Legacy: We Walk in the Footsteps of Those Who Have Came Before Us with Rolf Gates

In episode 99 of the podcast, Alex had the honor of sitting down with her teacher, Rolf Gates, and hearing about his journey from active addiction, to sobriety, to author of the book Meditations from the Mat. Alex had the honor of celebrating her 100 days sober on an Advanced Yoga Teacher Training with Rolf Gates back in 2019. Tune into this episode to hear how he got to where he is today, his story and his journey, and what wisdom he has to share to those on a sober journey. 

Transcript

Intro
Hi friend, this is Alex McRobs, founder of "The Mindful Life Practice" and you're listening to the "Sober Yoga Girl" podcast. I'm a Canadian who moved across the world at age 23 and I never went back. I got sober in 2019 and I realized that there was no one talking about sobriety in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, so I started doing it. I now live in Bali, Indonesia, and full-time run my community, "The Mindful Life Practice". I host online sober yoga challenges, yoga teacher trainings, and I work one on one with others, helping them break up with booze for good. In this podcast, I sit down with others in the sobriety and mental health space from all walks of life and hear their stories so that I can help you on your journey. You're not alone and a sober life can be fun and fulfilling. Let me show you how.

Alex
Alright. Good morning, everyone. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of "Sober Yoga Girl". I am so excited today because I have my teacher on the podcast, Rolf Gates. And the funny thing is that you know, we actually did Rolf Gates's book as the very first book club for "Meditations from the Mat" about two years ago. Our first book club for the Mindful Life Practice. And I wrote a post saying I was bringing Rolf on the podcast. And someone commented saying, wow. Like two years ago we were joking about this happening and now it's actually happening, which is so cool. So really happy to have you here. And welcome, Rolf.

Rolf
Thank you. Great to be here.

Alex
And for Rolf, it is 06:00 P.M. on Wednesday. And for me, it's 05:00 A.M. on Thursday in Dubai, which is pretty cool.

Rolf
We're time traveling in both directions, right? You're in the past and I'm in the future.

Alex
Either way, I'm in the future.

Rolf
Really? I was like, that's not a metaphor. Don't feel bad about being in the past. I'm like, wait, I'm in the past?

Alex
So I want to give a bit of context to my sort of story with how I came to Rolf's teachings. So, actually, I've been doing yoga now for about ten years, teaching yoga for seven. And when I first started practicing yoga, Rolf's book, "Meditations from the Mat" was actually on the shelf at the yoga studio that I worked for. And I was getting really into yoga philosophy at this point. It was before I was a yoga teacher. So I was just kind of like cleaning the studio in exchange for yoga classes and hanging around. And the owner of my studio that I worked for said, you know, you're getting really into yoga philosophy, you should read this book by Rolf Gates. So I read the book. It is like the one book that I reread over and over again. Like someone you know, posted a meme saying, what's the one book you reread over and over again the other day? And I was like, it's "Meditations from the Mat". And then how it became very relevant for me was when I was first becoming sober, I, you know, was alone in Abu Dhabi. I didn't know anyone else that was on a sober journey, anyone else that was sober. And the one person that I knew was Rolf Gates because I remember it was like a theme "Woven Throughout Meditations from the Mat", which I had read you know, seven years before. And so I picked up the book again and then I read your third book, "Daily Reflections on Addiction, Yoga, and Getting Well". I think that was like the first book I read in my recovery. And then I was like, okay, well, I have to meet Rolf Gates. And so I ended up going down to do a teacher training with Rolf around my 100 days sober. And it was like a really special milestone. And it was the first time I ever spoke in a room about my sobriety around people. And, you know, now I have a podcast about it. So it just shows how much has changed in the three years. And so anyway, Rolf is a really meaningful teacher to me. And so I'm just really excited and happy that he's here today. So thank you so much, Rolf.

Rolf
You're welcome. And congratulations on everything, really, and just I'm so happy for you.

Alex
Thank you. So I was wondering, I know many of the people listening have probably read your book. I always joke I'm like, I should really make a commission off of it because I feel like I've sold it so I can convince so many people to buy it. But for people that have not read your book that is listening to the podcast, I was wondering if you could start us off by giving a little bit of, like, an introduction and telling us about you.

Rolf
Oh, I thought you were going to have me talk about "Meditations from the Mat".

Alex
You could do either.

Rolf
I'm going to start with that because it's a pretty deep connection. So, yeah, I got sober in 1990, and it was kind of before kind of yoga and meditation were widely available. So the only practice I had was going to meetings. And for my first five years. And after that, I started going to Kripalu. But it was still like in the 90s, my wife and I would drive to New York, take a class at Tiva Mukdi, and then drive home. It's a three-hour drive from Boston to New York, take class, have lunch with a friend in New York, and then drive back and bring a bunch of books with us, you know. And then on vacation, I would just go to Kripalu, which was two hours west of Boston, and spend a week there and come home with a bunch of VHS videos. And that was pretty much it. I think I ended up with Pattabhi Jois's first series and second series videos and studied them. And I think Richard Freeman had a first series Ashtanga video. That was pretty much the only video that was available.

Alex
Wow.

Rolf
We just kind of made things up a little bit. I did a class with a teacher. Four of us would show up you know every Saturday, and one of them was the husband. And that was kind of a yoga scene, right?

Alex
Wow.

Rolf
Yeah. We were a little ahead of our time. That first decade of my recovery was almost entirely going to meetings.

Alex
Wow.

