B.K.S. Iyengar has been called ‘The Michelangelo of yoga’ by the BBC. Today he’s in his 90′s, and has been practicing, teaching, and developing his unique style of Yoga for over 70 years. Iyengar was one of the very first yogis from India to bring Yoga technology to Europe and America about a half century [...]

What is recovery all about anyway?  What does it mean to recover?  What was lost in the first place that needs recovering?  Webster’s online dictionary defines the word recover as to regain, as in, ‘to bring back to a normal position or condition’.   This implies a movement back to a place of origin.  What would this place [...]

Before we talk about what you can do about addiction, let’s be sure its addiction we’re talking about.  Using the dependence on a substance as an example, a behaviour qualifies as an addiction if it meets three or more of the following criteria over a 12 month period: Tolerance:  Either taking more to achieve the same effect, or taking the [...]

Speaking as someone who works daily with folks struggling primarily, but not exclusively, with alcohol and drug addiction, I perceive it to be a multi-dimensional condition touching all aspects of an individual’s life.  Their biology, their psychology, their social network, their educational and vocational aspirations, as well as the spiritual dimension of their existence.  I see it has its genesis [...]

What is trauma?  We hear the word bandied about in the mental health community or at 12 step meetings, but what is trauma anyway?  Simply put, it’s someone’s subjective experience of a disturbing life event.  It overwhelms a person’s ability to cope and leaves them feeling as if they’ll be harmed by someone, or that they’ll loose their mind.  You [...]

At the heart of healing is an experience. It is the experience of being willing and able to be in the moment with your feelings. No matter how awful or repulsive or spectacular they may be, to allow yourself to stay there and feel what is there to be felt. Of course you know as [...]

Did you know that truth is always the same?   That it is what it is . . .  period . . .  and that it remains the same throughout time?  The only thing that really matters is that you allow yourself to bump hip to the truth within your own being, and let it lead you into [...]

Some yogis call it ‘bare attention’, the practice of being present to experience. Some Buddhists call it ‘mindfulness’, paying attention to the moment on purpose, and without judgement.  Some trauma experts refer to it as the path of awareness, that brings the survivor to the painful truth of their experience. And then there are those in the [...]

It begins with a promise.  A promise so appealing you could set your intuition aside in favor of it.  The promiser sounds so sincere that you persuade yourself to take a chance on them, to trust them, yet again.  But eventhough they sound sincere, the promiser turns out not to be so, and betrays your trust by not following through on the original [...]

One of the new edges in the treatment of psychological trauma is Yoga.  A gentle and subjective approach that guides the practitioner into becoming more sensitive to their felt experience.  One that is less focused on the cultivation of the perfect ‘outer body’, and more interested in connecting with the ‘inner body’.   It’s an approach to Yoga [...]