My first yoga class was a donation-based class in New York City. I didn’t know a thing about it and truly and honestly only went because it was free and a friend of mine didn’t want to go alone. It was an interesting experience; I had a good time, got a good sweat going and went on and about my life without ever glancing back at the experience.
A few years later, through my addiction to drugs and the lifestyle that accompanies using them, I found myself in a county jail in South Florida. There was this woman who would always come in and teach yoga to us guys once per week. It wasn’t anything major for me at the time, but the break from confinement within the pod, and truthfully from within my own mind, was what made it so attractive to me to continue attending. I went every week, realizing that yoga was a lot more challenging than I had ever anticipated. I embraced the challenge and the small freedom offered to me through each class.
I got out of jail and went into a 90-day rehabilitation program and relapsed several times. It seemed I had no interest in getting and staying clean. The drugs and the lifestyle were still more attractive than anything else I had experienced up until that time. I stole, I hid, I ran, I used, and used, and used some more; and then I used some more. My journey with addiction is far-reaching and it extends far beyond the drugs I used, the people I chose as friends, the things I did to get and use more, or the disrespect I served myself and others in the foggy blackout of active addiction. It was all-encompassing and it made every decision for me. I had no choices. Only one cycle of behavior: more, more, and more.
I’m grateful. I had followed my cycle and pathway of addiction to bottom after bottom. I finally hit a crossroads where I was completely alone. Not even my street-pals wanted anything to do with me. I had been fighting, stealing, and lying to myself and everyone I came across – it’s what we do. It’s what I did. I knew I could either continue trying to make it work, despite having burned every bridge (in the world of drugs and out of it), or I could just stop and do what I had seen worked for others during my brief periods of “sobriety”.
I chose hope. I got myself involved in a 12-step program and got myself somewhere safe to live, that was outside of the community I had become so closely enmeshed with. I sought recovery. A few weeks after I started the meetings and I began living according to a program, a yoga studio opened up on the same block as where I lived. I started going to daily. I was detoxing so much debris and garbage from my spirit, my mind, my heart, and my body. I craved more. It felt good to feel so clean; so many layers of clean that I had never experienced before. Yoga became a central part of my recovery. I practiced my program and I practiced yoga daily, on my yoga mat, off my yoga mat, in the bathroom, while filing my taxes, everywhere.
Truly I was changing. I got certified to teach and immediately took off teaching at the same studio I cultivated my practice from. I got to give back what was so freely given to me. I fell in love with the person who was doing these things, who was reliable, trustworthy, honest, and kind – myself. Through the tools I was given in yoga, which pair so nicely with the ones found in recovery, I was living a new life. I have been so happy, fulfilled, and blessed to have made it to this point in my journey, that now I teach for Yoga 4 Change. WHEW!
I became aware of the opportunity to teach yoga inside corrections and my heart said yes in an instant, and now that is what I do. I bring yoga and recovery to men in the exact same position that I was in just a few short years ago. We connect and we come together and practice, united by our breath and circumstances and allow this beautiful mechanism of healing to change us. Yoga is a WE thing. Yoga is a community practice. Yoga is a gift that gives and gives and gives. I am grateful to be in a position to facilitate the exchange and I am grateful to receive the gifts of this practice of teaching and guiding men incarcerated through breath and movement.
I am so grateful that Yoga 4 Change exists. It is changing lives and connecting people with their bodies, their sense of something greater, or maybe, like me, with a small break from confinement, a subtle yet powerful freedom for a brief period of time. At the very least seeds are being planted. Seeds that will grow if and when they are ready to be tended to. Yoga has come into my life various times, each time before I was ready to embrace it. It came and I went and that was our relationship for a long while. The day finally came where I sought yoga and tended to the seed that had been planted years before I was ready for it to grow. From that first seemingly irrelevant experience in the timeline of the events of my life, a framework of healing, purpose, and meaning has grown and is now the structure and fabric of my life and message today. We have no idea the impact of the things we are called to do. This is powerful work. I am grateful to have been chosen to be a part of carrying it out.
Blog written by: Bryce Fegers
