Ask Kyczy about Yoga and Recovery; Brahmacharya - Non-excess

Yogic Yama - Restraint

Brahmacharya used to be translated as celibacy but now is more accurately defined as non-excess as it refers to all facets and characteristics of our being. It refers to all our passions and our desires. It can refer to time spent, money spent, and energy spent: to excess.  It can refer also to the velcro attitude in relationships and all the ways we can over do things.

The disease of MORE

Doing; doing doing doing – we are always doing something. The more we have to do the “better” we are. The more impossible our schedules the more valuable we are in this over indulging society. Free time is not only a fantasy for most – we don’t know what NOT to do with it when we have it.

Wall off the spirit; find the door

Another danger of excess it that overindulgence can be a mask, a thick goo of someTHING that covers a true need and blocks the spirit.  Food, things, sex, time; we find a way to over use and justify our excesses. Then to top it all off – I am an ADDICT! As an addict (and in my less than healthy state) there is NEVER such as thing as too much – so non-excess doesn’t make sense to me. Then there is my recovering self; that self that does not want ever to return to the madness of “too much of a good thing is a good thing” where good is relative.

With that desire for recovery Brahmacharya become one of my restraints.  So I keep Brahmacharya in mind when I work with my recovery and work with my yoga practice and when I work with my life.
With the help of others and with a sponsor / mentor the core of the issue can be revealed and resolved. This is the core of step work and the core of yoga practice.
Finding the point of enough, the grace of sufficiency, the divine in needing what I have and having what I need – that is my practice. That is my struggle and it is my reward.

Kyczy Hawk E-RYT200, RTY500 is the author of "Yoga and the Twelve Step Path", a leader of Y12SR classes, and the creator of SOAR(tm) (Success Over Addiction and Relapse) a teacher certification training that she holds with her good friend Kent Bond E-RYT500. Find out more about her, her classes and the training at www.yogarecovery.comhttp://www.yogarecovery.com