03. Introduction

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Introduction. It was in July 2020 when the idea for sober yoga girl came to me. I don't really remember where I was or how it came about. I just remember that I began. Once I started writing, I couldn't stop. It was like I was digging myself out of a deep dark hole with every word I put on the page. On the 8th of August 2020, I wrote the following post on Facebook. About 14 days and 83,895 words later, I finally got to the happy ending of my first draft of my memoir. I have no idea what I'll do with this book, but I have to say now I understand why Augustine Burroughs said he wrote his way out of addiction, quoted in Felsenthal. If you haven't tried writing yet, I highly recommend it, even if it's just for you. I thought this was the ending, but it was actually the beginning. I spent the following year until June 2021 working with my first editor, Saloni Lacchia. We met every week for a few hours and dissected, reorganized, and simplified the book's content. It is thanks to her that this story got its seven chakra structure, and I was able to release the least important parts of the story and lean into the most important parts. I found this writing, editing, and revising process more beneficial than therapy. In being forced to make sense of and organize the story of my book, I made sense of and organize the story of my life. Thank you, Salone, for guiding me through that process. The book stayed on my hard drive for a few years when I pitched my book to traditional publishers and got rejected. I wondered if it would go anywhere. During that time, my international yoga business grew. I began traveling around the world running yoga retreats and yoga teacher trainings. Several painful events I wrote about in the original book came full circle. I had an opportunity to resolve conflicts, heal wounds, and move forward. The book continued to evolve and change. As I thought more and more about self-publishing, I decided to do it because nothing about my career has been traditional. From choosing sobriety in my late 20s to launching a Zoom sober yoga community to running a business where I can work remotely and travel around the world. So why start doing things traditionally now? I decided to work with Jen Parker on a second edit, and this edit was a process of once again revising, rewriting, and really reflecting on what mattered to me more than three years after I wrote the book. This is when the book finally came to life. Thank you to the handful of people involved in this phase, including the characters in the book who go by different names in real life: Atif, Saad, and friends Fran and Yasmin, for taking the time to read this book and give me feedback. I also want to give a very special thanks to Sarah Millman, my third editor, who is also one of my yoga students, retreat guests, and yoga teacher training graduates. Sarah thoroughly edited this book for a third and final time, focusing on continuity and sentence structure. Sarah played such a massive role in the final edition, which Jen Parker also supported in typesetting and bringing through to publishing in the end. During this time, we worked on an extensive work-cited list for the book. Every effort has been made to acknowledge the original teachers, writers, and leaders who have inspired me. I also visited both Saloni Lakia, my first editor, and Anvita Dikshit, my yoga philosophy teacher, in person in Mumbai, India, in early 2024. Anvita gifted me a copy of Pantanjala Yoga Sutra, Sanskrit Sutras, authored by Dr. P. V. Karambalkar, published by the Yoga Institution where she grew up, K Valya Dham. It is one of the oldest yoga institutions in the world. It is 100 years old. I want to thank Anvita for educating me on the authentic teachings of yoga from India, which I have done my best to incorporate into this book, using her teachings and this reference as a guide. In 2019, when I traveled to Massachusetts to train with my teacher Rolf Gates, he taught me that yoga doesn't belong to anyone. He said it's been passed from heart to heart through thousands of years. I want to acknowledge all of the teachers who passed this wisdom to me, including Rolf Gates, who was my teacher long before I met him in 2019. His book, Meditations from the Mat, is what lit the spark of inspiration to follow this path. Thank you, Rolf. All of my teachers at Samatva Yoga in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, who were my very first teachers from 2010 to 2015. All of the educators in Baja, California, Mexico, where I graduated from my 200-hour yoga teacher training in 2014. All of the teachers in Bali, Indonesia, where I graduated from my 300-hour yoga teacher training in 2017. Tommy Rosen, with whom I had the gift of attending a Recovery 2.0 retreat in India in 2024. The many teachers I have been blessed to be guided along the way around the world, particularly in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, and Bali, who are too many to mention. This book would never have been written if it wasn't for Dan Kumar. Dan, my psychic healer, transformed the entire course of my life in May 2019 and is still to this day one of my biggest cheerleaders and supports. If I had never met him, all of this would still be a dream. Dan was the catalyst for me manifesting this reality. Through believing in my potential, Dan helped me believe in myself. Thank you, Dan. When I finally decided to move forward with the book in 2024, I was glad that I'd waited so long for it to be published. I had so many years to sit and reflect on the true purpose of this story and how I can move forward with it, with three yogic philosophies in mind. Number one, ahimsa, causing as little harm as possible. Number two, satya, telling the truth as I personally recall it. And number three, following my dharma, including my experience in the story only if they serve a purpose. Both the book's purpose and my life's purpose. The disclaimer is in this book, other than my family, none of the characters really exist. They're a combination of many people I met along the way in Canada, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, and Naobali with made-up names and character traits. There's no hero or villain in the story, because there is good and bad in all of us. As well, some of the locations and timelines have been changed. But everything that I've written about in Sober Yoga Girl did happen, in my recollection and opinion. My story is unique because I traveled and lived around the world and had different experiences in each place during my twenties. I want to be clear that no place is good or bad, and none of the stories are reflections themselves of the countries in which they occur. Every experience is based on me and who I was at the time I experienced it, more so than the location in which I found myself. And finally, to my Santiago, though he goes by a different name in real life. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in Eat Pray Love, people think a soulmate is your perfect fit. And that's what everyone wants. But a true soulmate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so that you can change your life. A true soulmate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. Soulmates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. Thank you, Santiago. Your support of this book, Sober Yoga Girl, means the world to me. Brene Brown wrote One day you will tell the story of how you overcame what you went through, and it will be someone else's survival guide. It is my hope that this book can become someone else's survival guide. With love, Alex.