I love good conceptual models. This is a particularly interesting one I stumbled across this morning from SAMHSA.

What’s exemplary is the cohesiveness of the thinking involved in creating this model of recovery. Like life itself, recovery is not solo project. It involves support from so many different people – families, communities and social services. What if we started acting like we were all connected instead of individual islands floating past each other? 

What if we figured out a way to connect all the support systems in the lives of people in recovery? What if we yoga-d our approach to recovery? In other words we coordinated services like health care, mental health and education. We brought important aspects of our lives closer together instead of keeping them separate and distinct?

The cultural tide within which we live does not support recovery. If it did, we would not be living with the crushing public health problem that is addiction. But there are so many good people, institutions and service organizations who care about addiction recovery. Yoga fits into parts of this model in the directions of recovery, health and wellness, and resilience. 

Yoga transforms lives and it can transform communities and even our society if we understand how it fits into these types of conceptual models, and how to appropriately deliver it.