Mind, Body & Soul
After leaving the Marine Corps, Jeff Drake felt alone. He lacked a community. He felt angry and hostile. He struggled to call himself a veteran.
Drake’s demons raged for the next dozen years before he hit rock bottom.
“My life spiraled downward,” says Drake, who served from 1979 to 1988. “In the winter of 2000, I was taken to the VA hospital. I was freezing to death in my shed and some lady got me to a veterans homeless program. I was too sick to protest.”
He left the program after six months, but Drake’s issues persisted. In 2007, his girlfriend threatened to leave him if he did not get help. “She thought I suffered too much, was haunted, did not sleep and had a substance-abuse problem. Around that time, my friend – a doctor, former Navy surgeon – told me I had PTSD.”
Those conversations prompted Drake to seek help for his post-traumatic stress disorder. In time, he found yoga – the “meds” that soothe his soul.
‘YOGA MISSIONARY’ In his pre-yoga days, Drake weighed 210 pounds, took VA-prescribed drugs daily and smoked a pack of cigarettes each day. “The handful of drugs were the doctors’ solution to my ‘self-medication’ of drugs and booze. But what’s the difference?” he asks. “I still felt like s---, just in a different way. I isolated myself from people and did not engage socially.”
Now, Drake is 175 pounds and engages in a 90- to 120-minute daily routine of breathing, prayer, mantras and meditation. “I teach yoga or attend a yoga class just about every day,” he says. “That is my social time.”
As chairman of The American Legion’s Veterans Affairs & Rehabilitation Commission, Ralph Bozella is well acquainted with issues surrounding PTSD and its treatments. A meeting between Bozella and Drake, coordinated by their dentist, led to Drake sharing the benefits of yoga with other veterans.
Bozella recognized the importance of yoga as an alternative PTSD therapy early on. He invited Drake to join and start a program at John Harold Buckley American Legion Post 32 in Longmont, Colo. “If this is to happen, it has to happen
through you,” he told Drake. “Let’s see where you can take this.”
The twice-weekly yoga class launched about four years ago. Up to a dozen veterans and relatives show up at each session. Students do a variety of poses and stretches, loosening up their bodies and relaxing their minds.
“Jeff is a missionary for veterans yoga,” Bozella says. “He’s very passionate about this. At our meetings, he stands up and preaches the values of veterans yoga, linking it to PTSD therapy and suicide prevention, and how important it is to mental health. People know that once they take part in yoga, it works.”
CAMARADERIE Like Drake and other veterans, Steve Pabst missed being around his military comrades. “They’re a part of you,” he says.
Pabst served in the 82nd Airborne from 1992 to 1996. About 10 years after leaving the Army, he felt the call to serve again, so he joined the Colorado National Guard.
During his first weekend drill, Pabst learned his unit would be deployed to Iraq. “There I was on active duty once again,” he says. “It was a big surprise and a lot of things went sideways for me and my family, but thankfully I made it out OK.”
Since leaving the Colorado Guard in 2010, Pabst has engaged in yoga as a way to not only forge friendships with other vets but to work through personal issues.
“Before, I was very tense and not able to deal with people well,” says Pabst, who has been diagnosed with PTSD and bipolar disorder. “I have come to this yoga class and have met new people to replace the ones who were my friends. It’s helped me rebuild camaraderie, which is so important.”
Now, every Monday and Wednesday, Pabst wakes up energized and ready for another session. “Yoga is an outlet, a sanctuary, a way to channel this energy,” he says. “I can’t wait to go to class. There are a lot of times when my family wants to go here or here. I tell them, ‘No, not until yoga is over.’ It’s essential. It has to happen.”
After yoga at Post 32, Pabst does some stretching on his own to relieve his arthritis. Then he’s ready for the day.
“I can go home and deal with family issues, work issues,” says Pabst, who serves as Post 32’s historian. “I can deal with people much better. I can feel the difference, and I directly attribute it to my class in the morning.”