Rolf
And I found meetings so poignantly beautiful and amazing that I spent that first ten years being like, I can't believe all of this goodness is coming into my being right now. It's just too much for one person. How will I ever be able to share what I'm experiencing? I went to meetings every day. I double up on weekends. So that's a lot of goodness. It was just being poured into me, the picture was ten years, 365 days. So it's over 3650 meetings. It's poured into me. All of this goodness. These are urban meetings. So there's like 50, 60 people in the room all the time. And so all these people sharing their journey. And I was just like, I was just being filled, you know. And so there was this really, really deep desire in me to share the beauty that had been. I feel like I kind of got it like I washed up on the shores, you know. Like, I got to pick me up and then had put me in this place where I got to see just amazing things for a very long time. Many, many years of just amazing lessons, just amazing examples. Amazing, amazing. And I was like, how will I ever share that? And at some point along the way, I guess, since you're asking me, I'll give a tiny bit slower version of this. I came back from the army. I got sober in the army. I came back six months sober, and I didn't have a career to speak up because my career had been in the military. Right?

Alex
Right.

Rolf
And so after a few years, I kind of ended up in addictions counseling. And this whole time going to meetings, it's amazing. And at the meetings, I kind of learned that you should have a path of service. You should find a path of service. And I was like, you know I think helping people get into recovery sounds great because I had a wonderful rehab experience. I'm not sure how many people have that, but I had one. I like a movie like "Montage" rehab experience. You know like you come in and you're feeling crappy, and then the conscious says like, you can do it. And then they cue the montage, and you're like, I quit smoking. I started money in the morning. I had a whole montage. It was six weeks. It was in the summer in Europe, in Stuttgart. It was just like, very-- Germany won the World Cup that summer, and we were in rehab like, yay, because we were living in Germany, and we were like, we were for Germany for some reason. But I kind of bought hook line sinker into that culture. And a big part of that culture is a path of service. And so I got literal, and I was like, well, I'll help people get sober. I went to school for that, got a job for that. And I started working with traumatized young people, and that was very hard. And I had to dig very deep to do that work. Deepest I've probably had to dig in my life in terms of professionally. Probably the greatest professional challenge of my life was my first two years working full time in addiction treatment. And to kind of meet that challenge, those VHS videos I was bringing home from Kripalu, I started doing in the morning, I kind of created this little practice where it was like 20 minutes of sitting meditation. No, it was 20 minutes of yoga. So it was 20 minutes of VHS yoga with this woman named Mega in a pink leotard. And then I'd sit for half an hour. It was about an hour of practice, and I found that somehow the poses were really important because being around traumatized children and their anger and their sadness was hard on the body you know, and doing the poses was necessary. I don't know why, but it was really like I couldn't be around trauma without doing poses in my body. But also the challenge of not giving into the kind of despair of the situation and to be visionary, to be visionary in the face of that despair, meditation was required. I'm not going to roll over here. I'm going to be successful here. I got like, a mission, right? I'm going to show up every day from a place of proactivity. I'm not going to burn out here. I'm going to respond here. I'm going to get better. These kids are going to get better. But to find that gear, you know, I needed meditation. There was something about meditation that allowed me to see the opportunity in my environment on a daily basis, not like once in a while at least flashes of insight, but to see that, you know, we're always in a situation. In that situation, we'll always have a possibility, right, which the Buddhist would call onward leading. There's a door opening somewhere in this situation that is beneficial, but it's a benefit to all beings. Alright? And meditation was like, because it's like, hard. Those places are hard, right, to be in. If nothing else is that we're sitting in, we're stepping into a very fast-moving stream you know, of like, Karma, like the parent's Karma, the kid's Karma, the staff's Karma, everyone's karma is like moving along. And it's just like it's not acceptable really, to go with that stream. The Buddha called his practice going against the stream. It's like just repeating the same mistakes over and over again is the stream. But even that fast-moving stream is just another situation where there's a possibility here and that's onward leading. And there's a way that meditation, it wasn't linear. It's like I would sit, I would sit, I would sit. And sooner or later, what I learned later is divine guidance answers the question that you are asking. Divine guidance answers it. And so I was asking a question about these kids well being and how I could be a part of that. And what's happening in meditation is among other things, where we're opening up that crown chakra and we're opening up that third eye. And so divine guidance comes in, and that third eye kind of figures out where to put it. It's like divine guidance gives you a beautiful vase, and you're like, where do I want to put this in my room, you know. That's the third eye like the divine guidance has come. Here's your vase. Thank you. Where do I put this? I want to put this somewhere, right? And so divine guidance comes in, and the third eye is like, I think tomorrow afternoon I'm going to have Jim Q be the one who leads the centering, right. It's just like you start to like, the third eye is like, okay, I know that I've got the guidance, like, how do I put it in? And so yoga was helping me with the embodied trauma. And then the meditation was helping me to see-- there's a way that the trauma lives in the first three chakras. It's the old world. Right. And we're called to create the new world. And the skills of the 5th, 6th, and 7th chakra are about creating the new world. Right? And then the third eye is about seeing the possibility of the new world. Seeing the possibility of the new world. The yoga was like, I have the old world calling to be healed in my body, and that's what the poses are about, you know. And the new world is calling to be seen. Right? And that's what the meditation was about. It's not bad, you know. But what's interesting is that I was forged in that, right. There's a phrase to be created by that which you are compelled to create. This is by Mark Nepo, "to be created by that which we feel compelled to create". Right? And so that was like 96 to 99. The program I was working in was so difficult that you had to do a two-year commitment or you couldn't work there because people would come for a month and quit. And so all these kids would have these adults quitting on them. You know, honorability. We had one staff member quit, but basically, you gave your word to the program that you wouldn't quit for two years. And that was like a long, hard two years. And when I think of the four years in the infantry in the Army, I'm like, you know, there were some ups and downs. When I think of those two years, that was a long, hard two years. Extremely taxing two years of my life. I've never been prouder of anything in those two years of learning and growing through those two years. But it got me into graduate school, you know and I went to graduate school for social work to become you know, an addiction and treatment person because that's my path of service, and I needed a part-time job. And before I went to graduate school, I was like, I'm going to go to Kripalu for a month. And they're like, what can I do? Well, they have a teacher training there. Okay, I'll do a teacher training.

