Reinventing myself in Yelapa
Hi — I’m Keith and I’m…..
On January 3rd, 2022 — the first workday of the year, I ‘checked myself into’ what I called a rehabilitation and wellness program. Since for some I think there are a lot of questions, this is a pretty detailed attempt to explain why I did that, how it’s probably not what it sounds like, what it was instead, and how that decision has changed my life. I write this, in part, because people who care about me, and whom I care about, want to know what I’ve been up to. The other part, however, is because by writing about it I stand a better chance of never forgetting. Fat chance, but still.
First, to set the stage, I am an alcoholic. I’ve known this about myself for years but have been unwilling, or unable, to choose sobriety. I am lucky in that I never fell to the level of despair that many of my brothers (and sisters) attained — but hopefully you’ll agree that the capacity to drink almost an entire bottle of liquor in one night, several nights a week, stopping each night only because I’ve passed out, earns me the classification. Yes — to the purists — I know it’s more complicated than that but, trust me, I qualify.
All that said, the transformational vision that presented itself to me in November, 2021 wasn’t of a program focused on not drinking anymore. I awoke that day to the realization that I hated myself, that everything I was doing to try and feel better about myself was just making it worse, and that if something didn’t change, I might die. This may come as a surprise to many because I’m pretty good at winning approval — even my own at times — so it’s understandable if I seemed damned happy. But there was deeply seated disdain for, and distrust in, myself as well and no amount of external validation could erase it. Alcohol helped ease the pain each night, but it was also one of many indicators of how I disrespected myself, indicators that also included the food I was eating, my declining physical fitness, the activities to which I chose to invest time and energy, and those I chose to ignore, and some seriously unhealthy relationships, with women and men, past and present. I awoke to a vision of a program that would make me into the man I’d wanted to be for a long time.
MEANT TO BE (I promise I’ll explain what I’ve been doing in due time, but how we got here is hugely important to the spiritual nature of my experience so please, allow me a brief side-step.)
The program I just completed didn’t exist on November 16th, 2021 — the day I first contacted Julia Allshouse. In fact, the program I read about on the internet a day or two before, the only one I could find in Mexico, and conveniently located a one-week sail away in Puerto Vallarta, didn’t exist either. It hadn’t existed for years yet the website is still up today (thankfully). The person whose name and number were listed as the primary contact for that defunct company has still not returned my calls. On that site, however, I read about and saw a picture of young woman, Julia, that I felt an immediate connection to. She was the person behind all of the wellness work — body, nutrition and spirit. One simple bio, and a picture, even though it was a woman, became the image of what I wanted for myself. Healthy, fit, spiritually at peace and happy.
I have always had a fascination with, and a reticent belief in, the concept of a universal spirit — a connectedness that permeates all of us. I also knew from occasional scans of AA’s 12-steps, that steps #2 and #3 were about acknowledging and surrendering to a ‘power greater than myself’. Ironically, that part of the 12-steps was hard for me because, even though I’ve always sensed that the spiritual world was real, I thought AA was specifically referencing the Christian “GOD” and the associated socio-political rats’ nest that comes with ‘Him’. So, when I found snippets of a program that had integrated recovery into a foundation in the physical, nutritional and spiritual traditions of Yoga, intuition (spirit) told me it was what I wanted.
I searched for and found Julia, eventually, under a different last name, in a different part of Mexico, offering a program that listed similar objectives. Sadly, however, she was in San Miguel Allende, a mountain town hundreds of miles from the coast. I decided to write anyways, mentally preparing myself that she wouldn’t reply, that it wasn’t going to work out for some reason, or that I’d have to make the hard decision to leave the boat and fly inland and live in a hotel for a while if I needed to. In truth — I’ve always wanted to go to San Miguel, but the timing and added cost was not ideal. To my surprise, and amazement, she immediately wrote back to let me know that after 6 years in San Miguel she had just moved to Yelapa — a small fishing village (note — ‘fishing’ means ON THE OCEAN) very close to PV, and that not only would she quickly recreate the program for me there, but that I could anchor in the bay and live on my boat for the duration.