TEACHING THE TEACHERS Post 32 is one of a growing number of American Legion posts that host or support yoga programs for veterans. Instructors study and are trained in a variety of yoga practices and techniques.
Drake, for example, traveled to India last summer to better understand the Iyengar style, which focuses on precise movements, sequence and timing.
VEToga, a nonprofit founded by Marine Corps veteran Justin Blazejewski three years ago, trains veterans to become yoga instructors. After his service, Blazejewski worked as a civilian contractor in Iraq. “I saw a lot of combat,” he says. “I saw a lot of sides of war that most people don’t see, being out in the thick of things.”
Initially, Blazejewski dealt with his stress by training for and running marathons. Then an injury sidelined him around 2008. “I was in a really dark place,” he recalls. “I was depressed, suicidal, very angry, agitated, reactive – all the symptoms that somebody would have with PTSD. I never wanted to admit it and never wanted to get diagnosed because I didn’t want to lose my security clearance. So I swallowed it and dealt with it until it got to a point where I got desperate – desperate enough to try yoga.”
Blazejewski remembers being impressed by the physical and calming aspects of yoga. “This was a pretty good workout,” he says of his first class. “As soon as I laid down and closed my eyes and the teacher was doing a guided relaxation, that’s where I felt my mind turn off. All the chatter that was in my head, all the anger, all that stuff that was going on, disappeared in that one moment.
“Once you get a taste of that, that sweetness, you know it’s something special.”
Blazejewski sees yoga as a solution for other veterans suffering from PTSD. It can be “that light for others who are out there like I was – living in the darkness, suicidal, dealing with PTSD, drug addiction, the opiates. It’s the one thing that I was good at, and that I was going to master and share.”
He started by learning how to be an instructor, then leading free classes for veterans. Recognizing that they might be more inclined to take classes taught by fellow vets, he created VEToga. Post 24 in Alexandria, Va., hosts the training sessions.
So far, 90 veterans have graduated from VEToga and are now practicing around the nation, leading classes for an estimated 10,000 students. “The post offering the space for us to do this training at zero cost for the veterans was a game-changer,” he says. “That relationship has changed the lives of dozens of people who have come through that facility, and countless others who take the classes.”
‘FELLOWSHIP IS THE FOUNDATION’ Yoga teaches practitioners to open up: open up their hips, open up their core, open up their minds.
For Marine Corps veteran Michael Stickley, yoga cracked open his exterior, allowing suppressed emotions to flow out and starting his healing.
“I never knew how to get rid of my problems and would just bury them, like most of us do,” says Stickley, who practices yoga and meditation daily.
“I had stuff that happened when I was in the Marine Corps that came up during teacher training. I broke down. I was like, ‘I am a big bad Marine. Why am I sobbing over here in the corner?’”
One of the VEToga-trained instructors, Stickley brought weekly yoga classes to Post 176 in Springfield, Va., earlier this year. The effect on some of his students was immediate, he says.
“I’ve seen some veterans come in and their eyes dart around – they are definitely uncomfortable in the yoga environment,” he adds. “By the end of the class, they are a lot calmer. They are focused. Their eyes don’t dart around as much. They are definitely way more relaxed.”
In Longmont, while Drake was overseas, Pabst and Alan Sonnenberg – Post 32’s senior vice commander – kept the sessions going. In four years, Sonnenberg went from never doing yoga to leading the class sessions.
“I wish I would have started this 10 years ago,” he says. “It’s great for the body. I feel wonderful afterwards. I bought a couple of books and practiced the poses. When Jeff isn’t here, I take it upon myself to lead the classes.”
Drake appreciates their commitment. He says he’d like to see the program expand so that even more veterans can experience the healing powers of yoga.
“The fellowship is the foundation,” he says. “The program is working because community is the principal thing for suicide prevention. It is a hub activity from which many other opportunities can spin.”
Henry Howard is deputy director of media and communications for The American Legion.