Alex
Amazing.

Rolf
But I want to go to Kripalu for a month, right. I wanted to walk into the waters of the Lake in July and walk across the cool green grass and smell the trees. I could care less about teacher training. I didn't care about like, I did not want to be a teacher. I was-- but I just wanted to spend a month at Kripalu. And so I walked out of there, like, having been trained as a teacher, didn't think much about it, but the graduate school doesn't pay you. I need to get paid. Working per diem at that time as a counselor was like $6.75 an hour.

Alex
Wow.

Rolf
Yeah. It's just like, okay, so that's not a real option. That's not going to do me much. Like you put an eight-- so my placement in graduate school was a 40 hours workweek that was unpaid. So I can't go now and work for eight hours at $6.75 and then pay taxes on that and have that be useful, you know. But then someone in my extended family was like, hey, I'm opening this wellness center. Can you teach yoga there? And we'll pay $50 a class.

Alex
Wow.

Rolf
Now, divine guidance speaks to me all the time, and I think that being good at most professions is learning how to listen to divine guidance or intuition or whatever. But every once in a while, it's different. I've had it may be different, like, once or twice in my life. The first time when I got sober, I got sober through, I did a prayer and the desire was lifted and I said, oh, it's going to be okay. That was like the first seconds of my sobriety, it's going to be okay. I hadn't said anything is going to be okay my entire life. Nothing had been okay. I'd never felt that feeling before because nothing was okay. That's why I didn't mind being in the military. I just didn't mind being a Ranger. I didn't mind living a life that was inherently dangerous because life wasn't more or less dangerous anywhere. As far as I was concerned, nothing was going to be okay. Right? There was no okay. Okay did not exist in my world. It wasn't an option. Right? And I prayed and I was like, oh, it's going to be okay. It's like, literally the first time in my life I even knew that existed like to even say, what is it? And I knew what it was. I knew what it was, and I knew it was going to be okay. It's going to be okay. Like, ten years later, I'm talking to this woman, you know, she's a friend of the family. And I was like, she's hiring me to teach yoga. And I swear to God--it's really funny now to say this, like, on record, but a voice said to me, It's really important that you teach yoga. I'm on the phone and I'm newlywed and it was on 21 Chauncy St. in Harvard Square, and I'm in a graduate school and I'm working in Boston, you know and it's like, dark because it's like Boston. So even though it's like the fall, it's already dark at night. And I'm talking to this person about this job. I'll be teaching in FreshPond. It's the first teaching job I've ever got. It was the fall of '97. And I'm like, oh, it's really important that you teach yoga. And I was like, well, that's interesting, you know. I wasn't galvanized in action, but what happened next was I taught my first class and the next morning I was freaking juiced. I loved it. I was just like, there's a song by Patty Griffith that's like, I was listening to it's, like, very upbeat. I would play it, but I don't think people need to hear this. Do you want to hear the song that I played?

Alex
Yes.

Rolf
Do you kind of want it?

Alex
Play it.

Rolf
I know what it'll come across on Zoom, though.

Alex
Okay, maybe I'll put a link to it in the episode.

Rolf
Yeah. Wait, I can at least give you the--I don't know if-- I have it on my laptop. Never mind. It's hard to tell the story without the beat of that song, but I'm listening to this song, and I knew there's this really beautiful beat that I'm listening to. I wake up in the morning, I do my ashtanga practice. And as strong at the time. And I have my little special, you know, vegetarian breakfast because I was very devout. And I'm listening to the song. I'm like, so into it. And I was like, I got to teach every day because I was so stressed before teaching and I was so amped after teaching that I was like, this is unmanageable. I need to teach all the time. So this becomes normal. But this isn't like, freaking out. I can't be on these emotional ups and downs. I teach all the time. So I ran around Boston and started looking for opportunities to teach. And I'm going to jump ahead now. And one thing led to another. About two years later, I started teaching large classes at the first Big Power yoga studio in Boston. And this woman, Trina Kenneson, was one of my students. And I figured out something from 12 separate programs that Jack Kornfield had learned, you know, 30 or 40 years earlier when he was teaching Mindfulness in Thailand, when he was, like, with his teacher, Ajahn Chah in the room. He was teaching mindfulness back when he was still on the ropes, you know. And his teacher observed him and said, you make them laugh, and then you put the medicine in their mouth. And that's what Tulsa programs do. They tell these stories and you kind of laugh and cry along with them and your psychological defenses drop. And then the medicine comes in. With the medicine is the truth. Right? And so I learned that style of teaching from 12 set programs, which is so ingrained in me that when I started teaching yoga classes, I just automatically did the Jack Kornfield thing where you kind of make them laugh and you kind of make them relax, you know. And it's like you make them laugh and then you put the medicine in, you know. And yoga is so fantastic because it's not just like a stand-up routine. You're doing this beautiful, somatic process with people. And they're like, they're healing, you know. They're healing at that level, you know. And also as they heal, I think what's happening is there's like, divine guidance is coming in. But our energy bodies speak to each other. Right? Our energy bodies are basically in constant communication and they cannot be lied to, right? You're in class and as people are healing, that healing process is communicating itself to you. And so you're not just making laughs and putting in the medicine. It's like there's a co-creation happening, right, between kind of divine guidance coming in, right, but also the collective genius being expressed. Right? Those two elements are like informing the choices you make as a teacher, as you get sensitive to that. And what kind of Trina Kenneson was like, you should just write a book of your stories because I would just tell stories in class you know, to get people, you know, to where they need to go. And I said, sure. And that was 2001. It was fall 2000. And then I started writing in 2001. And to close this part of it, that book was where I took those ten years of amazing and passed it on. I think what people are feeling from those words because it is possible. It seems when I was writing that book, I was aware of the profundity of what I was trying to accomplish. Right. Which is to help people see and feel what I saw and felt when I became available to a healing path and to a healing community into a healing discipline. Right. Like, how sweet it is for a human to kind of surrender and heal.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
And to be in the presence of surrendering and healing. It's just like, okay, that's awesome. That's completely what I came for. Right. I'm 100% all-in, you know. But it's hard to get there. It's hard to get there, you know. It's hard to get past-- we're our own worst enemy in some ways. We defend against what we desire, you know. And what we desire is in this case, it does many phrases for it. But I think the phrase of surrendering to, you know, our own healing process. Right?

