Nick Vaccaro: Teacher Spotlight November 2021
by Nicole Chaison, SCY Board Member
Nick Vaccaro teaches Thursday afternoons at 4:30 at the Portland Recovery Community Center (PRCC), in its new-ish location on Bishop Street, off Forest Avenue near Morrill’s Corner. The class is hybrid, so students have the opportunity to either practice with Nick, live at the Center, or online. He has been bringing his strong recovery and yoga practice to PRCC since July 2021, though he had been subbing there for a few years beforehand and had been teaching through Sea Change at Milestone, Maine Correctional Center, and Androscoggin County Jail on and off since 2018.
PRCC’s mission is to provide support, education, and resources for people recovering from and affected by addiction. As described on their website, PRCC is a “safe haven for people in recovery and offers a home for meetings and activities devoted to recovery from substance use disorder and other addictions… every activity is designed to help people with their daily recovery efforts.”
Nick’s yoga class speaks directly to the mission of PRCC and is reflective of his own recovery journey. He explains that while he was in treatment in Massachusetts, he had the opportunity to practice yoga. He reflects, “I met some amazing teachers that had a profound impact on me…That experience of having someone to connect with, trust, and feel comfortable around at a time when you don’t feel that way… I wanted to provide that opportunity to others.”
Nick explains that he originally started practicing yoga mostly for the physical benefits, but that as his practice developed, he began to recognize the meditative aspects. When he first started in 2013, he says: “I was super nervous and in my head the whole time. Then when I went to treatment in 2015, I started noticing other benefits of it. That was an hour class, and I didn’t think about what we were doing later, or when I was going to get out of there. It was a lessening, a 10-second or 10-minute reprieve from those thoughts and worries.”
Now Nick brings that opportunity to his students at PRCC, people in any form of recovery from behaviors or substance abuse and allies in the community. “We have the opportunity to slow down, breathe, make choices instead of always being in a reactive mode to situations around us,” Nick says. He continues, “Practicing yoga is an add-on to the other things I need to do to keep me sober. Yoga doesn’t keep me in recovery, but recovery keeps me in my yoga practice. They compliment each other. I used to think it was the other way around.”
First introduced to Sea Change when he attended Jennie Ferrare’s class at the PRCC in late summer 2017 after moving to Portland, Nick finished his 200 hour yoga teacher training at the Sanctuary Studio in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He was getting integrated into the Portland recovery community at the same time, and saw teaching with Sea Change as an opportunity to give back to the community. He started as a substitute teacher for various Sea Change programs, and joined the Board of Directors and Development committee in May 2019.
When not practicing or teaching yoga, Nick has a full time job as Controller for Barrett Made, an architecture and construction company for commercial and residential projects in Portland, and he enjoys spending time with his family.
In addition to Nick’s class at 4:30 on Thursdays, PRCC also offers a Sea Change Yoga class on Tuesdays at 1:30 with Jennie Ferrare.