SHAIR 94: "Balance and Breathe" with Esther Nagle, Beating Addiction through Yoga!SHAIR 94: "Balance and Breathe" with Esther Nagle, Beating Addiction through Yoga!
The SHAIR Recovery Podcast
Esther Nagle shares how two decades of drinking and mental health struggles gave way to sobriety through yoga, sleep, and self-kindness. Her story highlights practical tools and gentle spiritual growth that helped her swap chaos for a calmer, more connected life.
1:22:28•29 Nov 2016
Balance, Breath and Sobriety: Esther Nagle on Beating Addiction with Yoga
Episode Overview
- Daily yoga, meditation and proper sleep can give structure and emotional balance that make staying sober easier.
- Alcohol often starts as a way to belong or cope but can deepen low self-worth and mental health struggles.
- Simple principles like “don’t judge, don’t compare, don’t beat yourself up” support kinder self-talk in recovery.
- Building a personal sense of spirituality can come from nature, self-study and inner reflection rather than formal religion.
- Focusing on gratitude shifts attention away from triggers and excuses to drink and towards what is working well.
“Don’t judge. Don’t compare. And don’t beat yourself up.”
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? For Esther Nagle, it started with a brutal hangover, a yoga course, and the realisation that she finally had healthier ways to cope. This episode follows Esther, founder of Balance & Breathe and author of *Bent Back into Shape: Beating Addiction through Yoga*, as she talks with host Omar Pinto about 20 years of addiction, mental illness, and the unexpected power of a deep breath.
She shares how alcohol, drugs and loud music once gave her a sense of belonging, even as her self-esteem crumbled and her life became, as she puts it, “a constant battle” between who she was and who she wanted to be. You’ll hear her describe the moment a Queens of the Stone Age song, *I Appear Missing*, made her see just how lost she’d become, and how yoga teacher training slowly rebuilt her connection to herself.
Learning simple practices like conscious breathing, daily movement and proper sleep gave her something she’d never had before: tools to face pain without numbing it. Esther and Omar also talk about spirituality in a very down‑to‑earth way. She explains how yoga helped her move from a rigid childhood faith she’d lost at 12 to a personal sense of something bigger, found in nature, mountains and stillness. Her favourite guiding rule from her teacher’s lineage is wonderfully simple: “Don’t judge.
Don’t compare. And don’t beat yourself up.” If you’re curious how yoga, gratitude and self-study can sit alongside – or even kick-start – recovery, this conversation gives a raw yet hopeful look at change from the inside out. Could a mat, a breath, and a bit of self-kindness be part of your own sober toolkit?
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