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
There's a phrase step forward into your medicine. When you're stepping forward into your medicine, you're stepping forward into the medicine you need for yourself. But you are also stepping forward into the medicine you're meant to bring into the world. And this is what you're doing so beautifully here, for this podcast is you're stepping forward into your medicine. Right? And as you're stepping forward into your medicine, you're stepping forward into the medicine you were meant born to bring into the world. Bravo, right. Bravo. But that's because I was stunned. Like, when you write a book, we have a negativity bias. We have a confirmation bias. Right. And so when I wrote that book, I was like, okay, I'm done with this. And I walked away, you know. And then the publishers were like, oh, yeah, your editor is gone. They walked away from it. I walked away. Everyone walked away from that book. So me and Random House walked away and I went and lived my life. And nine or ten years later now, people have been inviting me to do workshops because of that book. And I signed you know, five to ten thousand copies of that book. So I was aware there was like, I felt like there was, like, a cult following, but I was not in any way wanting to reconnect to that. I had shame. When you're in a video, you're not seeing things as they are.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
You're like, how do you feel about your book? I had shame. Like, what? It's like well, I had a video. Okay. That makes sense. You know people look at, yeah, I feel fat. And you're like, what? Do you understand? Instead of having body image issues with my body, I had it with my book. Book image issues, right. Because you can't see yourself.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
You can't see yourself, you know. So I was just like, you know, what's going to make me happy is to forget it existed because I have too much like, it's too complicated for me. All I could see was its faults.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
Now when I pick it up today and read it, I'm like, oh, that's badass. That's freaking perfect. That's perfect. That's perfect. That's perfect. You know, honestly, I'm like, what the hell? You didn't know that, right? I mean, not all of them are perfect, but a lot of them are a lot like, damn, you know, that's really good. That's really good. I don't even remember writing it. Right. I can kind of remember writing it, but not really remember writing it. But when I read it, I'm like, because I am picky. I am extremely picky. I don't think you can be good at stuff without being a little picky.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
Right. You got to be a little picky. It's like, no, it's not half of what you're trying to say. You want to say all of it and you want to say it beautifully, right? How about that for our standard? I'm a little picky. And when I look at that, I'm going to be as picky about that book as I'm going to be picky about any aspect of this art. And I look at them, oh, that's perfect. That's really well done. But when I walked away from it, I couldn't do it. Now I'm in Boston. It's like probably 2011 or whatever, 2012. And I have an in-law whose big in publishing, and he's in Random House. Who is the house that owns my book and he said, yeah, Rolf, I looked up your numbers because I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, I looked up your numbers. You're doing very, very well. And what your numbers are telling you is that you have a voice that your audience responds well to. And this is like the first moment, I'm in the driveway in like, I can't remember what community I'm in, like Austin, Massachusetts. And the first time I kind of took the book seriously, like, oh, this book is a part of my life. I can't walk away from this book. This book is a part of my life, and I have to decide what I'm going to do with it. Think of the shame and the kind of the toxic relationship to yourself that would make you run away from your book for ten years?

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
You know, it's like my mom, my biological mother left me in an orphanage. And there's like, a way that I'm like how could you ever do that? How could you leave your child? How could you leave a child? How could you leave your child, you know? How could you leave your child? How could you leave your child? How could you leave a child? How could you possibly just, like, walk away from your child and never want to see it again? Just like, walk away and be like, I'm good because I've met her since, and we have issues, you know. So I'm like, how can you walk away from your child? How can you walk away? But like, you know, 2011 and 2012, I walked away from that. I signed every book everyone wanted me to write, and they're like, oh, that's great. That's great. But I was just like, this book sucks. That's good. Because it's just, you know what I mean? Think of, like, what happened-- think of someone who leave a child at an orphanage, how wounded their relationship to themselves are.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
It's just like they're just so wounded. They don't feel worthy of. But when I was in the process of writing the book, I was all in. I was completely in the joy of the process. It's really two different things. It was like me in the process of writing it, and it was like a download. I had ten years of gratitude for people who had helped me, and I wanted to share. My way of expressing that gratitude was to pass it on, you know. My intuition, when Divine Guidance speaks to me, it shows me an image. And it just says, tell them about this, you know. And there's a way that book was a way for me to be like--and then I experienced this. And then there was this other day, I experienced this. There was the other day I experienced this. And on this day, it was like a Saturday afternoon and I experienced this. Because it was just every day. Every day was like showing up for a miracle. And then a miracle happens. And it's just like, I can't have this me be the only one who ever saw this was my feeling. I'd have it over and over again. I'm just like, this is so beautiful. This is so beautiful. This is so beautiful. This can't be the end of it. I'm appreciative, I'm worthy. I deserve this. However, I want to share this. I want to share this. And that enormous like, you know, I think Esther Hicks talks about Rockets of Desire. That enormous intention ended up in that book. Right. And so that's that book. So I'm glad that you got caught some of that.

