What Recovery Actually Looks Like: The Chair Conversations, Session Three
Founder & Principal Consultant · NIH CHORUS Co-Author
The question was simple. When you picture someone in recovery, who do you see?
Most people said the same thing. A human being.
Who Pulled Up a Chair
Eight people, this round on a screen instead of in the shop — but you still pull up a chair. Black and white, women and men, every walk of life the neighborhood holds. The circle answered the question twice: once out loud, and once just by being what it was.
Who pulled up a chair
Executives
Directors
Small business owners
Startup founders
Youth intervention specialists
A young person
When you picture someone in recovery, who do you see?
If the picture in your head does not include an executive, a director, or a twenty-year-old, the picture is not wrong about recovery. It is wrong about people.
We Breathed First
Session Three opened differently, and online this round. Before the conversation opened, every screen went still. Allison Burke of NamaStay Sober led twenty minutes of chair yoga and breathwork — seated, gentle, no experience required, nobody asked to move from wherever they had logged in. NamaStay Sober is a Boston organization built on the same conviction that brought us into a barbershop in the first place: meet people where they are, and let the body come along.
Try it · a minute to settle
Session Three opened this way. If you would like, follow the circle for a minute — no experience needed, move at your own pace, stop whenever you want. A simple breathing pause, not medical advice.
In for four, hold, out for six.
It changed the circle that followed. People who have already exhaled together talk differently than people who log on cold.
What Shifted the Conversation
Midway through, Tye put a question underneath the question:
“What if we took recovery out of the equation? We would still have human beings who need support—and who possess untapped potential that, with the right development, can become one of society's greatest contributions.”
— Tye Perryman
The circle went quiet, and then it opened. Take the word away and nothing about the person disappears. The need is still there. So is the capacity. What changes is what you are looking at — a case to be managed, or a person with something in them that has never been developed.
People Are in Recovery When They Say They Are
This one needed clearing up, and the circle cleared it. Not when a program says so. Not when a chart says so. Not after a number of days, a completed level of care, or a signature from somebody with a credential.
“People are in recovery when they say they are.”
— Tye Perryman
Recovery is a self-declaration. It belongs to the person making it. Everything a system does afterward is either support for that declaration or interference with it.
The Insightful Way
What we are building has a name and a direction, and Tye said it plainly:
“Recovery is the foundation. Human development is the destination.”
“The Insightful Way is the shift from traditional deficit-based models to insight-oriented, asset-based human development.”
The deficit model asks what happened to you and how bad it got, because that is the question that unlocks funding. It is not a conspiracy — it is what the paperwork rewards. But a system organized around documenting damage cannot see capacity, and it definitely cannot develop it.
The same facts, read twice
What the system records
Severity. Damage. How bad it got, and how long.
What is actually there
Survival. Persistence. Skill. Somebody just has to write the second reading down.
Asset-based is not optimism. It is accuracy. The same facts that document severity also document survival, persistence, and skill.
What Worked
Not concepts — the actual mechanics of the two hours.
Engagement
Show up first
Connection
Person to person
Warm handoff
Walked, not sent
Accompaniment
Nobody goes alone
Small-group engagement worked. People respected one another. Everyone who wanted to speak was given the attention to do it, and nobody had to compete for the floor. That is the whole method, even through a screen. Before treatment, before a program, before a diagnosis, somebody has to show up and be heard.
One More Monday
Session Four closes the founding pilot series.
Next Session · 04 · What We Were Self-Medicating
Monday, August 10 · 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM
Flipping Clippers Barbershop · 483 Washington St, Dorchester · Free · Walk-ins welcome. Free haircuts throughout. This is the final session of the pilot.
Nobody just wakes up one day and decides to become addicted. So what were they running from?
Save Your SeatFund the road instead? Sponsor a session — the community walks it free.
Catch up on the series
- Session One — We Don't Talk About It
- Session Two — Somebody You Love
- Session Three — What Recovery Actually Looks Like (you are here)
- Session Four — What We Were Self-Medicating · August 10
Free. Walk-ins welcome. Free haircuts throughout. Pull up a chair.
The Chair Conversations™ is presented by Insightful Recovery Solutions LLC under The Insightful Way™, with Flipping Clippers in Codman Square as its home shop. Session Three met online. Chair yoga led by Allison Burke, NamaStay Sober. What is shared in the circle stays in the circle — nothing in this recap identifies any participant or reproduces anything said in it.
Disclaimer: This content is not medical advice. Insightful Recovery Solutions provides non-clinical recovery support services. This article is educational and peer-oriented — it does not replace professional medical care, therapy, or treatment. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, thoughts of self-harm, or a medical emergency, call 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357, or go to your nearest emergency room.