UPWARD FACING DUDE –
Dec. 14, 2022 – “As soon as I was willing to let go of being in charge of my own life, which I had messed up pretty badly, admitted my powerlessness over alcohol and drugs, and asked for help, help showed up,” he explained. With the support of his loved ones and case manager, Emily, Lewis moved into a homeless shelter called Transition House and took a job as a dishwasher at Santa Barbara City College. Humbly, he began to piece his life together.
One day, in his fifth month of sobriety, he received a life-changing phone call from a woman named Ginny Kuhn who was teaching yoga to female inmates as a part of her master’s degree project. “She had decided that it was time to start a men’s program, and she thought of me,” Lewis said. “The rewards of sobriety were coming fast to my life.”
The classes have become “the best two hours of my week,” Lewis said. He has countless stories about teaching the men about mindfulness. One of his students, Jaime, stopped cutting himself after Lewis introduced him to meditation. “I knew it was going to be fun to work with that population, but I didn’t know what was going to happen to me as a result,” Lewis said. “I didn’t know it was going to radically change my whole perspective on my own freedom and my own appreciation of being sober.”