Alex
Yeah. Oh, my gosh. There's so much there in what you shared and so many different things that I relate to. But, yeah, that whole idea of you feeling shame about it to me just seems like the most ridiculous thing, because I'm obsessed with that book. I have passages memorized from it. And I remember, I was actually thinking about when I first showed up at your teacher training on the first night they were like, okay. You said, you know, let's go around and share why we're here or you know, what we're hoping to get out of it. And I was like, okay, I can't seem like a Rolf Gates super fan. So came around, and I was like, Hi, I'm Alex. I'm from Abu Dhabi, and I really like yoga work. That's literally what I said. And I remember a few days later when I told you, I was like, I'm actually, like, a super fan. And you were like, oh. I was thinking, like, you know, she must really love yoga workshops if she came all the way.

Rolf
It was like this small little workshop in the middle of apparently like in Kripalu in the summer used to be, like, the prime time, and now it's like New Year's and Christmas. It's like the place was sleepy and quiet. I was just like, wow. It's like, a kind of young, vibrant person who traveled halfway around the world to go to this workshop. Well, can I ask you a question?

Alex
Yeah, sure.

Rolf
So, you know, I'm happy to talk about what happened, but I kind of had a pretty ordinary drinking story and getting a sober story. You know, I drank a lot. I had quite a genetic predisposition, and it really didn't work out for me at all. It was a big, huge mess, and it was dramatic and everything. Of course, I was young, so I made it very dramatic, but it was really just an embarrassing mess. And I had really no choice but to kind of, you know, get help. But I remember you at 100 days, and I kind of want to know, like, what happened after, like, what happened? So you leave Kripalu, then what happens?

Alex
So at the time that I had come to Kripalu, so right when I got sober, I met a psychic. I don't know if I would have told you about him. I wasn't speaking about him that publicly because I thought it made me seem, like, very strange. But around 30 days sober, I met a psychic who told me that I was going to start this business, which I have now, the Mindful Life Practice. And he said it was going to be, like a retreat center, which I was like, okay, I don't have any money, so I have no idea how that's going to happen, but okay. And so he was the one who kind of sent me on this path of, like, you know, start doing all these things. He said, you know, do this life coach training. He didn't tell me to come to meet you. That wasn't part of it, but he kind of set me on this path of, like, this is your Dharma and your purpose. And so everything you do is to fulfill this, basically. And so I was in this really hardcore, like, I'm going to, you know, do all these things and start a business and quit my teaching job by the end of the year was basically the plan. And then I did a life coach training, came back to Abu Dhabi, went back to teaching. But the problem for me was that-- so I was building my business. But then I also had a partner who I thought, you know worked in the fitness industry, and I thought was going to help me achieve my goal. So I was kind of working alongside him and sort of working for his company in Abu Dhabi, basically. So this is still going. I was still teaching. I was getting nowhere with anything because I wasn't building my own business. I was building his. And then the pandemic hit. And there was, like, a big, you know, explosion around between the two of us. A big breakup, lost my job, and then started teaching yoga on Zoom. And that was it. I described it to people it was like the Mindful Life Practice was in the womb, you know the whole time. But it was like I just needed this big dramatic shift where everything got taken from me. At that time, I was, like, running around Abu Dhabi and tutoring and teaching private yoga and working at the gym and at the school and blah, blah. But then the pandemic hit, and it was like I had nothing. And I was just in my apartment, and I was like, okay, I guess it's time to really build this business. And so then that was when it started. And the funny thing was that I never wanted sobriety to be my thing. Even when I came on your training, I wasn't even talking about it. I had never publicly talked about it. It was like, on the-- I remember I always tell the story, which I think is so funny. The project that you gave us was, you know, find an ordinary moment from the last 90 days and you know make a Dharma talk on it and embody it and whatever. And I just remember coming to you and, like, hysterically crying. And my reason that I couldn't do it was I was like, no moment has been ordinary in my life. And I said, and I feel like I'm plagiarizing a Rolf Gates book because everything that I say is like your ideas. And there were two, well, there are two reflections I have on that. And one is like, that was clearly just this act of self-sabotaging because that's like a ridiculous reason to not do something because my life had been ordinary, stupid. But then the second thing that I've always remembered you said on that day was you said, you know, do you think I came up with kindness? Do you think I came up with believing in yourself? Like, we all walk in the footsteps of those who came before us. And it's actually been a theme that I've been really getting into in my teaching. And my work right now is like this idea that I am this collection of every single person that came before me. And my students are this collection of every single person that came before them. And we're all carrying these parts of these teachers, and we pass it on. And I just think it's like the most beautiful thing that, you know, my students have bits of Rolf in them because we all just carry our teachers who came before us.

Rolf
Wow. Yeah. I want to tell you, I'll do a brief-- yeah. I'm working with this guy who's going to be talking to some judges. He's a lawyer and he's with the Bar Association. You know he's at the state level. And so he's doing a breathwork workshop for the judges of his state.

Alex
Wow.

Rolf
A couple of hundred people. And so we're working on his presentation, and he's kind of a beautiful man, you know. This is what he said you know last night. We were talking about what his theme is, and he's like, my theme is legacy. I see all of us as we're in a relay race, right, and those who came before us give us the baton. Right. And then for a while, we carry that baton, and then we can't choose who we're going to pass it on to. But then we pass the baton on, and it's like legacy is about knowing what baton you want to carry. Right. And then how you want to carry it. Right. So he's going to speak to those judges about, like, legacy. Like what baton is worth giving your life to, right, and then how do you want to carry it? You don't know who you'll be passing it on to, but how do you want to carry it? And I'm really hearing that with you is this idea of, like, for a while, we carry that baton, and you and I chose, you and recovery as the baton we're going to carry. For me, this has been what I felt compelled to create and what is creating me. This is my baton, you know. I think you have a great baton with you. I think your baton may grow and change. Right. We're not going to limit your baton, but this is a damn good baton. Right. The Buddhists would call it the process of spiritual unfolding, like being with each other in the process of our unfolding. It's not a bad thing. Do you have questions that you're going to ask me?

