Recovery Yoga Meetings® with Suzula Bidon
In yoga studios and treatment centers, Recovery Yoga Meetings® are helping people live and breathe recovery on the mat and in their lives.
Suzula Bidon, E-RYT 200, YACEP, CPRS
Suzula Bidon created the Recovery Yoga Meetings® curriculum and has been teaching it since 2012. In long-term recovery herself, Suzula is an attorney, recovery advocate, and Certified Peer Recovery Specialist (CPRS). She also has a Master of Science in Addiction Policy and Practice (MS ADPP) degree from Georgetown University.
“After several years in recovery, “working” a 12-Step Program, I was making progress, but something was missing. My head and my heart - what I knew and how I felt - didn’t match up. I still felt uncomfortable in my own skin. I realized there was no physical component of my recovery.
I tried going to various yoga classes, but none of them resonated with me. Sure, yoga provided physical exercise and stress relief, but there was no meaningful, consistent correlation with recovery. I wanted a yoga practice that would allow me to fully integrate my spiritual and psychological understanding of recovery into my body.”
“I continued to practice yoga, and I developed a sequence of yoga poses where each pose embodies a principle of recovery, so I could “work the 12 Steps” physically. I found that experiencing the principles of recovery with my body – not just thinking or talking about them – expanded and completed my recovery. Adding the physical dimension made my recovery real. Finally, I was comfortable in my own skin.
I wanted to share the experience with others, so I combined the recovery-specific sequence I created with the sharing and community of a peer support meeting, and I’ve been leading Recovery Yoga Meetings ever since.”
