Seeing Upside Down is taking questions! Submit them to: sudwinks@gmail.com. Feel free to visit my About tab for a list of potential topics to get the juices flowing. I will keep names anonymous in my posts. If I answer your question, and you would like to reveal yourself as the question-asker in the comments, you are free to do so!
This week’s question was the second question to ever hit our inbox.
Hey Jeannie,
When I think about your transformative journey, I'm curious what role yoga has played in it. How did you get in to it, what has it taught you, surprises? I'm assuming there's a depth of information there and I'm genuinely curious as someone who would love to dive deeper in to yoga but am a bit intimidated. :)
No pressure to use this for your substack if it doesn't fit! But it is a question I've had.
(Received: January 7, 2024 - 9:11pm)
Dear Curious,
I feel a great sense of responsibility as I venture into answering this question. As I’ve said before, what I can do here is share my experience.
For many years, I always had a feeling yoga was something I wanted to explore. I didn’t really know why, other than maybe it seemed like something more “appropriate” to do as an adult than dance classes, which I used to take. Of course, I no longer agree with that now. I have adult friends taking dance classes, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I join them, even if that’s in another few years.
Yoga was something in my peripheral for about a decade. Every once in a while, over the course of that decade, the opportunity to take a class would pop up, and I would go once. I always remember liking it, but I wouldn’t go back for another class.
As many of you who have been reading know, I have been in recovery from alcohol addiction since 2018. I mention that because before I could even think about a dedicated practice with anything whatsoever, I had to give up the thing that had me in chains. I could drink and drink and dream up all sorts of things. I had journals of plans, and I could talk all night long about everything I would do. Then I would go to sleep to blackness, wake up sick, and do it all over again.
I first surrendered in 2018. I went to a treatment center where I lived with other women going through what I was going through. One or two mornings a week, a volunteer yoga teacher would come and lead yoga for us. I remember it being pretty early, around 7 or 7:30am. I dreaded getting up to practice yoga in a group that early. However, after the first session, I couldn’t wait until the next one. That was one of two offerings in treatment that I remember physically calming me down and helping me feel okay in my own skin. The other offering was another person who would come in and talk about mindfulness with us. His name is Andrew Chapman. I remember him being such a peaceful presence, and everything he shared and wrote on the whiteboard made so much sense to me. After he spoke and we had some discussion, he would lead us in a guided mindfulness meditation. It felt like pure medicine that had instantaneous calming effects.
After getting out of treatment and over the next few years, I had plenty to focus on while working a program of recovery with sponsors and friends, navigating relapses, getting a new job, and ultimately “cleaning house” enough to learn what it is I naturally enjoy doing.
My last relapse with alcohol was in July, 2020. I got even more honest about everything in my life. I started seeking not just with my head, but with my heart. I looked myself dead in the eyes and got honest. I saw where I was still going through the motions with people, doing things to check boxes, making choices I thought other people wanted me to make. I couldn’t ignore the dust bunnies of my shadows still piling up in the corners where I tried to hide them. Note this behavior was still present even after two years of working a 12-step program.
I started seeking not just with my head, but with my heart…
This meant connecting more with my body and what it was telling me.
I started to take all the head knowledge I gained from the 12 steps since 2018, and I let it all drop into my heart. This meant connecting more with my body and what it was telling me. I heard someone share how, after getting sober, she noticed the way she held her shoulders up by her ears. Because she wasn’t numb anymore, she could actually feel the built up tension and pain in her body.
I’ll never forget the way I listened to her share while placing my hands on my shoulders to actively pull them down.
I do that too, I thought. I’m sure my mouth was open because that’s the profound realization I remember having.
I later shared with a friend how this resonated with me. We ended up going on a tangent about all the things we hold in the body. She was the first person to recommend the book The Body Keeps the Score. She started giving me simple suggestions like taking regular epsom salt baths and trying yoga. She raved about a massage she had with Sarah Jane Chapman here in Nashville. A massage sounded wonderful… and easy, so I followed the link to this gal’s website and booked it.
I was so grateful to meet Sarah Jane, and I learned what a healer she truly is. She invited me to a virtual group she was leading soon called Yoga for Body Connection Series. I went for it and signed up. I met weekly over Zoom with her and several other women from January 6, 2021 until February 24. We only ever had very gentle movement and meditation alongside our discussions. There was not a single sun salutation in sight, and that’s exactly what I needed to begin.
I learned how to breathe. I started to recognize moments when I could slow down, like when I was eating for example. In turn, I began to enjoy those moments more, like that delicious bite of food, instead of rushing through them. I connected with Sarah Jane on Instagram and learned that her husband is Andrew Chapman, the one I mentioned earlier who brought mindfulness to us when I was in treatment. When I say everything is connected, I mean it so seriously. Andrew is a co-director of Wild Heart Meditation Center here in Nashville, where I also attended a few Recovery Dharma groups and yoga classes in early recovery. I only foresee these connections continuing as I am now considering the same yoga therapy program Sarah Jane completed.
