Cole Chance grew up in a small town Oklahoma family with a healthy sense of exploring and love for nature and the outdoors. The family had a boat they would take out on lakes and go wake boarding, camping, as well as ski vacations in Colorado. She was used to finding new friends and adapting to her environment quickly as they moved around a lot.

FREE FROM ADDICTIONS.

Today, she is known as a successful international yoga teacher and retreat facilitator. With 4-5 retreats held yearly across the globe in serene and natural locations, Cole has led many people through to journey exploring themselves on the mat and in the world.

She also teaches classes on youtube which reaches people globally. While she teaches in many capacities, her passion is supporting people in recovery. Her signature program Emerge, is an 8-week course offering a holistic approach to finding freedom from destructive behaviours and addictions.

“Addictions are hard work and all-consuming, whether it’s alcohol or incessant negative self talk or codependency”

— Cole Chance

REHABS MADE NO DIFFERENCE.

When Cole herself was 13 years old, she had her first consumption of alcohol and it was an experience she describes as falling in love. “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life” she said to herself, feeling alive, relaxed, happily intoxicated and connected for the first time in her young years. What followed were over 15 years of heavy drinking, alcohol abuse, which later slipped into substance abuse and finally heroin at the age of 29.

The relationship with her parents became broken. Stays at rehabs and hospitals and detoxes never seemed to make much of an impact on her. She was married to the drug. At the age of 21 she started waking up in the mornings with her hands shaking from the withdrawals but rather than using this as a sign she needed to seek help, she began drinking in the morning to ease the symptoms then continued on throughout the day. If she kept drinking, there were no signs of withdrawal, and so she kept going.

EVERYONE WAS DOING IT.

Her head space was constantly occupied with finding ways to hide the alcohol, to get more, to keep up with her excuses, to not smell like it, and so on. Blackouts where common and so were here bruises. She would seek a circle of friends who would validate her behaviour, often lost in their own addiction.

In her perception of reality, everybody was doing it. It was bonding with a tribe who would protect the addiction and not possibly allow breaking out of the cycle. There were days she was so sick; she would vomit and then drink again. At times, do both at the same time.

Her parents send her to rehab over 7 times, which felt like a punishment and it was clear that no one could try to overcome the addiction for her. At the end of her efforts, she had a heroin overdose and a stroke at the age of 29.

WHEN GRIEF IS THE WAY FORWARD.

Cole With A Retreat Group in The Moroccan Desert.

That overdose finally shook her hard enough. She realised her addiction was going to kill her. Something that she had been denying for the past 15 years.

This very realisation and awareness started to expand as a version of herself. The physical and emotional pain she endured, removing herself from the alcohol, was tough. And the mountain of shame and guilt she had built up over the years was brutal to overcome. Plus, the breakup with alcohol felt like she had lost a soulmate.

Until she found her way to a yoga mat, a place that throughout the years had become one of the only quiet and safe spaces she knew, and despite the distractions, kept coming back to, day after day. This was the place where she could grieve the way she needed to, in order to process the pain of letting-go.

Sobriety = better than exPected.

In the very beginning of this new journey, Cole felt like a shell of a person, who wasn’t sure if she could take on this challenge without the support of the alcohol itself. But through her yoga practise, she began to create a fresh relationship with herself, free from all the chaos and substance having weighed on her for so long. Sobriety was a slow, challenging, but rewarding mountain to climb.

Exploring the nuances of her inner world, she was able to isolate emotional triggers gracefully rather and need to drink her discomfort away. That’s when her world and possibilities in life slowly began to open up again.

Cole commenced her teacher training in the same studio she came to her mat on at the begging of her recovery and began teaching in some of the rehabs she was formerly a client.

She now uses her unusual life experience with alcohol to support other traversing the narrow corridors of addiction. She truly utilises in the power of yoga, reflection, and self-inquiry allowing others to repair the relationship with the self as well as their outer relationships.

If you would like to KNOW MORE ABOUT COLE, please visit COLECHANCEYOGA.com, FIND HER YOUTUBE CHANNEL HERE & on INSTA COLECHANCEYOGA.

We hope you enjoyed this article.

Stay true to yourself, dare & care.

X

Lara

TAKING A NEW CHANCE.