From Addicted and Broken Towards Healing and Wholeness

Kim Dienert is a bright, enthusiastic woman who wants to spread the good news of Bikram Yoga. When first meeting her, you would never imagine the challenges she has faced in her life. Rather than being worn down and dulled by adversity, Kim has been polished to reveal her strength, determination and sparkle. But this has not always been the case. In fact, just this summer, Kim was struggling with an addiction that threatened to dim her light. Kim attributes this transformation to her Bikram Yoga practice.

Seven years ago, Kim moved to Asheville with her three children. She came with hopes of starting a new life - leaving behind a challenging childhood and physical, verbal and emotional abuse. Kim had been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 1998. Her doctors tried several interventions, but nothing helped other than taking pain medication - the beginning of her opiate addiction. In 1999, she courageously left a sixteen year marriage. After this marriage ended, several friends died unexpectedly. She experienced increased pain, depression and loneliness and was beginning to take more and more pain medication. It soon got to the point where she was taking the medication more to numb the emotional pain than the physical pain.    

Within this last year, Kim’s thirteen year addiction spiraled out of control. By the end of July 2011, she was taking triple her dosage. She started spending more and more time laying in bed, watching movies and feeling miserable. A turning point came when her twenty year old daughter came to her and said, “I want my mom back. You were always the one who was so strong in the face of everything, and I don’t see that anymore.”   

This moment was Kim’s wake-up call. She had tried to take herself off the pain medication cold turkey in the past, but knew this process could be deadly. She began to research opiate detoxification programs, but found them all to be unaffordable. She found a doctor on the internet and wrote him a letter telling her story and requesting his help. This doctor led her to a rapid detox program. Kim describes the experience as eighteen hours of hell. She explains, “It was like an exorcism. I went to meet the devil, fought him, and came back alive.” After five days she was finally able to take a bath. She had to be flown home because she was still too sick to drive.

Her follow-up instructions were to lie in bed for one week. She did. Her legs were weak and ached terribly. After another week she tried to go for a run, made it one mile, but could not go any further. She had to lay in bed the entire next day. She tried again the next day and still could not even go a mile. Over the next three weeks, she built back up to two miles. At this point, Kim would wake up at 8am, go to work, run for two miles, then by 2-3pm she would crash. She felt terrible. Kim did some research on life after opiate abuse and learned that due to the depletion of serotonin it was common to have constant aches and pains and experience lack of emotion. Kim went to several doctors who all told her the same thing – it would take months or years for her brain to heal and the serotonin to rebuild to its normal levels, and sometimes it never fully restores itself. Kim felt defeated and hopeless. She was also consumed by guilt, shame and depression about the effect of the addiction on her life and relationships.   

Kim soon began to have urges to go back on her pain pills, but she kept going back to that wake-up call moment with her daughter. One particularly desperate night in October, Kim prayed for help. She wanted to feel better and did not know what else to do. The very next morning Kim woke up, opened her nightstand drawer, and found a Bikram Yoga Asheville flyer she had from a year previously. She had tried Bikram Yoga briefly before and remembered the heat, the stretching, sweating toxins from her body… she thought, “Why not give it another try?”    

Kim came to her first Bikram class post opiate addiction in November 2011. This first class was taught by Janet. She remembers that after class Janet walked by and said, “Kim, you haven’t lost it!” After all she had been through, Kim soaked in this positive encouragement. She was sore the next day, but kept coming back. One week into the yoga, she noticed she still had energy at 5pm. Another week of the practice and Kim started to realize she was no longer having muscle related pain. Kim has come to class 6 days a week since. She is still running four miles every other day – strengthened by her yoga practice. Her perseverance has greatly benefited her. In her mind it was not an option to let the doctors be right about their prognosis – she took full responsibility for getting her life back, and found results and hope in Bikram Yoga.  

Kim states, “I want to reach out to anyone who feels there is no hope and is suffering like I have to take the first step to come to class. It can be life changing. When I walk through the door, I let everything go. I let the abuse go. I let the addiction go. I let my childhood go. The detox. The toxins. The sadness. I leave it all in the room.”

Kim has noticed many benefits from her practice - she has toned up, has increased confidence, and feels proud of who she is. She is learning to take what she learns on the yoga mat into her life - she handles things better, is more rational and gets less angry. Also, Kim appreciates being around a community of people who are taking care of themselves. But most importantly, Kim feels like Bikram Yoga saved her life because it helps her to not relapse. She shares, “Addiction took my life away, Bikram Yoga is giving it back.”

