⚠️ Content Warning: This episode and study guide explore themes related to chemsex and methamphetamine use, emotional dysregulation, childhood trauma, and the physical and psychological process of recovery. Some content may be activating for individuals currently in or working toward a chemsex-free life. Please move through this material at your own pace and reach out for support if needed.
A Personal Note from Dallas
I have a client who won't shut up about yoga — and honestly, thank God for that, because it led me to this conversation.
When I started digging into what Malu teaches, I realized we are speaking the exact same language, just from different traditions. He talks about the addictive self stepping forward and the authentic self fading to the background. I talk about the prophetic vision — the perfected version of you who already exists and is waiting to step into the light. Same thing, y'all. Different words. Same truth.
What I love most about this episode is that Malu doesn't sell yoga as a cure. He offers it as a bridge — between what you learn on the couch in therapy or coaching, and how you actually live it out in the real world. That gap is real, and I see it constantly with my clients. They have the insight. They understand their trauma, their patterns, their triggers. But knowing and embodying are two very different things. Yoga, done with intention, can help close that gap.
Whether you've ever stepped on a mat or not, there is something in this conversation for you. Malu meets you where you are.
Love you. Dallas 💚
About Malu
Malu is a yoga teacher with over twenty years of experience who has organically built a practice centered on gay men and recovery. His own journey through alcohol dependency brought him into the rooms of AA in 2012 and deepened his understanding of how yoga can serve as far more than physical exercise. Trained in the therapeutic tradition of tantra yoga alchemy under teacher Rod Stryker, Malu focuses on nervous system regulation, self-study, and identity reclamation as the three pillars of his work. He offers a free mini-course on Instagram and works with individuals navigating numbing behaviors — substances, pornography, compulsive scrolling — to help them develop a personal daily practice and embody the life they are moving toward.
Yoga as a Bridge: From the Couch to Your Life
One of the most honest things Malu said in this conversation is that insight alone is not transformation. You can spend years in therapy understanding why you used. You can read every recovery book, listen to every podcast, and have the most elegant language for your trauma — and still find yourself opening Grindr at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday.
That's not a failure of intelligence. It's a gap between the mind and the body.
Malu describes yoga as the bridge that helps you take what you learned in session and actually practice it in your body, in real time. When you're on the mat, breathing through discomfort, holding a pose for just three more breaths — you are not just stretching. You are building the neurological and emotional muscle to sit with difficulty without fleeing. That same muscle is what you call on when a trigger hits in your actual life.
He also makes a distinction that I think is worth sitting with: there is a difference between abstinence and living chemsex-free. Abstinence is not picking up. Living chemsex-free is showing up regulated, boundaried, emotionally present, and rooted in who you actually are. Yoga, practiced with intention, is one of the most effective tools Malu knows for moving someone from the former to the latter.
Tapas: Using Heat as Purification
The first pillar of Malu's framework is tapas — a Sanskrit word that literally means fire or heat. In the yogic tradition, tapas refers to the discipline of doing the difficult thing on purpose. Staying in the pose when you want to move. Returning to the mat when you don't feel like it. Sitting with the heat of a craving instead of escaping it.
This concept maps directly onto chemsex recovery in a way I find thrilling, because the heat of a craving is tapas. It is an invitation to practice. Malu teaches that our patterns — what yoga calls vasanas and samskaras, grooves worn into the psyche by repeated behavior — can begin to unwind when we move the body in intentional, unfamiliar ways. The body holds the story of our using. Yoga wrings it out.
Practically, this means that a consistent physical practice, even seven minutes, builds something. Not just flexibility. Regulation. Tolerance for discomfort. A new pattern laid down alongside the old one. Over time, the brain begins to associate stress with the mat rather than the pipe. That is not a metaphor — that is neurological rewiring through behavior.
Malu is careful to note that yoga should balance you, not amplify what's already dysregulated. If you are someone who runs hot — high-stress, overextended, constantly in go mode — a punishing hot yoga class may actually deepen your dysregulation rather than soothe it. The goal of a therapeutic yoga practice is to move you toward sattva: clarity, steadiness, water-like calm. Meet your nervous system where it is, and guide it toward center.
Svadhyaya: Self-Study and the Addiction Frequency
The second pillar is svadhyaya — self-study. This is the practice of examining your interior landscape with honesty and compassion. Malu draws here on the work of Tommy Rosen, who speaks about the addiction story and the addiction frequency: the narrative you carry about why you need substances to function, and the vibratory register you inhabit that makes everything in your life serve that need.
I talk about this too. Are you behaving as a person who uses meth? Is that your frequency? Are you inconsistent, unavailable, dishonest, boundaryless — because those are the behaviors of someone living in the addiction frequency, regardless of whether they've touched anything lately.
Self-study means becoming curious about your story. What is the wound that substances were medicating? What is the fear underneath the craving? Malu introduces a journaling technique from his own practice: write your fears and resentments in plain language — I fear I am not enough. I resent that I was never protected — and then release them. Sign the page. Tear it up. Let it go. The point is not to psychoanalyze yourself into the ground. It is to name what's live in you so it stops running you from below the surface.
He also notes that self-study requires self-compassion. When you start excavating the material that drove you to use, you are going to run into some hard things. The practice is to meet that material with love rather than judgment — to say, I was a human being doing the best I could with what I had. That is not an excuse. It is the foundation that makes honest self-examination survivable.