As luck (fate / spirit / God) would have it, I was meeting my ex-wife and kids in Puerto Vallarta the following week for Thanksgiving, so we agreed I’d jump down to see Julia while I was there. My first contact with Julia was on November 16th. On November 22nd, 6 days later, we were having tea in Yelapa and beginning to map out my transformation with a planned start of January 3rd — only 41 days away and just over 50 days from the day of my ‘awakening’.
God energy wasn’t done yet. Julia had a tremendous amount of work to do, and very little time. She had the yoga and nutrition knowledge the program needed, and the operations management experience to pull it all together, but she didn’t have the recovery coaching or 12-step background I would also need, and she didn’t know anybody locally because she had just moved. Through similarly random circumstances, however, Tisana Scanlon, the other angel of this story, learned that Julia was creating a wellness and rehabilitation program, and approached Julia to ask if she might help. As it turned out, Tisana had a background in sobriety and AA, coaching credentials in trauma and addiction treatment, and a great deal of exposure to programs integrating Yoga and 12-steps. She and Julia met and bonded immediately. Julia setup a three-way call and, again, I felt an immediate bond. T had the kind of honest, loving approach to trauma coaching, sobriety and healing that I knew would provide the safety I needed to bare my soul. We were three.
The more I consider how differently things could have gone the more I’m overwhelmingly certain that the universal spirit, God if you will, was instrumental in guiding all of our lives such that we would come together at this time in life. There are few people on the planet I will love as deeply as I do them.
Note: I’ve never been a numerologist but during my time there both Julia and Tisana informed me that the number 11 was very special. According to Julia it, “…is a communication from the source (God) saying, “hello, continue, you’re on the right path, and I am here to let you know all is ok and to continue on in the direction you’re headed.” I looked back at my outbound texts and my last drink was on November 11th. 11–11. My last day in the program was Feb 11. I’m becoming a believer in this numerology stuff.
THE HEALING
In yet another fateful twist — my healing started before I got to Yelapa. I’d made the decision to start with Julia on January 3rd but I was still over 700 miles away in San Carlos. The process of doing the final boat prep, weather analysis and course charting was intimidating yet confidence building. Sailing three 200+ mile passages, each just under 2 full days, by myself, over the next 15 days, was the most personally empowering thing I’d done to date, made more so by the fact that the decision to stop drinking was so evident to me that I was never tempted during that time, despite huge ‘celebration worthy’ accomplishments and two major holidays — Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I paddled ashore on that first day in a great place to start my transformation.
The program itself had 2 major focal areas. Yoga (Body, Nutrition, Spirit) and 12-step and Trauma Coaching. An outline of my routine might help line things out.
I started each day on my boat at 6:30AM with coffee and my attempt at meditation. That part I added myself. At 7:30 I paddled ashore where I was greeted by Julia with a freshly made vegetable or fruit juice made specifically to cleanse my liver. She then led me through a solid hour-and-a-half of meditation, breathing exercises and yoga. I told Julia before came to the program I had ‘done’ yoga before but wasn’t sure I’d ever ‘Practiced’ yoga. I now know I had not. Our daily practice changed me physically by stretching and strengthening every muscle in my body. What I didn’t expect, however, was that by meditating, doing breathing exercises designed to awaken energy inside me, and then stretching and opening some of those energy centers, that we’d be helping to ‘unlock’ events from my past that had caused minor traumas. I learned that we store the energy from those traumas in our bodies and that once identified we can begin to address them — which is where Tisana came in. More on that later. BTW — If that sounds a little ‘out there’ then you’re a lot like I was on the 1st of January.
At 10AM Ryan, the chef Julia hired, served us a healthy breakfast, the first of 3 meals he made each day. Changing my diet was a big goal for me and I knew that the best way to do that was to have someone else cook for me for a while. Once I was in the habit of eating good-tasting healthy food, I reasoned, it’d be a lot easier to take the time to prepare good-tasting healthy food. I ate mostly vegetarian meals (if we did eat meat, it was chicken, fish or shrimp), many vegan, every day for 40 days, and almost every one of them was insanely delicious (even Ryan has an off day occasionally). I learned to enjoy food I didn’t like before, like quinoa, brown rice, sweet potatoes, squash, zucchini and even Brussel sprouts, along with things I liked but never ate like steamed greens, beets, broccoli, asparagus, carrots, avocados, onions and tomatoes. I learned to eat eggs in the morning WITHOUT bacon or sausage — although we ate oatmeal usually — a staple in my diet for years. We also put more fruit in my body than it’s seen in the last year and a half. For the last 3 weeks of the program, I started cooking to make the transition easier. All tolled — I’ve lost a bunch of weight (don’t know how much — don’t own a scale) and feel 100 times better. And, thus far my reasoning has panned out. I’ve been out of the program for 14 days now and have maintained my eating habits. I also had to buy new shorts today. Size 30 waist if you can believe it.
