My name is Jiva! I am grateful in recovery from addiction and associated behavior. I am a certified Hatha yoga teacher, certified addictions coach, certified business coach and trainer, certified life and spiritual coach. I celebrate 27 years of sobriety from addiction, I am a survivor and thriver of an abusive alcoholic and disfunctional family and a parent of a recovering addict. I am alive and healthy today only because I had a loving and supportive 12 step community that saved my life in 100 ways. I am eternally grateful I have now made it my life's mission to make sure that no person seeking recovery ever be alone again. The Recovery Annex offers a safe supporting space for anyone seeking recovery from the bondage of the self, through Addictions, co-addiction, being raised in addictive and or disfunctional households, regardless of race, creed , faith, class, sexual orientation, gender or financial situation. We provide a holistic path to recovery; using the 12 steps of various Anonymous programs and the wisdom from the 5000 year old Bhagavad Gita. these two simple tangible truths are tools for which i and many others have lived our lives in recovery with hope, love and purpose. Please join our loving and supporting, international community. I grew up in NYC, I never felt I belonged on this planet. At 14 I left my highly disfunctional home and ran the streets of NYC. I resented the world and many of the people in it. The hypocrisies, the injustice, the weird conformity and the cruelty. I never felt comfortable in the world outside of me nor did I feel comfortable in the world inside of me. I started using drugs at a very early age which quickly provided relief from the violent world I had lived in. First on Weekends. Then weekends started Thursday and ended Monday. Eventually I was using every single day of the week. 14 years later living in Berlin I was 85 pounds, homeless, friendless, lost custody of my daughter and dying of Hepatitis C. I knew I was going to die or even worse, live a long life of suffering and misery. The night of March 2nd 1997 I surrendered. My life changed completely. Slowly the dull black and white film I was living became technicolor. I never knew a life of freedom from compulsion, addiction, self loathing and desperation until I got clean. I still cannot explain how much gratitude I have, for it was not I who had gotten me clean and sober. I can only call it an act of providence. My recovery from drugs and addictive behaviors was and is a life long journey and after many years on this path, I realized that I could not get to the next level if I was not ready to dig really deep. There were deep lying wounds that needed healing in order for me to move forward and continue a life of recovery and hope. Free from the wreckage of my past. After working The ACA program and years of trauma therapy I decided to dive deeply in yoga studies. It was there that any questions I had about life, God, space, why, how, when, were all answered. Any question about any thought that my little brain could think up, there was an answer. Not only any answer, but a really solid, simple and easy to understand answer that just made sense. The 12 steps and yogic wisdom! I have striven to learn as much as I can so share this all with you. I am alive and healthy today only because I had a loving and supportive 12 step community that saved my life in 100 ways. I am eternally grateful I have now made it my life's mission to make sure that no person seeking recovery ever be alone again. The Recovery Annex offers a safe supporting space for anyone seeking recovery from the bondage of the self, through Addictions, co-addiction, being raised in addictive and or disfunctional households, regardless of race, creed , faith, class, sexual orientation, gender or financial situation. We provide a holistic path to recovery; using the 12 steps of various Anonymous programs and the wisdom from the 5000 year old Bhagavad Gita. these two simple tangible truths are tools for which i and many others have lived our lives in recovery with hope, love and purpose. Please join our loving and supporting, international community.