Everything is connected.
I share that story to highlight how I did not begin yoga for the purpose of exercise. I began at a time in my life when I didn’t know how to be comfortable in my own skin. You asked about surprises on my journey. I think the big surprises came later on, such as my first ever heated power yoga class. I laid in savasana at the end of that class, and the only words I can think of to describe what I felt are: “what just happened?” haha! It kicked my ass, but in a way that made me want to do it again. I could not deny how amazing I felt at the backend of class, even after the intense challenge of it. That was after my first few months practicing in a studio for the first time. I started there, at Shakti Power Yoga, in April 2021 with a 30-day intro special (a couple months after Sarah Jane’s virtual group). I only took the unheated vinyasa and restorative classes and finally got up the guts to try a heated power flow.
It was a gradual journey from the meditative practice into the physical practice. The more I kept trying, the more I loved it. I loved it all the way to teacher training, and now I am a certified yoga instructor. Teaching keeps yoga alive in me. It keeps me practicing because I’d burn out if I only taught classes and didn’t practice. I am always learning when I practice and when I teach. I also now work with a non-profit organization called Small World Yoga, and we bring yoga all over Nashville, including recovery centers. The mission is to make yoga more accessible. Everything has truly come full circle. I get to lead yoga for women in treatment, just like it was introduced to me when I was in treatment.
I’ll share with you what I shared with the women there on Friday afternoon.
The origin of the word yoga comes from the Sanskrit word ‘yuj,’ which means to unite, yoke, or join. Yoga is the union of mind, body, and spirit. This means that any person can experience yoga. As you can learn from my story, yoga meets you where you are. Want to try? If you’re not listening to the voiceover yet, feel free to scroll up and press play at the top of this post. You can even fast forward to this next part at the minute:second time marker 9:40. Listening will allow you to close your eyes.
Start by finding a comfortable position, whether that is sitting in a seat or laying down.
Notice where your body meets the support of the surface beneath you. Pull the crown of your head away from your shoulders to lengthen the spine. If you are listening, allow your eyes to come to a soft gaze or fully close.
Seal your lips. Take a deep breath in through the nose, and let it out slow through a long exhale out of the nose. Take two more like that.
In through the nose, take another sip of air at the top, hold for a moment, then slowly let out your exhale.
One more.
Let your breath come back to its normal rhythm. Notice where your hands are resting. Notice if you can feel your heartbeat. What do you hear? What do you smell?
Soften behind your eyes if they are closed.
Soften your jaw. Lift your shoulders up toward your ears on an inhale. And draw them back down the spine on the exhale.
What is this moment offering you?
Receive it.
Take a couple more rounds breath here.
Allow the eyes to open if they closed.
If you participated in those prompts in any capacity, you just did yoga.
If you like the idea of starting with meditation or breathing exercises, I highly recommend the Insight Timer app. If you find it hard to be still and/or if meditation feels out of the question right now, maybe the physical practice is where you want to start. There is no wrong way to enter the practice. What I have found is most of us meet in the middle anyway.
There is no right or wrong with it. Yoga is for everybody. Yoga is for every body. I’ll say it again: yoga meets you where you are.
If you’re interested in starting in a studio, it’s common for places to have a 30-day intro special like the one I started with. If you want to develop a foundation before going to a studio class, YouTube or a few private sessions might be a good idea. If you’re in Nashville, I am now offering in-person private sessions. I can send you a preliminary questionnaire for us to connect and see if it would be a good fit. If you are outside of Nashville, I am open to the possibility of virtual sessions as well.
Well, sweet Curious, I hope this helps while you consider that dive into yoga.
It is a dive indeed. If you go for it, I think you’ll find it to be a never-ending ocean because it leads you to the never-ending evolution of yourself and who you believe to be your higher Self or your higher power within. You may already have a container for your spirituality, and this would only supplement that. And if you don’t, yoga might just be a way for you to connect with the spiritual realm of life.
Or not.
It’s all up to you.
With love and a wink,
Jeannie Lynn
Song by my friend Caleb linked above.
Lyrics to snippet played in voiceover:
Hi Jeannie,
Thanks for sharing your yoga origins & journey so far. I found yoga when I needed a transformation from deep emotional pain and its physical presence; after Laura died. I began yoga a few months later after the suggestion of a close friend and healer and found my first seconds and then minutes of relief from profound grief. I will write this story again soon. I published one years ago in an online yoga journal. I began with hot power yoga- since that is where my friend took me. Amazing! Glad to have you as part of the unconscious collective of yogis! So great your recovery took you to yoga and to Substack! Lucky are we all to know you!
I loved this response, Jeannie. I love hot but I keep having bad headaches hours after class no matter what I do to try to hydrate! You’re enticing me to try again. I’m going to start 200 yoga teacher training on Friday!