Alex
Yes. Although you answered quite a few of them in the story that you shared. I was wondering, what are you-- okay, so you got sober, you started becoming a yoga teacher. You wrote "Meditations from the Mat", and then what do you do? How do you serve in the world of yoga now? And tell us about you know, your offerings, your workshops, your teacher trainings?

Rolf
Well, you know, my first ten years, I think I just kind of did what was put in front of me. Right. So this woman came and asked me if I would teach. And the voice was like, it's important you teach yoga. And then about a year and a half later, Baron Baptiste opened a yoga studio about a mile from my house. And I was like, deep into like, I wasn't a very experienced teacher, but at that point, I was full-on. I'd been a very intense yoga practitioner for what felt like a long time. It was like five or six years, but it's a long time when you're like 3were0, you know. It's like you've given your adult life to something. And so it was like, oh, there's this yoga teacher guy who's come into our community, which was odd because at that time there was no, like, celebrity teachers. There were no big-name teachers. And so I was like, well, this is odd. And so we went and I went the first day, and I've been practicing, I learned Kripalu yoga, which is kind of Hatha yoga flowy thing. And I learned Ashtanga. And I was like, I want to be a little bit of both. I wanted to have a kind of a flowy thing, and I wanted to have an Ashtanga thing. And I came in, he was teaching this power yoga thing, which was what I wanted to teach. It was super weird. He was like, this is precisely what I want. I had envisioned it. I want to have kind of a flowy and improvisational thing, but I want to have some Yang to it. I want to be, like the militant thing over here, but I don't want to be the flowy, flowy thing. I want to be in the middle. I want to be fun and a little spontaneous. And I came in, he was, like, rocking all the-- you could tell, like, okay, that's Ashtanga, that's Bikram. Okay, that's this, you know. But he got to kind of do some fusion with it. He got to have some freedom with it as a teacher instead of like, this is our style. It was like he had some freedom and some ownership of the process, which is interesting, like I don't know if I shared this part of what it felt like, but I've been in very top-down styles where you had the person from India who taught it, and you have to teach it the way they teach it, even though you never even saw them. So you don't know if that's how you are supposed to teach it or not, right? It was very like that in the 90s, very top-down in terms of if you were a new teacher, you're just being told what's what. You had no voice, you know. And he was like, teaching a style that was like, you could tell. He was like, making some stuff up. He was being creative, you know. And I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. I walked away knowing that although I was a very junior person in Boston, I think I'm, like, probably the best person in Boston to teach this style. I realized because I've been thinking about this in advance, I can recognize the value of this style. You have to figure out this thing we call it miniatures, like, all over the world, but it has never shown up. This is the first day of it being in Boston.

Alex
Wow.

Rolf
And I'm like, I recognize the value in this. I also was a group facilitator. And the problem with group facilitation is participation and ownership on the part of the people who show up. You got to crawl, cross broken glass for people to participate in their own recovery. And the thing about the yoga class is people participate immediately. It's come to find your mat and come into your mountain pose and just feel your rest beneath your feet. Participation, participation. And then if you get good at your job, you have this beautiful schematic thing, but you're also inviting them to participate. So you're organizing the process for them. But they're the ones driving the train, you know. And so there's ownership, and it's ownership. And without that ownership, there's no real learning because the true aim of the teachers for the students no longer needs the teacher. Right. So we have to teach in a way that allows them to learn in a way that allows them to remember and be able to apply it later on in different situations, our students will have to apply what they're learning with us in situations neither one of us can imagine. This is the aim of education. And I saw in this kind of, like, improvisational style, a fantastic group to facilitate, like a Vinyasa class. If you think about I was looking at a Vinyasa class as a group facilitator in graduate school for social work and specifically group facilitation. I'm like, wow, this is an amazing group. It's going to take a while to learn how to run all this because he was, like, from L.A., yoga teachers at the time were about 50 times better than Boston yoga teachers. Right. And so he was, like, doing all this stuff. I'm like, wow, it's going to take a while to figure all this out, but when I do, this is going to be a great vehicle for group facilitation. And sure enough, the next day, I showed up and someone told Baron that I was a teacher. I did not have that identity, and I didn't know that anyone else knew I was a teacher. He's a teacher. I was like, what? I'm not a teacher? So that afternoon, he asked, he offered me a job, you know. That was in May. And then in August, his wife had been running a really beautiful teacher, dana Baptiste had been running their studio, and she was kind of the business end of things as well as being an awesome teacher. And the two of them, their marriage failed, and she left town, and he had to go to Utah, where she, you know, brought the kids and sought out their marriage. And they were divorced. So I had to run the studio.

Alex
Wow.

Rolf
And so I had to run a studio and teach all the classes and call him up at night and talk to him while he was in Utah. And that went on for the entire fall and winter of '99 and 2000. That's how I learned to teach yoga.

Alex
You talk about it just like stepping into your Dharma. It literally just comes and is presented to you, you know.

Rolf
Yeah. And so I had about a five-year learning curve of just teaching daily classes. But I was committed to also leading retreats. I assisted Baron on probably 30, 40 retreats that he taught in, like, Mexico, Costa Rica, Hawaii. And I was constantly assisting and learning about running retreats from the inside out and kind of falling in love with the larger picture of the process. And eventually, you know, we didn't really see eye to eye on some things, and we had to part. But I think that happens you know, I think that I learned a lot, and then it was time for me to move on.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
And I learned a lot from moving on that I've carried with me in my life. Let me see. But then I ended up in New York, and I'm teaching, I'm running a studio for a couple because you know, you without any money. So I was running someone else's business.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
I ran Baron's business and I was running somebody else. I got hired to run their business. And I'm in New York running someone's business. And my wife and I did a retreat in Mexico in 2007. And we came back and we brought our kids. My son's like a baby. My daughter is three. And we go to London, and it's just like a week, and it's like magical and wonderful. And we get back to our little place in New York, and our eyes are like, just bugging because it's like this is what we were meant to do. It was so fun for us to run our own company, you know. That was the spring of 2007 because I ended my work for that company in the winter of 2008. And so for that, from there, I started to envision what I do now, is there's a phrase in AA which is if you don't like what you hear in a meeting, say it yourself. And so the inception of my new business was from running Studios was-- I get to New York in 2006, and I'm trying to hire teachers, and they just weren't being well trained. I'm not going to name names, but like, big, you know, well-known organizations were turning out teachers, and they weren't doing a good job. So people like yourself, I mean, think about you're the demographic. Right. It's like young, smart, willing to do anything. Right. Work, do all the work, learn all the learning, do everything. But you still need coherent instruction.

