This is why I can't smoke. Quitting tobacco a decade ago was one of the hardest things I've ever done. If you lean towards compulsion too, you get me. And maybe, like me, you noticed this inner tendency, and have 'healthified' it best you can, by satisfying that need to do and do and do again with ritual, with yoga and meditation, with team sports or therapy or a strong, intimate friends circle. I've cut out just about every self-destructive tendency and poured in spiritual ritual to quench my completist, compulsive inner guide.
And it was really working. I'm pretty sure I'm addicted to yoga (asana and meditation), but it's much better for me than the other addictions I've moved through. Which brings me back to the tobacco, and my divorce. Divorce, for those of you who haven't endured it, is an inordinately painful, shocking process of grief. It will shake you to your core, and challenge every gain you've made in your life. It will simultaneously be the best and worst thing that could happen, and it will throw the most devout practitioner into upheaval.
Divorce will enable your escapist coping mechanisms to weasel their ways back into the foreground. So whether it's compulsion or avoidance or a nasty temper, you will likely find yourself dining with your deepest demons. For me, I was hanging out with some friends who 'smoke while drinking.' Fun, edgy I thought. Of course I can have a cigarette with a couple cocktails and get that great little high, and leave it at that, I told myself.
Um, of course I can't do that. Ever. Just a few days after my 'smoking while drinking' experiment, I found myself buying tobacco and then buying more and then all of a sudden I was smoking every day. I couldn't really remember how that happened, but there I was, cozying up with the most self destructive part of myself. I was so embarrassed and ashamed. I mean, I own a yoga studio. Smoking cigarettes fits into that picture not at all. So I told my therapist, who helped me to find some compassion for myself. In a weird way, my smoking helped me through a crucible time. Some helping just comes with a big side of hurt. And, once I stopped beating myself up, I was able to set a quit date and stick to it. And, like before, the yoga practice helped so much.
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So why am I telling you this? Because I want you to know I'm as imperfect as anyone else. And when you show up to yoga class and feel like you don't belong because you've been struggling with an eating disorder, or a temper that keeps flaring up, or you can't remember the last night you didn't have a drink, and you look around and think everyone is healthier or better than you, and you're not sure you belong, STOP RIGHT THERE. Yoga doesn't need you to be perfect before you show up. You're not obligated to overcome every challenge of life before you step onto the mat.
In fact, that's why the mat is especially relevant for you. The yoga gets it. It sees you just as you are. I don't know any longterm yogis who got there because life was so easy and soft on them. To commit to practice and ritual is to fill a need in life, to establish control where there wasn't enough, to keep the compulsion in check best we can, and to slather self love and radical self acceptance over the wounds of self abuse and hate. Wherever it is you want to go, the yoga can take you there. And the only thing it will ask of you is to come just as you are.
Justicia DeClue is a non-smoker living in Philadelphia. She owns Maha Yoga Studio, and believes yoga is for anyone who wants it. She's been teaching yoga since 2005, and is passionate about its power for healing and building radical self-love. She wants you to follow her yoga adventures on Instagram.
