How to Use Yoga for Recovery (Poses, Benefits, and Support) • Yoga Basics

When I started practicing yoga as a 17-year-old matric student in South Africa, I never thought I would ever use it for recovery. My first impression of yoga was how good it made me feel, mentally and physically. I discovered that it was highly beneficial to my shifting hormonal state, my flexibility, and my confidence.

Much later in my life, after having two boys, I chose regular yoga classes during a turbulent perimenopause. I chose holistic health and ditched my wine and sugary treats. I chose to detox my body and brain, my spirit, and my inner child. I did this with regular yoga classes. I was ‘in recovery’ for me!

Roll on four years, and the shock of my husband’s depressive breakdown led me to look inward. So again, I turned to daily yoga to distract and renew myself. I surfed the waves of epiphanies and realizations with vinyasa flow every morning, and I became strong and resilient.

For me, recovery is personal and means different things to those experiencing the healing. A recovering alcoholic feels very different from the person who crashed his motorbike or survived a terminal illness. Their families will be part of the healing process. Personal recovery after COVID assumed millions of different forms as millions of different people tried to restart their lives.

All of this led me to ask: what does recovery mean, and why is yoga so well suited to support it?

What Is Recovery?

“A recovery is when you save something that was lost, in danger of becoming lost, or retrieved. If something was taken from you, such as diamonds, money, or your dignity, and you get it back, you can say that you are glad for its recovery. The noun recovery also refers to a return to a natural or original state. After a devastating hurricane, an area’s recovery may take many years.”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines recovery as “the act, process, or an instance of recovering, especially: an economic upturn (as after a depression); the process of combating a disorder (such as alcoholism) or a real or perceived problem.”

Recovery takes time — it can take anything from a few days or weeks to a few years, or even a lifetime. People in recovery take their healing one day at a time, one step at a time. They aim for better health and wellness, for the ability to set goals and live a responsible life, to reach their full potential, no matter what that is.

Recovery needs four pillars of support:

1. Health (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual)
2. A home (safe, loving, and kind)
3. A purpose (something to do every day that is meaningful with positive results such as earning income, caring for people or animals, independence, skills, and connection with others)
4. Community (being part of something, be it a church, a job, a volunteering activity, a regular companion, an animal walker or other)

For me, yoga is the panacea for recovery. Yoga encompasses the four pillars of support:

1. It offers physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual support — movement, introspection, breathing, and meditation
2. It brings the yogi home, to a safe place — to the body and mind, practicing yoga in the present, on the mat
3. It offers a purpose: to focus and breathe, forget the past, forget the future and focus only on the body and movement in the here and now, on the mat. The long-term purpose is clarity of thought (less thinking, more self-acceptance), a stronger body, and a resilient spirit that learns it CAN BE and CAN DO in good health
4. It is usually part of a unique community — of like-minded people who are non-judgmental, accepting, and all on a personal path towards something peaceful, something better.

Why Use Yoga for Recovery?

Choosing Yoga Provides the Right Kind of ‘High’

Feel it at the end of a long flow class when you lie down for Corpse Pose (Savasana). Many people in recovery have stopped using a substance such as alcohol or drugs. They have forfeited the ‘high’ for a ‘normal’ lifestyle.

Tommy Rosen describes it emotively:

“The feeling was electric — energy humming through my body. I felt like blood was pouring into areas of my tissues that it had not been able to reach for some time. It was relieving and healing. It was subtler than the feeling from getting off on drugs, but it was detectable and lovely, and there would be no hangover, just a feeling of more ease than I could remember. I felt a warmth come over me similar to what I felt when I had done heroin, but far from the darkness of that insanity, this was pure light — a way through.”

Yoga Is a Way to Detox the Body and Mind

Move the energy through the body and find release from physical and mental pain. Addiction permeates our modern societies and lifestyles — alcohol, drugs, food, money, shopping, sex, fitness, technology, and social media. I believe that addiction is caused by our disconnection from Nature, the Universe and their natural origins and spiritual source.

Yoga Can Flush Toxins from Your Body, Including Toxic Thoughts

Addiction finds its source in trauma, much of which happens unconsciously during childhood and sits in the very tissues of the body that we think are growing and nurturing us. We may be super healthy, but our tissues are choked with toxins from our traumas.

Use Yoga to Find Your Way Back to You

Buddhist nun Pema Chodron notes that people these days find it difficult to simply be here now, to be really present. So, they self-medicate to de-stress and find “happiness” elsewhere, in the stark short term of an artificial high. And psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, who admits to being addicted to nicotine, said that “What we humans really long for is a connection to God … alignment with the Holy … re-union with the Divine. It is a deeply spiritual hunger — a longing to go home again, back to Source.”

