The Soul of Yoga Institute was honored to have Durga Leela teach her 50 hour Yoga of Recovery course this past July. I was fortunate to be in attendance, and to be able to sit down and chat with Durga afterwards. Durga boasts an impressive number of initials after her name…BA, CAS, PKS, C-IAYT, RYT-500, and, NAMA member. However, it is clear that she is first and foremost a servant of healing whose training in Ayurveda and Vedanta first saved her life, and then became her Dharma path. She now devotes her life to helping others with addictive tendencies, and to training other healers.

For a topic that deals with such heartbreak and struggle, I was struck most by her unique combination of compassion and humor. She knows when to sit in silence and receive the stories of heartbreak, loss and pain, and when to add levity, primarily in the telling of her own stories. And she does have stories… She had a challenging childhood, being the child of an alcoholic parent, and then suffered with her own alcoholism and addictions as an adult. This life experience, in addition to all her credential initials, allows her to intimately relate to others who are on their own addiction journey, and to guide them toward recovery. A quote that resonates with Durga is “Recovery is my livelihood. The rest is how I make a living.” When I asked her how she is able to hold all the pain and suffering, she said that she considers it an honor. When she receives others stories, it’s a release for them, and a mirroring for her; she feels less alone. As she says, “A problem shared is a problem halved.”

The structure of the 6-day training is centered around the 6 Tenets of Yoga of Recovery (one per day!). The tenets are Life is Longing, Life is Relationship, Life is Sweet, Life is Love, Life is Prana, and Life is Progress. Durga developed these tenets as a Vedic re-framing of the problem and solution approach of the 12 Step Programs, and of Western medicine. Yoga of Recovery is a holistic approach that treats the roots of the problems, not the symptoms. In the mainstream treatments for addiction, when an addictive tendency is removed, the hole that is left behind is often filled with another addiction. But when there are tools for a creative self-inquiry of the totality of one’s life experience, and for self-awareness and analysis of the uniqueness of one’s body and spirit, there is less of a chance for a backslide.

The tenets are taught together with the Ayurvedic framework of the Gunas; the basic building blocks of the universe and of all things, and our inherent psychology. They are Tamas (dark, heavy, dull), Rajas (active, desire, restless), and Sattva (light, purity, knowledge). Simply put, by understanding our changeable Gunas, together with the 6 Tenets, Ayurveda, and Yoga, we can heal the wounds that create imbalances and addictions. We also had Monique Lonner, our Director of Advanced Training, teaching daily asana practices that fit perfectly into the daily Tenet and topics of the day, showing us how perfectly Yoga melds with the healing practices of Ayurveda.

Durga loves to represent the “largely misunderstood” yoga side of medical treatments at medical conferences. She feels strongly that evidence-based treatments, which require lengthy and expensive clinical trials, do have their place for some illnesses, but that the more immediate experience-based treatment is what is needed for most addictive tendencies. Durga puts it so beautifully when describing that with a focus on the Gunas, and ones ability to work with them and shift them, “there is a capacity of light that’s arising, that’s letting itself be known, and a person might not be there yet, but they can see that some people are, and that they have that capacity to be there too.” That deep dark well that a clinical diagnosis alone can sometimes throw you down into, now seems more scalable.

While attending the Yoga of Recovery training. I witnessed such open, honest, heartfelt and heartbreaking stories, as many attendees have experienced addiction in their own lives and in the lives of loved ones. And how beautiful that these people are now choosing to turn their pain into their strength, as they seek to help and serve others. In concluding our discussion, Durga came back to healing, healers and service. She said that she felt so privileged to have collaborated with people and institutions such as the Soul of Yoga Institute who rallied when the times became tough recently. They stood firm, they educated, healed, raised the consciousness, and really held everyone together. She is also uplifted by seeing the high attendance at these trainings, and feels that there is a rallying of the people going on now; a desire to come together in community with the common goal of healing and helping. She strongly believes that service doesn’t take a degree, and that alternative treatments that belong to the people who have been pushed aside in the past (witches, midwives, herbalists) are making a comeback. “Healers don’t always have the right initials after their name, and haven’t always gone to the best schools. But there’s a sense around that ability, that the person with the capacity to heal will be there when the healing is needed.”

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