Alex
Education. Yeah.

Rolf
Right. It's just because you're willing to do what it takes and work, think about what you see in New York from a teaching point, like first class, young people willing to bust their butts. But if you don't get good instruction, you walk away being like, and then, of course, there's the neuroplasticity thing is if you learn something the wrong way as you're trying to learn something the right way, you've got to overcome learning it the wrong way. So I was having all these teachers who had learned something the wrong way, and it was just like, but they had that kind of young person fragility, shall we say? Other people would call it arrogance. They learned, look, I'm certified. I went to this place, and I do it this way. And it's just like, it'll be very hard for you to succeed if you persist on this path. Right. I felt for all these people that I'm trying to hire, but we were these people from this, like, Boston to New York is like, provincial. I was this guy from this little town, and I'm in New York City, and we were, like, teaching a better class than these people could teach. And they couldn't even recognize what they couldn't do yet. It was just like a huge gap between competent yoga teaching and what was coming out of these trainings and even a sense of what was possible, right, or a sense of their role in the student's life. And so I was like, you know what they say, you don't like what you hear in a meeting, say to yourself, don't like complaining about things, don't find fault, make a difference.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
You know, and so I was like, okay, I guess I got to start teaching yoga. I didn't want to do what teacher trainings because in, like, 2001, 2002, 2003 I was a part of early teacher trainings, and it was like this kind of gold rush where you're putting people through a week of yoga and saying they were level one, certified, and it was just like, crap. It was just like a week of yoga with 60 people in the room and you're level one certified. It was just like, it wasn't ethical, and I didn't want to be a part of it. I was like, I don't want to work with people who want to be in that space. And so I was doing these retreats that were for people who wanted to do spiritual work. And I was like, oh, I know how to kind of safeguard the spiritual work is by not having any certificate or paper at the end. If you want to do something for a week without getting a piece of paper--

Alex
Yes.

Rolf
That's a statement, you know. If you don't get anything out of it other than your own personal growth, that's what I want. From 2003 to 2008, I didn't do teacher trainings. I'd only do retreats. And in 2008, I was like, I got to start training teachers because I believe in them and the individuals who are coming through my door and saying, I want to be a teacher. I truly believe in them, but I don't believe in how they've been treated, and they deserve to be treated better. They're being charged good money and being given a crap product. Right. They at least deserve a fair shake. And so that was my thinking. And I just went on this path of doing trainings. And when I started teaching classes, I was like, I'm going to be the hardest working teacher in showbiz. You know, I've been like the talented person. You probably know what this is. Like you have the talents and the gifts, and it's like there's nothing worse than being a talented person who didn't work hard enough to get to where they wanted to go. Right. And so I've been that person. And so when teaching came along, I'm like, I'm going to be the hardest, I'm not going to be the most talented person in the room. I want to be the hardest working person in the room. I want to put my 10,000 hours. I want my 20,000 hours in. I want to put my 50,000 hours in. I want to put my time in. And so I did that with just dropping classes, running Studios. And so when I started teaching, doing teacher trainings, that's what I did. I was like, I'm just going to run a lot of trainings. I've run a ton of trainings. I'm still running a lot of training. You have to be careful about setting powerful intentions because you may live in that for years. And so I wanted to run a lot of training. I run a lot of training. It was like I should have toned it down a little bit. But, yeah, I've taught a lot of teachers, and that's been in mostly since 2008. Now it's like 14 years. It's been a great run because you meet a lot of great people. As you know already, writing teacher trainings is a chance to meet fantastic people, and then you watch them grow. It's like this person goes through your training and you blink. It's five years later and they're running a studio. Do you know what I mean?

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
It's like you get to see this beautiful process. You're a case in point. Right. It's amazing stuff that you see, like, blink and they turn around and they're like changing the world.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
Right? And so it's been cool that way. It's kept the lights on. My kids now 17 and 16 and 19 in May. So in a couple of months, it will be 16 and 19. They were like a baby and all that.

Alex
Wow.

Rolf
Yeah. And that's when most of it. I've done a couple of things. So writing teacher trainings was my contribution to the space. It's my way of doing right by the teachers, but also the students who come into the door, right, which was supporting teachers properly. Nikki Myers and I did the yoga recovery conference. We started it in 2010, probably because we were like, because of "Meditation from the Mat". I was scanning people coming out of the woodwork. Wherever I go to workshops, people would say, hey, I'm sober.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
Tragically, a lot of people would say, hey, I'm in relapse, you know. I got a lot of that or, hey, my son is using it, won't stop.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
And so I was just hearing about how the yoga space had a lot of addiction in it and a lot of recovery in it. And so we started the recovery conference. And then about five years ago, so that was kind of, you know, speaking to that issue. And about five years ago, you know, about a year, probably a year after Trump came into office, I started what's called "Communities Rising", which is yoga teacher trainings for communities of color, which is just an effort to kind of offset. It felt as though the bipod community was harmed during that election and harmed by everything that followed it. And so Communities Rising has been an effort to address the harm. And so I have my day job, which is mostly trained teachers, but then I try, if I have extra bandwidth to address the larger space, influence the larger space. And so those have been two ways that my career is like the kind of-- I've done the teacher trainings but I've also done those two efforts as well.

