Cheryl Spera’s Higher Ground Story
When, after two decades in recovery, Cheryl Spera relapsed, it was yoga that helped her maintain sobriety again for good. It took her five long years of moving from relapse to sobriety and back again before she had the courage to roll out her mat, she says, and while she may have stayed sober without yoga, she credits the depth and meaning provided by yoga as integral to her commitment to sobriety.
“The sense of guilt, shame, anxiety and depression that I felt early in my renewed recovery was powerful,” wrote Cheryl in an email. “Yoga helped me process these feelings and continue to stay sober while working a program of recovery. My yoga community became part of my support system.”
Cheryl went on to found Higher Ground Recovery & Yoga, an organization and brick-and-mortar studio dedicated to providing trauma-sensitive yoga and mindfulness programs for people in recovery, to complement traditional therapies. “Trauma-sensitive yoga (TSY) is an evidence-based methodology for complex trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder,” writes Cheryl. There is no shortage of evidence to support the fact that TSY can have a positive effect on recovery efforts for substance-abuse disorders across the spectrum.
According to a 2021 report by the American Addiction Centers, “yoga is increasingly being used in substance abuse treatment programs and throughout recovery to help prevent relapse, reduce withdrawal symptoms and drug cravings, and provide a healthy outlet to cope with potential triggers and daily life stressors.”
Cheryl’s personal experience supports this assertion. “It felt like magic,” she says. “Gradually, the feelings of emotional numbness and disconnectedness began to subside as I practiced yoga regularly and attended recovery meetings.” While Cheryl had come from a more traditionally fitness-focused background when it came to movement, she craved the spiritual aspects of meditation, and at some point, she writes, “yoga became more than the shapes on the mat. Over the years, my yoga practice has helped provide deeper meaning to my recovery program and allowed increased spiritual connection to my true self and expanded my relationships with others.”
It is this holistic approach that makes yoga and mindfulness programs such a powerful tool for people in recovery. When you come to mat, writes Cheryl, you show up exactly as you are. Yoga is not really about flexibility of the body, after all — but to create a sense of flexibility in the mind, including the ways in which self-compassion and self-regulation may inform the ways in which we both experience things and the ways in which we show up for others. “We create safety and security within ourselves,” writes Cheryl, and “begin to awaken and embrace the present moment.”
This is particularly meaningful from a recovery lens, because this practice, writes Cheryl, allows “the past to teach us rather than diminish us. The future becomes a possibility rather than a source of anxiety. One breath at a time and one day at a time becomes part of the mindful journey of our own recovery.”
This has benefits beyond the moment in which you’re truly practicing — the gift of presence throughout one’s day is a meaningful way to encourage a consistent checking in; learning how to identify one’s feelings and working through negative feelings with empathy rather than frustration. “I ask myself ,are you hungry, anxious, angry or tired?” writes Cheryl. “Learning to identify feelings, locating them in the body and then using yoga and mindfulness practices to work through them, has been one of the greatest gifts of my practice.”
It’s important for all folks instructing yoga to consider taking a trauma-informed training because you never know who is coming to class, and with what personal experience behind them. TSY training can help teachers identify biases and harmful patterns of which they may not have otherwise been aware. “The techniques and tools of TSY can be implemented into a variety of yoga styles and classes,” writes Cheryl. “This approach allows for the student to cultivate personal empowerment and a deeper mind-body connection through personal agency.”
If you are in recovery or if you work with an organization that serves the recovery community, considering the integration of yoga and mindfulness programs, consider a TSY training with Higher Ground Recovery & Yoga. You may learn more about their programs here.