024: Nikki Myers "Y12SR" The Yoga of 12 Step Recovery shares 40 years of drug abuse, alcoholism, relapse and recovery!024: Nikki Myers "Y12SR" The Yoga of 12 Step Recovery shares 40 years of drug abuse, alcoholism, relapse and recovery!
The SHAIR Recovery Podcast
Nikki Myers shares her long history of addiction, relapse, and recovery, and explains how Y12SR blends yoga with 12-step principles to support relapse prevention. The conversation focuses on body awareness, spiritual practice, and practical tools for building a sustainable sober life.
53:50•28 Jul 2015
Yoga, Twelve Steps and Relapse: Nikki Myers on Recovery You Can Feel
Episode Overview
- Relapse can still occur after many years clean and often signals the need for deeper or additional recovery tools.
- Combining the cognitive work of the 12 steps with the somatic practices of yoga can create a more sustainable recovery platform.
- The body often signals approaching relapse before the mind does, so learning to read physical cues is crucial.
- Working all twelve steps – not just one through three – is presented as essential for long-term recovery.
- "Keep coming back" is framed as both a spiritual and physical practice of returning to centre, connection, and supportive community.
“The theme of Y12SR is "the issues live in our tissues."”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation with Nikki Myers shows how recovery can live in both your head and your body. Celebrating 15 years clean, Nikki shares four decades of addiction, relapse, and healing, and how those experiences led her to create Y12SR – the Yoga of 12-Step Recovery.
She talks openly about drug abuse, alcoholism, commercial sex work, trauma, and multiple relapses, then explains how 12-step fellowships and yoga together became her "sustainable platform for recovery". You’ll hear how her first eight years clean ended with a seemingly harmless glass of champagne and a minibar in Germany, and how another relapse came when she decided yoga alone was enough. Her conclusion?
"I can intellect my way right into a coffin" – she needed the cognitive tools of the steps and the body-based tools of yoga working side by side. Nikki breaks down Y12SR meetings: a 12-step–based discussion followed by a themed, trauma‑informed yoga practice.
She explains why "the issues live in our tissues", why the body often warns of relapse before the mind catches up, and how simple tools like breath, HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired), and "keep coming back" can be felt physically, not just repeated as slogans. The chat also touches on codependency as "the disease of the lost self", service work in prisons and under‑resourced communities, and why 24 hours clean can be a very long time.
With practical humour, old‑school sponsorship wisdom, and gentle spiritual language, this episode speaks to anyone who’s relapsed, feels stuck in their head, or suspects they might need more than meetings alone to stay sober. Could combining movement, breath, and the steps be the missing piece in your recovery toolkit?
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