Alex
Yeah, that's amazing. And it's like the kind of like expanding and giving back and things that are really meaningful to you.

Rolf
Yeah. And keeping learning. I think that probably if you're a full-time teacher, the way that you keep growing as a teacher is to keep challenging yourself to move into different spaces. This rising was a different space. The yoga recovery conference is a different space. And so, yeah, I just have been very lucky that the Zoom world and Covid, it's like a huge new space to move into that. Although the whole thing has been a huge tragedy. I'm much happier in my work and I'm a much better teacher than I was three years ago, no question about it. I'll close with this. There's a teacher named Matt Sanford who-- have you heard of him?

Alex
No.

Rolf
So he was in a car accident when he was 13, and he woke up with a paralyzed chest down. For the next ten years, he was told, yeah, you're dead from the chest down and just learn to use your arms, basically, and have my calm light. But he always had sensation beneath the injury, you know. And the doctors were like, you don't. He just, like, lived with that question. And eventually, he would do yoga and teach yoga and be able to articulate and demonstrate that although his physical body was injured, his final body was not. And that his style of yoga is about connecting, about bringing awareness to the relationship between your physical body and your energy body. And so he's doing that with people with spinal injuries but also people with amputations. In like healing that what he calls the trauma that exists there, you know. It's not just a mental-emotional trauma. It's that physical trauma. And you're healing that. It's all one trauma. Right. And you're healing that trauma by breath. He calls it starting in the middle, that most yogis start with the physical body, and then they move to the energy body. But he starts in the middle because then from there, you know you understand it-- But none of this would have happened if something hadn't happened. At 23 years old, he goes to a yoga teacher and says, can you teach me yoga? Because I kind of wants to like, he had this intuition that there was something in yoga that would help him resolve because these doctors were saying he wasn't feeling this and he was feeling it. And now when you put him in the MRI and you touch his feet, the parts of his brain light up. That would light up. Yeah. Because his physical body is in communication with the energy body. Now we have MRI, and you can see that he was true, he was experiencing this, but he had no way of like, he's like, I experienced this, you know. And the doctor was like, no, you're not. And so he said, I'll try yoga. They're woo-woo. And so maybe they'll listen to me. And so the first yoga teacher was like, I can't help you. And the second yoga teacher said that I'll try. He had to go to the second teacher. He had to not quit. And there's a lot that he had to do. But I feel like the part that we can play in this story is to be the second teacher and say, I'll try.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
So with the recovery conference, I'll try, with the community rising, which I'll try, you know, with what you're doing. And with this work, it's like, I'll try.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
You will be created by that which you are compelled to create.

Alex
Amazing. Rolf, thank you so much for being on the show. It was just so wonderful to hear more of your story and how you got to where you are and connect. And I just really appreciate your time. So thank you so much.

Rolf
I was like, wow, I wonder if she wanted that much. But, yeah, those are cool stories. I don't talk about meditation. I don't know that I've ever actually told that story, about "Meditation from the Mat". It's a story that wanted to be told. So thank you for listening.

Alex
Yeah. Thanks for sharing. I have one last question I want to ask you. If you had any advice or wisdom for someone who was just starting out their sober journey, what would you say?

Rolf
Yeah, I have to come back and talk more about sobriety. We talked a lot about yoga. I think that's important. Your peace cannot be found in the future or the past. Right. You can only find your peace in the present. And so there's this willingness to live one day at a time, to live this present day in a way that brings joy to your heart. That is what recovery is. It's like you're worth a good, sober day. You're worth a sober day just have a good sober day. Don't try to find peace in the future. There is no peace in the future, there is no peace in the past. There's only peace in the present and like that's all we need.

Alex
Yeah.

Rolf
You know, the peace that can be found in the present is all the peace you'll ever find. And so some people ask me like, what would the Buddha say about this or that? And I'm like the Buddha can't help you with the past or with the future, the Buddha cannot help you with your past, cannot help you with your future. The Buddha can only be found and you can only apply the teachings of the Buddha in the present and so I guess that's what I'd say is that you're worth a sober day. Just let that be enough for you just to celebrate what it takes to put together a sober day and become really good at it. Become good become like an authority on a good sober day and let the rest of it work itself out because it definitely, definitely will and these early days are quite sacred and quite brief. You'll find yourself like three, four, five years sober whatever. You know partnered, careered, and for a brief moment in time, you get your life has become very simple and very clear it's like you're not drinking one day at a time and then you're using that sober day to find a little joy and a little peace, a little connection, a little laughter. This is all that's needed of you and if you do that then you can help countless others, right. Countless others need you to have a good day. If you can have a good day one day at a time eventually you'll touch the lives of countless others.

Alex
Yeah. What a great note to end on. Thank you so much, Rolf. I really appreciate your time. Honestly, it was amazing to just have an opportunity to interview, like I consider you my teacher and I just really appreciate your time. So thank you so much.

Rolf
You're welcome. It was my pleasure.

Alex
And I'm sure we will cross paths again when I'm back in the States, I'm going to make sure I make it to Kripalu at some point to join another one of your trainings.

Rolf
Alright. Thank you.

Alex
Alright. We'll speak to you soon.

Rolf
Take care. Thank you for having me.

Alex
Bye.

Rolf
Bye.

Outro
Hi friend, thank you so much for listening to this episode of "Sober Yoga Girl" podcast. This community would not exist without you, so thank you for being here. It would be massively helpful if you subscribe to this show and leave a review so that we can reach more people. And if we haven't met yet in real life, please come hop on Zoom at "The Mindful Life Practice" because the opposite of addiction is connection. Sending you love and light wherever you are in the world.