Kim’s advice to a newcomer: Don’t give yourself an option to not come back. If you can make it through your first week, you will be hooked. You have to be the one to get what you want. Take one class and challenge yourself. The more you come, the more benefits you will receive from the practice. You can’t do it in one class. You have to commit and be devoted and make it a part of the rest of your life.  

Kim welcomes talking with anyone who is moved by her story. In fact, you may find her enthusiastically sharing her Bikram Yoga testimony all over Asheville. Bikram Yoga is helping her transform from addicted and broken to healing and wholeness - and she wishes the same for you. 

A Natural Yogi Discovers Bikram

Wolf Ziegra and his wife, Sarah, have been taking classes at Bikram Yoga Asheville since December 13, 2009. Wolf and Sarah had recently moved to the Asheville area for Sarah’s job at Warren Wilson College. A colleague of hers recommended the Bikram Yoga Asheville studio for help with some medical concerns. Wolf immediately recognized the Bikram dialogue held the germ of all the yoga styles he had ever practiced. The secular nature of the dialogue was important to him because as a Muslim, he cannot worship a guru; an element underlying many other yoga styles. That day in December, Wolf recommitted himself to a formal practice of yoga. If you have been coming to the studio for any length of time, Wolf will most likely be familiar to you as he has been attending class every day, sometimes twice a day, ever since.  

Wolf was drawn to yoga at a young age. He shares a story of getting into lotus position for the first time when he was seven and saying to himself, “I’m never going to forget.” Reflecting on this memory at age sixty-two, Wolf explains that in this moment he set an intention to remember the feeling of union between body and mind that comes so naturally when we are young. From this moment on he became a spiritual seeker and yoga practitioner.

For Wolf, these paths of exploration were a way for him to deal with the chaos of the times. At age twenty, Wolf was drafted into the Vietnam War, but that same week attended Woodstock instead. He intentionally chose a pacifist direction - opposing the values of his father, a WWII veteran. In fact, he was interviewed at Woodstock and featured in the movie Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music. Dodging the draft and being against the war, he was on the outside of the establishment for seven years. He hitchhiked across the country to continue his journey.

Wolf’s exploration led to a fascinating background in the study of yoga and spiritual philosophy. He has studied meditation at Zen centers across the country, met Swami Satchidananda while spending a summer at his ashram in Virginia and lived in an ashram for a year with Gurumayi Chidvilasananda just after Muktananda died in 1982. While living in New York City as a painter and massage therapist for over twenty years, he studied and practiced Asthanga, Iyengar and Jivamukti styles of yoga. He was attracted to the teachings of Ramakrishna and the religion and politics of Ghandi, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. His spiritual exploration eventually led him to study with Lex Hixon, a philosopher, spiritual practitioner and Muslim sheik. In 1992, Wolf became a Muslim and converted to Islam.

Wolf’s yoga practice was put on pause in 2001. On September 11th, Wolf was taking an Iyengar class on 24th St. in New York City. After his class, he had to walk toward ground zero to pick-up his daughter from school. After 9/11, he was on the outside again, this time as a Muslim. Wolf stopped formally going to yoga class due to family and financial obligations as well as emotional challenges.

Until his journey brought him back to daily practice at Bikram Yoga Asheville almost ten years later.      

Wolf describes his yoga practice at Bikram Yoga Asheville as, “a platform, a place to go everyday to confront my life’s struggles in an environment that allows me to work things out. It is about me discovering me; where my resistance is, where my fears are. Yoga has always been about a personal adventure.” He has found Bikram Yoga heals the body but also heals the mind, allowing a connection between them. For Wolf, the dialogue reflects Bikram’s genius for words; it is constant and addresses needs in a fun, respectful way.

Wolf’s favorite yoga pose is still his first yoga pose - Lotus position (Padmasana). His favorite pose from the Bikram series is Locust Pose (Salabhasana) because it is the most challenging for him. For students new to the hot room, Wolf’s advice is to breathe and sit down when you need to. He feels it is important to remember, even for himself, that the first step is the only step. Through his daily yoga practice at Bikram Yoga Asheville, Wolf is able to remember the body/mind/spirit connection that at age seven he intended to never forget.