How Mindfulness Can Help Your RecoveryHow Mindfulness Can Help Your Recovery
The Recovered Life Show
Host Damon Frank and mindfulness practitioner Colleen talk about how simple present-moment practices can support sobriety, reduce anxiety and help prevent relapse. The conversation focuses on practical tools, emotional honesty and using mindfulness to deepen spiritual and personal recovery.
34:43•10 Oct 2025
One Sacred Breath: Mindfulness as a Lifeline in Recovery
Episode Overview
- Mindfulness is described as paying attention to and being with the present moment, even when it feels uncomfortable.
- Awareness of when the mind is stuck in the past or future helps reduce anxiety, depression and the likelihood of relapse.
- Simple practices such as two minutes of stillness, conscious breathing and emotional check-ins can start to shift recovery in a big way.
- Mindfulness supports emotional regulation, making it easier to pause rather than act out old addictive patterns.
- Regular practice can deepen connection with a higher power and with oneself, offering a sense of peace and “returning home” inside sobriety.
“Don't ever discount the power inside one deep, conscious, sacred breath.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation on The Recovered Life Show brings mindfulness down to earth for anyone in recovery who’s tired of living in their head instead of their actual life. Host Damon Frank chats with mindfulness practitioner Colleen, who gently breaks down what mindfulness really is: simply "paying attention to the present moment" and, as one of her teachers put it, learning to be *with* the moment, even when it isn’t pleasant.
She explains how anxiety, for her, is often "future tripping", and how practices like meditation, yoga, breath work and simple check-ins have helped her notice when her mind has sprinted off into the past or the future. The episode speaks directly to people in recovery who find themselves relapsing in their thoughts long before they relapse in their behaviour.
Damon shares how, whenever someone talks about relapse, he asks, "Where were you in your mind?"—and no one ever answers, "Right here in the present." Mindfulness becomes a safety tool: when you’re where your feet are, you’re less likely to act out. You’ll hear practical starting points too. No fancy cushions, no perfect morning routine—just "two minutes of stillness" with a lot of self-compassion.
Colleen calls mindfulness "a beautiful returning home to yourself", and talks about how it’s strengthened her emotional regulation, lifted anxiety and depression, and most of all deepened her relationship with her higher power. There’s also permission to admit that sitting still can feel like "peeling my skin off with a razor" at first, and a reminder to stay curious rather than critical about that discomfort.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re sober but still spinning on the hamster wheel, this might be the nudge to pause, breathe, and ask: what would it feel like if everything was already okay, just for this moment?
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