Identity: Who Are You Becoming?
The third pillar — and the one that landed hardest for me — is identity. Malu describes the addictive self as a character who has stepped into the foreground of your life, while your authentic self has receded into the background. Recovery is not about creating a new person from scratch. It is about getting the addictive self to move out of the way so the real you can step forward.
He calls this practice Yoga Nidra — a deep relaxation technique in which you seed an intention, a sankalpa, into the subconscious mind at the threshold between waking and sleep, where the rational guard is down and the deeper mind is receptive. The sankalpa is not a fantasy. It is a present-tense statement of who you already are, at your core: I am someone who is chemsex-free. I make choices that reflect my values. I am joyful and I live with integrity.
I use almost identical language in my program. I call it the prophetic vision. He calls it the sankalpa. The mechanism is the same: we are not inventing a stranger. We are calling forward the man who already exists inside you, who has always existed, and who is waiting for the addictive self to get out of the way.
Malu recommends writing your sankalpa, posting it where you will see it daily, and repeating it to yourself as you fall asleep every night — at that twilight threshold where it will root into the subconscious. Simple. Consistent. Powerful. Start tonight.
Closing Reflection
What Malu offered in this conversation is a complete framework: heat to purify the patterns, self-study to understand them, and identity work to replace them with something true. None of it requires you to already be spiritual, flexible, or chemsex-free. It requires only that you are willing to begin — and to begin again, every day, in whatever small way you can manage.
Seven minutes. Three poses. One sentence written on a mirror.
That is enough to start. And the man you are becoming? He's already there. He's just waiting for you to give him room.
If you're ready to go deeper with a coach who gets it, I'd love to walk this with you. Visit me at drdallasbragg.com and let's talk about what Recovery Alchemy can look like for you.
Love you. Dallas 💚
Reflective Questions
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Malu distinguishes between abstinence and truly living chemsex-free — behaviorally, emotionally, and relationally. Honestly, where do you currently sit on that spectrum? What does the gap between the two look like in your daily life?
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Malu describes the addictive self as the character who has stepped into the foreground while your authentic self has faded back. What qualities does your authentic self carry that you can still recognize, even underneath the using?
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The concept of tapas — disciplined heat — suggests that the discomfort of a craving is not just a threat to navigate but a purification in progress. How does framing a craving as an opportunity to practice, rather than an emergency to escape, change how you relate to it?
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Malu and Dallas both emphasize that insight is not the same as transformation. Have you ever had a profound realization about your using or your patterns — and then found yourself repeating that same behavior anyway? What do you think was missing between the insight and the change?
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When you imagine a day in the life of the chemsex-free version of yourself — how you move, who you spend time with, how you feel when you wake up — what is the first thing that comes into focus? What about that image feels most distant from where you are right now?
Journal Prompts
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Write your own sankalpa — a single present-tense sentence that names who you already are at your core, not who you are trying to become. What would it say? What comes up for you when you write it and then read it back?
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Malu teaches a fear-and-resentment writing practice: name everything that carries an emotional charge right now, phrase it as I fear..., and then release it. Try it today. What did you write? What surprised you about what came up?
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Describe your addiction frequency — the specific behaviors, patterns, and ways of showing up in the world that belong to the using version of you. Now describe the frequency of the chemsex-free man you are becoming. What are the behavioral differences between those two versions?
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Malu says our issues are stored in our tissues — that the body holds what the mind hasn't fully processed. Have you ever experienced an unexpected emotional release during physical movement, exercise, or even a massage? What was happening, and what do you think was moving through you?
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Think about a pattern in your life — a way you consistently respond to stress, loneliness, rejection, or boredom — that you can trace all the way back to its origin. When did this pattern first form? What need was it originally trying to meet? Does it still serve you?
Action Exercises
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Start a seven-minute daily practice. You don't need a studio or a mat. Look up Malu on Instagram and try his free mini-course — it's under an hour total and can be done in small pieces. Show up for seven minutes every day this week, same time, same place. Consistency is the point, not perfection.
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Write and post your sankalpa. Draft a single present-tense sentence about who you are at your core — chemsex-free, boundaried, worthy, whatever is true for you. Write it on a Post-it. Put it on your bathroom mirror. Read it every morning when you see your own face, and repeat it to yourself as you fall asleep tonight.
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Do a fear-and-resentment release. Set a timer for ten minutes. Write every fear and resentment that is currently live in your body, no matter how small or irrational — I fear I'm not enough, I resent that I can't trust myself, I fear I've already lost too much time. Don't edit. When the timer ends, sign the page with I release this, and then destroy it. Tear it up. Delete it. Let it go.
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Interrupt one automatic pattern this week. Pick one small, daily habit — which side of the bed you get out of, which hand you brush your teeth with, which route you take to the kitchen in the morning — and deliberately do it differently. Notice what it feels like to make your subconscious guess. Notice the small, unfamiliar awareness that opens up. That awareness is yours to use.
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Write your "perfect day" vision. Get somewhere quiet. Close your eyes. Let yourself drift into that soft, almost-asleep state and ask yourself: What does a perfect day in my chemsex-free life look like? Where are you? Who are you with? How do you feel when you wake up? Write it down in present tense and as much sensory detail as you can. Read it back. That man is real. He exists. He's waiting.
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