ROCovery Fitness: Rochester, New York
Help Open New York State’s First Sober Active Community Center
I was checking my Facebook feed a few weeks back and came across a “go fund me” page for an organization called ROCovery Fitness in Rochester, New York. You can check out their website at www.rocoveryfitness.org. I was intrigued and clicked on the ad…… I was so impressed to learn about this pioneering organization. The “gofundme” page seeks donations to help construct and open the “first sober active community center in New York State.” From our perspective at Spiritual Adrenaline, this is pretty exciting and naturally I wanted to learn more about how this group got started.
Turns out that two years ago, a group of people decided to put together a hike as a positive healthy activity for people in the addiction recovery community. About a dozen people joined the group’s founder Yana Khashper and Sean Smith for that first hike. Reflecting on how the group got started, Yana stated: “We were looking for an alternative to relapse. We thought that maybe fitness could be the piece we were missing in our recovery.” Fast forward two years and ROCovery Fitness has over 1,000 individuals who have participated in adventures, activities and community events which the group sponsors. Last September, the group held its second annual Family and Friends 5k Fun Run, attracting over 150 participants.
ROCovery has a little bit of something for everyone. For example, they offer a multitude of services ranging from “running, body conditioning, weight lifting, cycling, hiking, yoga, meditation, planned trips, social events and much more for individuals recovering from addiction in the Western New York area.” How cool is that! The group is “focused on providing a safe fitness-oriented community for individuals recovering from addiction…[while] fostering a commitment to change by replacing maladaptive patterns of living through the connectedness of like-minded individuals pursuing wellness, fitness, and outdoor living.”
If ROCovery has been able to do so much in two short years without a place to organize and use as a headquarters, you can imagine how this cutting-edge program can add value to so many lives when they open their new community center. I asked Yana about ROC’s plans for their new home. Yana proudly told me: “We are so close to opening ROCovery’s community center, creating a safe, nurturing and healing environment where people can find hope and recovery among peers in a wellness based mindset and surrounding.”
Yana and everyone else at ROCovery are 100% correct. Study after study, and common sense confirms that: self-care in the form of exercise, proper nutrition and positive socialization dramatically improves a person’s chances of success in addiction recovery. Spiritual Adrenaline wrote about one of those studies in August 2016. In our opinion, ROCovery’s pioneering work will one day be the norm for everyone in addiction recovery as increasingly twelve-step groups and institutions incorporate self-care components in the recovery model.
We encourage you to check out ROCovery’s website at www.rocoveryfitness.org and if possible make a donation to their campaign to raise funds to complete construction on “first sober active community center in New York State”. To donate, go to their gofundme page.
If you or your organization are integrating exercise and/or nutrition into a twelve-step recovery model, let us know. We want to share your story. Send me an email at: tom@spiritualadrenaline.com.