do that, we are in that fear in that way we can't fully be in the moment. We can't fully live life. The path I follow, speaking of that a little earlier, is isha and one time [inaudible 00:32:42] said something that just changed, it shifted everything for me. He said, "Just stop trying to control it and just be a part of life. Just be a part of life." I'm another animal on this planet. Just stop and be a part of the beauty of life. Stop trying to control it. It's a delusion to try that anyway. You can't control it. Tommy: It s so powerful. Nikki, I have heard you and other people speak about a 12-step philosophy. One of the things that I have heard you share is about the way the steps are formulated into groups. Nikki: Yes. Tommy: Can you speak a little bit about that? This is going to lead into the same thing on the path of yoga. Stages and steps. Nikki: I love it. I love it. Yeah. This came to me from working with Joe McQuany. Joe McQuany is often times in 12-step programs you hear about these two guys Joe and Charlie. They just had a way of explaining steps that really sat at a very practical real level. Joe and Charlie had a book had a book called The Steps We Took. In that book, his explanation of the steps he talked about them in terms of groups. He talks about 1 through 3 as the foundation steps. Often times we will use this analogy that as humans we are a vessel and addiction turns our vessel upside down. For when I came in the rooms I was totally upside down. Steps 1 through 3 are the foundation steps to help turn that vessel back right side up. That vessel could now sit right side up. It's funny because we work with the body in the yoga practice in this way too. The first thing we do in our asana or whatever posture we are in we find foundation first. Whatever touches the earth is your base. It's your foundation. We want to connect in with earth. We want to connect in with the mother in our basis foundation. Next steps 4 through 9 according to Joe, Joe called these the action steps. The analogy that we use in [inaudible 00:35:23] is that now the vessel is put right side up. I've been upside down in my case 34 years. My vessel was full of shit, right? It was full of crap. I got to shovel that shit out. I've got to clean that vessel up and prepare it for sale. That's what those action steps do. We go through a series of steps and to really look deeply and clean this vessel up. That's 4 through 9 as far as the grouping of the steps are concerned. The body, we think of this as core. More than just muscles below the navel but how we reclaim ourselves.

10 This is the reclamation of all pieces of ourselves. Steps 10 though 12 now that we have got foundation, we have got a sense of self, we've got a sense of core, now we can truly set sail on the spiritual voyage. This is when we are truly now sail worthy. We can set sail on this spiritual voyage. Joe talks about these steps as maintenance. I'm not really a big fan of that word. To be me, maintenance kind of sounds like you chill and do nothing. There is lots of work in those steps. I like sustainability. These are the sustainability steps. These are the steps that keep that vessel smooth and sailing. We are on our spiritual voyage now with these steps. It's the same way again. We work with body. It's the same again talking about these connections. Patanjali spoke about the same thing in body. When they talk about asana or posture in the yoga sutras, there is yoga sutra 246 which talks about sthira and sukham as the two qualities of asana. You can think sthira as foundation and core. Those are those things that give you the sense of sense. Sukham is the ease. It's where we set sail. We've got the ease to set sail on our spiritual voyage. Again, it's all these similarities. Tommy: Yes. Thank you for that. As Potanjali in the yoga sutras lays out there are a bunch of different steps and limbs to becoming a whole- Nikki: That's right. Tommy: Reaching your potential. Can you speak a little about that approach yamas, niyams, etc and then we will speak about a couple of sutras and a few other things and then we will go home. Nikki: I would love it. Tommy: We will let people go home. Maybe, maybe. Nikki: We can do this all day. Tommy: I know we can. I know. Yeah. Nikki: I love it. I love it. I hear you speaking about the 8 limbed path, is that where... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. The yogis in the yoga sutras map out several things. They talk about who we really are not... We talked about this in some of our conversations before. Not just 1 body but 5 bodies. Then they talked about how we get misaligned. That's what we were speaking to earlier, the [clasis 00:38:51], what Bill talks about are stinking thinking and all those things. That's how we get misaligned. Just like Dr. Bobby [inaudible 00:39:01] they didn't leave us... Patanjali didn't leave us hanging out there. They gave us a path both in order to come back to wholeness. They gave us a path to come back to wholeness. In yoga that is called the 8 limbed path. It starts out with the yamas and the niyamas. You can think those who know anything about the 12-step program we often talk about the spiritual principles that sit underneath the steps. Step 1 of spiritual principles that sit underneath that step are acceptance, awareness, all of those things, honesty, open mindedness, willingness. All of those things, those principles. You can think of the yamas and niyamas as the principles that sit underneath the steps. They are same thing. The invitation just like in 12-step program, the invitation for yogis is to practice the principles in all the [postures 00:40:07]. All the [postures 00:40:08] of our life. Like we practice the principle in all of our fairs, right? All is to... it's the exact same thing. Right?