Between breakfast and lunch every day Julia taught me either about Yogic spirituality and philosophy (Sutras) or about yogic guidance on nutrition (Ayurveda). As I said before, I knew I’d had the ‘spiritual awakening’ that is the basis of the 12-step program, but I wasn’t really interested a Christianity based approach to that conversation, so the Yoga Sutras were perfect for me. The conversations on Ayurveda were a little less palatable (pun intended) in that they specifically identify the foods that I should and should not eat given my body type and, of course, much of what I like is on the ‘avoid’ list. Given how great I feel, however, the information is hugely compelling and I will no doubt be integrating more of those suggestions over time.
Three days a week, after lunch, Tisana spent 2 hours with me on 12-step and trauma work. I joked with a few people after I was here for a while that I felt like I came to this program for a teeth cleaning and got a root canal instead. Tisana is the dentist. I’m not entirely sure how to describe what she did for me without getting into tremendous detail about the dozen or so deeply, often subconsciously, held beliefs I had that were negatively influencing me. These were beliefs about myself, about my family members, about societal expectations, and even about sex. What I can say is that through coaching conversations, breathing exercises, guided visualizations, and body work (often coordinated with Julia’s morning Yoga sessions) we began the process of examining and reframing the events that were the root cause of those beliefs and laying the groundwork for me to reprogram my thinking. Beliefs that are so central to how we’ve lived, sometimes for over 50 years, live in our cells and can’t be reprogrammed in a month’s time, but I can at least recognize when they’re presenting themselves now which is the first step in changing them. I don’t know exactly what it will look like yet, but my work with Tisana isn’t done yet. May never be. It takes a long time to turn a big boat.
There were three other things that Julia coordinated that were the ‘icing on the cake’, as it were, to the care that she put into this program.
#1 — Knowing we were doing a lot of work on and in the body, she arranged for me to have a massage once a week. I went along with it but, in truth, I’ve never been a massage person much, owing to some of the stuff Tisana helped me deal with. After 6 weeks, my ability to relax into a full one-hour massage has been a transformational acknowledgement of self-worth. It is a treat I still give myself.
#2 — In one of our discovery conversations I mentioned that I enjoyed writing. Well, Julia coordinated with, of all things, a screenwriter who lives in Yelapa, to work with me one hour a week. Not only did I learn about screenwriting, and had a great time, but we managed to work some of the self-examination work I’d be doing into the assignments by writing character profiles for some of my ‘inside’ personas. I strongly suspect that should become part of the program going forward.
#3 — Playing guitar and singing used to be a huge part of my life and should be still. Julia found a weekly music program that we had intended on attending every week. Sadly, there were complexities that arose that prevented that from happening. The intention, however, meant that everyone involved knew I had that background and interest and so ad-hoc guitar playing and singing broke out several times. That, too, was very valuable to me.
BOOK-ENDS
The formal book-ends to my time in the program were an opening and closing ceremony marked by white outfits, beads, prayers and lots of incense. I find it interesting that, in hindsight, I felt a tremendous amount of love and honor from both Julia and Tisana on that first day. It was a beautiful ceremony and it established the container of safety and trust that I needed to accomplish what I’ve accomplished. The closing ceremony included a few meaningful rituals in addition to the white clothes, beads and incense but was mostly a day spent leisurely enjoying the beaches of Yelapa, confessing my love for the two amazing women who had given so much to me, and wiping away tears and a persistently snotty nose.
I sailed out of the bay the next afternoon with tear filled eyes and a new life ahead of me in La Cruz, Mexico. After I left Yelapa bay I pointed the boat to La Cruz and set the Autopilot. The heading was 11 degrees.
