Acceptance: Living Life on Life’s Terms

As a person in recovery, I think a lot about acceptance. You know, living life on life’s terms. It’s a subject that doesn’t come up much around my ‘normal’ friends. Of course, they don’t have to go to meetings either. Maybe they don’t think about acceptance. Maybe they just do, or maybe they just do it…accept things the way they are.

For those of us in recovery, however, ‘acceptance’ only comes after we have completely surrendered to our addictions.

This was not something I easily embraced. Like most of us, I had to be beaten into a barely recognizable pulp and even then I tried to put up a fight. But I was lucky, at least I was alive and had a chance to accept my fate.

My idea of what acceptance is or isn’t has changed quite a bit since early recovery. I used to think that accepting something simply meant not fighting it. And for me, at least early on, that idea worked enough to keep me sober. One of AA’s early members, Dr. Harry Tiebout, termed this sort of thinking as ‘compliance.’ It is both a step toward acceptance and a barrier to it.

For me, I was desperate enough in early recovery that I would have done, or complied, with anything you crazy people said to do. I knew that I needed help, that my way wasn’t working and that, as annoying as it was, you were happier than I was. I saw people at meetings that laughed out loud, that smiled, that appeared to be…happy.

So, I complied. I did what you said to the best of my ability because I had no other options left. But, acceptance…surrender…that was slow in coming. It took a while for me to truly surrender to my disease. To be honest, it is probably the only thing in my life that I have ever truly surrendered to. The true gift of recovery is that I have to continue to do it every day. I have to give up every day…I have to accept the fact that I’m not unique (I don’t do so well with that one) and there are certain things that I have to do each day in order to successfully treat my condition.

Now, what does this have to do with my yoga practice? with YogaVibes.com? Nothing…and everything.

I guess you could say that I’m in ‘early yoga.’ On many levels, I’m excited and enthusiastic because I can see immediate benefits of even the smallest effort I put into my practice. And with YogaVibes.com, could it be any easier to get to a class? I feel so great physically and mentally when I connect with myself, the universe and my higher power. Most importantly, I feel the peace and serenity that I have always been looking for.

But, if I’m really honest with myself, I’m still just complying.

There is a small voice inside me that is easily drowned out by the noise from my busy life. When I practice, I hear it. It calls me to go deeper…to surrender…to accept.

I hope there are others of you out there that can relate and are willing to take this journey with me. See you here and on YogaVibes.com.

~ Matt, a YogaVibes Ambassadors