Use yoga to find your way back to you, the real you. Yoga is the easiest and most natural route to going home, to the source within, the inner child, the individual minus the ego. Yoga brings connection between mind, body, and spirit, opposing the disconnection prevalent in any addiction. Many people who are torn apart by addiction lack self-esteem and purpose in life. Yoga can bring them back to this, to building a purpose through holistic health and can-do movements. Pushing through difficult yoga asanas is a mental achievement that carries forward into daily life.

How to Use 13 Yoga Poses for Recovery

Learn how to use yoga for recovery in a few easy steps. Start like this:

1. Mountain Pose (Tadasana) — grounding, centering, focusing, and stabilizing. The perfect nervous system reset, grounding the body into the Earth, promoting focus and tension release.
2. Tree Pose (Vrikshasana) — focusing, strengthening, balancing, in complete awareness of the present here and now. Ideal for reducing anxiety, boosting self-esteem and focus, strengthening legs and back.
3. Child’s Pose (Balasana) — calming, resting, back strengthening, safe, and releasing. Calms the nervous system, lengthens the spine and stretches hips, thighs and shoulders, releasing tension.
4. Seated Forward Bend (Paschimottanasana) — calming, stretching spine and hamstrings, introspection, and self-reflection. Perfect for calming the mind, releasing tension, and lengthening hamstrings and spine.
5. Yogi Squat Pose (Malasana) — grounding, back strengthening, bowel detoxing. The best hip flexor, spine strengthener and tension release pose, ideal for daily health.
6. Butterfly Pose (Baddha Konasana) — hip and pelvis opening, releasing stress. Reduces lower body stiffness and tension, increasing circulation and calmness.
7. Fish Pose (Matsyasana) — brain boosting, tension releasing, detoxifying. Go deeper and speak — open the throat chakra for communication, honesty, and self-belief.
8. Downward Dog Pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana) — rejuvenating, energizing, calming, inspiring. A panacea for holistic healing — relieves physical and mental fatigue, increases circulation, strength, and calmness.
9. Warrior 1, 2 and 3 (Virabhadrasana) — empowering, strengthening, opening, releasing stress. Opens the hips, chest and lungs, strengthening the spine and legs — releases anxiety and boosts stamina.
10. Bridge Pose (Setu Bandha Sarvangasana) — opening chest and heart, releasing deep-seated emotions, back and legs strengthening. Releases tension and fatigue, glute strengthener, and gut cleanser while focusing the mind.
11. Legs-Up-The-Wall Pose (Viparita Karani) — soothing, releasing, calming, ready for sleep. The ultimate restorative pose to boost circulation, calm the nervous system, and relax the muscles.
12. Shoulder Stand (Sarvangasana) — inversion, releasing fatigue, boosting circulation, strengthening back and shoulders. A powerful restorative inversion at the end of a class to calm the nervous system, reduce fluid buildup, and increase circulation while focusing the mind.
13. Corpse Pose (Savasana) — deep relaxation, nervous system regulation. The final pose for deep recovery of body, mind, spirit, and emotions — activating the parasympathetic nervous system, helping the body integrate physical, emotional, and mental changes.

Healing Mind, Body and Spirit in Recovery

These yoga poses address recovery due to their unique benefits. The yogi focuses on the body, the mind is still, in the present, here. Thoughts disappear in that moment, that class, which refreshes the body. Focusing on the breath moves energy or chi through the body, quieting mental chatter.

Vrtti refers to fluctuations or modifications of the mind — whirlpools of thoughts, mental patterns that prevent self-realization. “When vrittis arise, they create a kind of ripple effect throughout the body and nervous system. When these ripples become patterns, they form samskaras, or impressions left by past experiences. They form the basis for future reactions, habits, and mental fluctuations, which bind us to our karma.”

Patanjali says that we experience five types of vrittis. Most people experience thousands of thoughts a day, most of them based on false beliefs and individual history. It is easier to sort these thoughts into different types to make it easier to understand them and regulate their wavering patterns.

1. Correct perception — something we know based on fact or observation
2. Delusion — misperceptions that lead to false conclusions
3. Imagination — fanciful or vague impressions
4. Deep sleep — absence of conscious thought
5. Memory — recalling past thoughts or events

In a state of addiction, the victim is a prisoner of the dark side of these five categories, and the gunas are imbalanced. Extreme rajas means excessive stimulation and reactivity, while excessive tamas means extreme apathy and lethargy. The true yogi finds the middle path of sattva, where there is ample energetic stimulation and adequate time for rest and doing nothing.

I hope that you can use yoga for your recovery. Did you find this blog useful? What resonates for you? Have you ever experienced an addiction to something, and how did it make you feel? Do you have any yogic advice for those in recovery?