11 So those are the first two and then from there comes [Asana 00:40:24]. Asana is posture, it's position. Right? What happens in the body. What happens in the body. From there the [Yogi's 00:40:33] speak about the breath. So it is [Pranayama 00:40:35]. All right. From there Yogi's start to peak about the breath and breath is life and we will say that over and over again in our practice. You know when we really look at our breath it's the connector between the mind and the body. It is what connects the mind, the body, and the spirit. It's the thread that connects the mind, body, and spirit. So the Yogi's invite us to really to be begin... all of these things are about relationship. They are all about relationship. So here the Yogi's invite us in to have really deep relationship with our breath. With our life. Right? Then we get to the next one and the next one we got yamas, niyamas, asana we got pranayama [00:41:17] and the next one... why have I just lost it? Tommy: [Pratyahara 00:41:22] Nikki: [Pratyahara 00:41:23] thank you, thank you. Pratyahara [00:41:25] is about our senses, right? Really it's about how we relate to the world relative to our sense perspective. So it's about our relationship to our senses. This is a very, very deep topic in it of itself, right? How we relate to things because are senses are how things come in to our system, right? That's how it all comes in. So having a relationship with that is what the Yogi's say we next need to do. And then the last three dharana, dhyana, and [samadhi 00:42:06] are all about our relationship to our mind, right? Our relationship, our mind and our minds are filled with tension, right? And really the most precious gift any of us have to give is where we give our attention because where your attention goes as the Yogi's say your energy flows. So the most precious gift we have to give is where we give our attention. So the Yogi's have told us to pay attention to these relationships. Our relationship to these things, right? In healing our relationship with these things we bring a sense of wholeness back into our lives. Tommy: Thank you so much. So I want to ask you about a specific [suture 00:42:47], I have two actually. The first ones is, I can't remember the number, but it speaks about the concept of [Vairagya 00:42:55]. Nikki: Yes. Tommy: And [abhyasa 00:42:57]. Nikki: Yes. Tommy: And [Vairagya 00:43:00] being the letting go process. [Abhyasa 00:43:05] is steady practice. I think I have that right, I might have them backwards. Nikki: Yes. Tommy: I think that's right. Nikki: Yeah.

12 Tommy: Vairagya and [Abhyasa 00:43:13] seem to me to be completely a match for what we are sort of... where we are asked to go... Nikki: Yeah. Tommy: On the Twelve Step path. Nikki: Yeah. Tommy: Can we speak about that? Nikki: Absolutely. I love [Vairagya 00:43:26] all right. It reminds me of the phrase we often use in the Twelve Step program, 'you can't keep what you have without giving it away.' All right. You can't and you can't. Right? You can't keep what you have... as much as it tells like a paradox... you know when I first came in the twelve step rooms I heard someone say that, I'm like 'well, how the hell are you going to keep it if you give it away.' That's the way my mind works. But, I have had some very wise teachers tell me whatever it is that I want more in my life then I got to give more of that away. If I want more love in my life then I need to give more love. If I want more money in my life I need to give more money. If I want more time in my life, I need to give more time. Right? Whatever it is that I am looking for in my life just give more of it and I promise. Oh my god has it worked for me, right? I know whenever I am craving I need to give more of it away. You can't keep what you have without giving it away and that is with the [Vairagya 00:44:32] means for me. Tommy: And [Abhyasa 00:44:34]. Nikki: [Abhyasa 00:44:35] means for me you got to keep coming back, right? That relates to... you know I keep coming back to my mat. I keep coming... and the reason that it is important for me really to keep coming back it's about what we talk about in Yoga alignment. Right? It's about energy flow. You know we talk about this all the time. It's all about the energy flow, right? The analogy I will use for this, I will date back again let's see if you go this one, when I was little we had TV and a lot of times it would get fuz and this was back in the day and what my father sometimes had to do was go up on the roof top and he just change the antenna you just adjust it a little bit, right? And the fuz would go away and all of sudden I could see the whole world. I could see the world in the little bitty box I could see the whole world. Tommy: Yes. Nikki: Right, all he did is he made this little adjustment, right? And that's what coming back to my mat is like for me. It's so... I make these little adjustments and all of sudden there is a flow and you know a whole world of possibility opens up that's just not there before. So alignment in tune the universe. In tune with all it is. Tommy: I love it. Thank you so much Nikki. The last one is I think both of our favorite sutures is 216. Nikki: Oh yeah.

