Eddie LeShure

Eddie LeShure is a Certified Yoga Instructor (RYT 200), Meditation Teacher, Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor (CADC), Certified Peer Support Specialist (CPSS), Spiritual Emergence Coach ® (IMHU),Breathwork Facilitator, and trained NAMI Family Support Group Facilitator. Eddie is a person in long-term recovery, and his professional background includes 10 years of training, supervision and direct client contact in addiction counseling.

“I am a person in long term recovery but for a long time I was in short term recovery. The turning point was when I comprehended the impact trauma had on my life.”

See the rest of Eddie’s story

Eddie’s personal journey took him deep into the throes of active addiction and incarceration on a drug arrest. His two years behind bars were mostly spent in the notorious Attica Prison where he survived a rebellion in 1971 that killed 43 inmates and employees. Eddie is a trauma survivor!

His personal healing and recovery and how he works with others have always been guided by deep understanding and compassion. After becoming a counselor, Eddie has facilitated groups in numerous treatment and recovery facilities and guided classes, workshops, and retreats. He has worked with many individuals one-on-one, both online and face-to-face. He regularly presents workshops at conferences addressing addiction recovery, plus teaches mindfulness practices to professionals.

Eddie taught himself yoga in a prison cell in the early ’70s and began meditating in the ’80s. Since then he has lived in two Buddhist retreat centers and studied, practiced, and participated in numerous retreats in Asia, Europe, and the U.S. with a wide range of Eastern and Western meditation teachers, including H.H. Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. Eddie has spent the equivalent of two years in a retreat setting. Though his roots have been in Buddhism, his style of teaching is secular and easily accessible to anyone regardless of their beliefs or experience. 

Eddie is currently offering yoga and meditation classes on Tuesdays at both Asheville Community Yoga and Weaverville Yoga. 

Eddie’s Story

I Didn’t Know Trauma Was Activating My Addiction

I am a person in long term recovery, but for a long time I was in short term recovery. Can you relate to that pattern?

My addiction really took hold when I went away to college at age 17. By 22, I was locked up for selling narcotics, served in the notorious Attica Prison where a prisoner rebellion took place in September, 1971 that killed 43 people. I then spent 6 straight months in solitary confinement. Though I survived and was released after 2 years, I walked out into freedom still unknowingly shackled with invisible, yet major trauma.

Prison Trauma

My life looked typical from the outside. I raised a family, maintained a professional career, traveled extensively, and lived abroad for 5 years. I also began meditating, even attending long retreats. I also continued to practice the yoga I had initiated on my own in my cell while in Attica. My addiction continued to erode my life in ways that remained mysterious to me because I had no recognition of how the prison trauma continued to impact me. Reactive angry outbursts, heavy dips into depression, simmering anxiety and run-away panic sabotaged my intimate relationships, work life and even social events that I tried in vain to enjoy.

Powerless Over My Addiction

At age 58 in 2007, after enduring a life threatening experience and feeling blamed by trusted teachers afterward, I came to the realization that regardless of my spiritual pursuits, I was still powerless over my multiple addictions and desperately needed help! I entered addiction treatment.

My Body Remembers the Trauma

The turning point in my treatment was comprehending the impact of my trauma. While working with a treatment center therapist, she revealed how the trauma I’d endured could still be unconsciously influencing my thoughts, sensations and behavior. She handed me a list of post-incarceration trauma symptoms, and I checked all the boxes. When stress heated up, the unacknowledged and untreated trauma was keeping me stuck in compulsive comfort-seeking – despite all the negative consequences. I was finally able to make the connection as to why I could abstain for long periods of time without using, and yet on other occasions, memories, sounds, body sensations or smells triggered a return to use that brought me to my knees.

Learning to Be Okay With Being Uncomfortable

I made a promise to myself then and there. I would consciously navigate the space between where I was and where I wanted to be, consistently making the effort to get out of my own way, find teachers and therapists I could trust to guide me into a mindful way of living, with compassion for the real challenges of recovery and hope for strong emergence. I finally addressed the trauma through Somatic Experiencing and Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), both therapeutic interventions designed to treat trauma. I went to meetings, cultivated a community of support, and learned to be okay with being uncomfortable.

I became a yoga and meditation instructor and counselor because I feel “on purpose” when bringing the proven, ancient practices of mind/body/spirit medicine to work on issues related to trauma, addiction and spiritual integration for people just like me. I learned through the simple, daily practices of yoga, meditation and breathwork how to be gentle with myself, use self-care practices to return to balance and good health, to accept myself as fully human and fully divine.