Enhance Your Recovery with Yoga and Ayurveda
How can Yoga and Ayurveda empower recovery from addiction? Join Durga Leela, author of Yoga of Recovery, as she shares how tools from these ancient sciences enhance traditional recovery pathways and offer healing, hope, and transformation for those on the path of recovery.
Durga Leela is a person in long-term recovery, a certified Ayurveda Practitioner, yoga teacher and yoga therapist (IAYT certified) from the UK and now based in the US. She has shared Yoga as a recovery pathway in several recovery conferences over the last 20 years. She has also served as the Director of the Ayurveda Programs at the Sivananda Ashram in California since 2003 and is a professional member of the National Ayurvedic Medical Association (NAMA). Durga is author of the book Yoga of Recovery.
Her website is YogaOfRecovery.com
Facebook and Instagram: @YogaofRecovery
THE YOGA HOUR TEAM COMMENTS: This is an excellent program for not only those in addiction recovery but also those who want to understand healing, using Yoga and Ayurveda. Durga Leela's experience of recovery along with her deep study of Yoga philosophy and Ayurveda offers the integration of these two sister sciences to help people shift their life trajectory. Her discussion of the gunas, the qualities that imbue all of nature, gives us a real understanding of how addiction comes about and also how we can deal with addictions in a positive way. I appreciated her quote from David Frawley, the renowned teacher of Yoga and Ayurveda — “Addictions are a [another] form of psychological disorder. They occur from too much Tamas or inertia in the mind. This is often caused by excess Rajas, or mental disturbance, which is compensated for by providing an artificial calm." Durga Leela says, "Get off the addiction roller coaster and become a master of your life." I highly recommend this program.
DR. TRUJILLO’S COMMENTS: I really appreciated our conversation about how yoga and Ayurveda can enhance the recovery journey. I was particularly struck by the first sentence of her book Yoga of Recovery: “Our understanding of our suffering defines the nature of our solution.” This begins by realizing that the root of all disease is spiritual (as she has titled the first chapter of her book), and that it arises when we forget our true nature as spirit. I enjoyed our conversation about the three gunas, sattva (luminosity), rajas (motion), and tamas (inertia), and their effects on the mind. Durga’s inclusion of David Frawley’s definition of addiction, that it arises from an excess of rajas in the mind that we compensate for by providing an external calm offered insight into the cause of addiction.