May 4, 2023 – He found that “it was a really difficult thing to find people to connect with in recovery and sobriety in Northwest Ohio. I was always just a little bit different … There was always a lot of dogmatic things brought in from Midwestern AA.”
A year into sobriety, he started meditating, beginning a path of serious spiritual practice. As he developed this dimension of his life, he and a friend decided to bring recovery and meditation together. They modeled their meetings after 12-step programs. Since they emphasized the 11th step, it is a 11 step program. As expressed by Alcoholics Anonymous that step is: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
DeWood said as someone who is “staunchly agnostic” the references to the deity didn’t sit well with him, but he clung to the mention of meditation.
The meditation recovery sessions started in Toledo, but when he moved to Bowling Green, where he is practitioner with Empty Cloud Zen, he established them here, first at the Common Good.
Now the sessions are held Sunday at 7 p.m. in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church on Church Street. The meditation recovery sessions last an hour. They begin with five minutes of introduction and restatement of their intention, then followed by 25 minutes of meditation.
DeWood practices Zazen, or seated meditation, but the sessions are open to all forms of meditation, or just silence. The session concludes with 35 minutes of discussion and talk.
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