Strength Training for the Soul
On the assault bike, Monique Coombs’s coach asked how she’d empty Sebago Lake, one bucket at a time. Almost seven years sober, she finds in strength training a mirror for recovery: progressive overloa…
Topic
Body Practices
Movement, breath, and somatic tools — how the body holds and releases what recovery is asking it to carry. Exercise, stretching, breathwork, and other practices that anchor wellness in the physical self.
33 stories
In the Heart of Phoenix, a Recovery Movement Rises
On a Monday night under park lights in Scottsdale, more than twenty people in recovery circle up for volleyball. No church basement, no folding chairs. Just movement, music, and laughter. In Phoenix,…
The Body–Recovery Connection
A client sits with her counselor and names it plainly: another health crisis, another reason to give up. Chronic pain, untreated illness, a broken tooth. Each one whispers that recovery isn't worth th…
Learn To Love Your Wobble
Rebecca guides her yoga students into Half Moon pose, offering three difficulty levels. "Go where you could embarrass yourself, but without hurting yourself," she says. Then comes the real lesson: "Th…
Physical Well-Being in Recovery Building a Strong Foundation
Alison Jones Webb watches a person in recovery take their first morning walk in months, shoulders straightening with each step. This moment captures why physical health matters so much during recovery…
The Phoenix Building Strength and Community Through Sober Active Living
Scott Strode founded The Phoenix after recognizing that recovery needed more than abstinence. Through rock climbing, yoga, running, and weightlifting, this nonprofit builds community where people in r…
How to Survive a Panic Attack When it Strikes
Your heart races. Your chest tightens. You can't catch your breath. A panic attack strikes without warning, leaving you disoriented and scared. But panic attacks are survivable, and there are concrete…
Unlocking Your Body’s Natural Calm
When stress tightens your chest and your thoughts race, your body already knows how to find calm. Dr. Steven Porges discovered a special nerve that runs through your face, neck, and chest, waiting to…
Danielle Rideout
Danielle Rideout is a counselor in private practice who works with individuals and families facing substance use disorder. She also teaches a recovery-friendly class at a Yarmouth gym.
Balance Your Physical Well-being with EFT Tapping
M.T. had carried chronic back pain for three years. Painkillers and physical therapy offered only temporary relief until a friend suggested trying EFT Tapping. Within five minutes of gently tapping ac…
Radiant in Recovery – Danielle Ward
Danielle Ward is a recovery coach and certified yoga instructor with five years of sobriety. Her goal is to become a certified drug and alcohol counselor.
Inhale Goodness, Exhale Wellness
When your shoulders tense and breath catches during a stressful moment, your body is sending a signal. You can answer back. This piece explores how intentional breathing practices, drawn from yoga tra…
Healing Inside Out
Someone in early recovery discovers their body needs attention too: years of neglect have left them with untreated health problems and no idea where to start. Physical wellness turns out to matter dee…
Get Moving, Feel Better: Exercise in Recovery
Marcus hasn't set foot in a gym in five years. These days, he walks his neighborhood three times a week, sometimes with a friend. What he's discovered: movement matters in recovery. Research shows eve…
Holistic Recovery: Blending Traditional & New Therapies
You're sitting with a horse, learning to brush its mane, when something shifts inside you. Holistic recovery combines traditional medical treatment with approaches like equine therapy, art, meditation…
The Weiss Method : How Energy Works In The Body
Maria's hands moved on autopilot, reaching for the same habit each evening without thinking. The Weiss Method locates where repetitive patterns live in your body's energy systems. By understanding wha…
The Weiss Method : Using Energy to Help Break Unhealthy Habits
Kevin O'Grady stopped drinking and smoking after years of failed attempts through other methods. He describes the Weiss Method treatment as flipping a switch: the constant inner craving disappeared, r…
Carly and Brinn Flagg
Sisters Carly and Brinn Flagg both live in Maine now. They powerlift together and lean on a strong community. Carly's sobriety date is October 4, 2014, and the family has learned to talk things out.
Sensational Radar
After years of numbing pain through survival mode, someone realized their body held vital signals they'd learned to ignore. By tuning into physical sensations tied to emotions, they discovered how to…
Taking Care of Your Wellness in Recovery
River Martin sits down with people rebuilding their lives after substance use and asks them a simple question: what does wellness look like to you? Their answer often reveals something unexpected. Rec…
6 Ways to Fortify Yourself
When stress piles up, your body needs more recovery time, not less. This article explores six practices that fortify you during turbulent periods: rest, recovery, refuge, relationships, resilience bui…
Yoga In Recovery
Jodi's mind raced at 6,200 thoughts per minute during early recovery. On a yoga mat, guided to focus on her breath, that hamster wheel finally slowed. Yoga offers people in recovery something deeper t…
When in Doubt, Choose Challenge
The water was 38 degrees, and everything in her wanted to stay warm and dry. That's exactly why she jumped in. This piece explores how intentionally choosing difficult moments, whether it's an icy oce…
Stephen Chabot
Stephen Chabot wakes at 4:34 AM to work out before his three young children stir, before the demands of leading Maine's largest elementary school begin. He's reclaimed mornings as his territory, he sa…
Aromatherapy
Susan Giarolo's back throbbed after surgery. Pain pills had nearly cost her everything. Then, in a yoga studio bathroom, she spotted an essential oil blend and wondered: could scent become medicine? T…
Massage: Nourishing Your Mind/Body Connection
Jay Phelps traces his fingers along his forearm during a massage session, feeling tension melt away. After twenty years in recovery, he's learned something crucial: massage isn't luxury. It's medicine…
Yoga Instructors
Elise Boyson came to yoga and felt something unexpected: she was coming home to herself. Now, as Executive Director of Sea Change Yoga in Portland, she brings trauma-informed classes to people in jail…
Niki Curtis
Niki Curtis loves to make people laugh and give them hope. In recovery she took up running and painting, and on hard days she turns to helping someone else.
Community acupuncture works because wellness starts with ‘we’
An older woman with arthritis reclines beside a young man battling anxiety, a cancer patient managing nausea, and a person newly in recovery from substance use disorder. They're strangers in a warm, q…
Kayla Kalel
Kayla wakes early, drinks coffee, practices yoga, then heads to the beach with her nine-month-old daughter Trinity. A perfect day, she says, includes one essential thing: staying abstinent. In recover…
Melissa Rivera
Melissa Rivera, 41, is a full-time health coach and the first resident health coach at World Gym. At a women's meeting this past winter, she felt for the first time that she fit in.
Fit For Recovery
Keagan Delaney takes a walk through Portland's nature trails most mornings, but his real fitness goes deeper. Two years into recovery, he's learned that getting physically strong builds the endurance…
Jennie Joan Ferrare
Jennie Joan Ferrare, 29, runs Arcana, a healing studio in Portland's Old Port, and its yoga school. She is coming up on five years sober and is a new mom to baby Leo.