13 Tommy: Can you talk about that? Nikki: Oh yeah. So 216 says 'hey Duke [anaagatam 00:46:18],' right? Which means future suffering can be avoided. Right? And I say that this one is the basis of all the relapse for [benching 00:46:27] work. The future suffering can be avoided. So in our conversation we talked about my relapses. I relapsed after eight years. I relapsed after four years. What I didn't say at the end of that and I can say it has been sixteen years grace since that last relapse, right? Sixteen years since that last relapse and I know the suffering that... I personally know the suffering that relapse brings and I don't want to ever go there again. And I really don't want to go there again. So that Yoga suture says that suffering can be avoided. That suffering can be avoid and that's what I want for me and for everyone. That we don't have to continually go back to that level of suffering. Tommy: Thank you so much Nikki that is amazing. I want to ask for you to share a little bit about your work in the world. How people can connect with you? Nikki: Sure. Tommy: Share your world with folks. What are you working on now and how can we engage? Nikki: Wow. I am so grateful for Y12SR and I don't even know how to even begin with this it's just been this grass roots, organic movement, right? It really has... that's the only way I know how to phrase it, it's become a movement. Y12SR stands for the Yoga of 12 Step Recovery and now there is meetings and practices. So it combines a discussion group based in the Twelve steps and yoga. A little discussion group and then directly after that what we call a trauma informed themed yoga practice that is based in whatever the discussion was. Now, they are going on all over the country. They have taken off in different parts of the world. The greater London area. All over. I am traveling all the time. Teaching others how to hold space for those meetings. How to bring those things back into their own community. Tommy: So Y12SR.com. Nikki: Yes. Tommy: Can get people there and they can train with you and learn how to bring this back to their own community. Nikki: That s right. Tommy: Amazing. So the final thing before we go here, so listen up you guys, come find this women and her work. This is really coming together of two extremely powerful spiritual paths that deal with, in my opinion and I think Nikki's opinion, it really deals with mind, body and spirit. Come and look for that and bring that back to your home town. It is very, very important work.!!

14 Nikki: There s our work together. Absolutely. Number one recovery 2.0 is absolutely amazing and I feel so completely blessed to have seen it from the very beginning even before it manifested itself fully in the world. So I feel so completely blessed to have been a part of this, you know to have seen it, to bare witness to this incredible phenomenon it is. Tommy: Thank Nikki. My hope for this interview for people is that they watch and are encouraged to explore the path of Yoga and the path of the Twelve Steps. I know that for you and me that both of those paths that have been helpful in our life. I think, I will speak for myself, but I know that the way that I got sober is only that. Is only that. It's just the way I found it and of courses there's that tendency to want to pass that along. That's what we can pass along. Nikki: That s right. Tommy: But, for that person who is just closed down. Is usually closed down to the twelve steps not usually closed down the path of Yoga, as I noticed. Nikki: Right. Tommy: For that person that is closed down just keep working on your Yoga. On your path. Looking within. What can we say to that person, Nikki just before we go. Nikki: Oh whatever it is that's saving your life in this moment we are dealing with addiction here and we know what's going on in the world with this and people are dying in numbers that... I've been around this whole thing for many years and never really seen quite that is going on in the world today. I never seen anything like it. So anything that keeps you alive in this moment. Anything that is supporting you in staying alive and just free of this disease of addiction in this moment, thank god. Thank god. And just keeping doing... this is a phrase from the twelve step program 'just keep doing the next good, right, honest thing, whatever that is for you.' Do the next good, right... just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Keep on the path. Tommy: Thank you Nikki. Thank you for that. I just love you so much and I look forward to continuing collaborations. Nikki: Absolutely. So we got the two conferences you can talk on my [inaudible 00:52:26]. Tommy: Oh yeah. We have conferences coming up every year. We do May and October or May and November. May is in [00:52:32]. October is at [00:52:35] on the West Coast and we do five days together. This is the coming together of Yoga and the Twelve Steps and it is powerful. Nikki: Yeah and we got Costa Rica. Tommy: And we got Costa Rica. Coming up... We got Thanksgiving November 19th to 26th this year. But, always Thanksgiving week and that will be a blast too. Can't wait Nikki. Nikki: Absolute. Thank you Tommy.