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Lisa Cam

Picture this: you wake up in a hospital, weak from having your stomach pumped, and find you cannot move your arm because you have been handcuffed to the bed.
That is exactly what happened a decade ago to James Gannaban, then a professional in Hong Kong’s food and beverage industry, after a drug overdose.
Today, Gannaban is a certified yoga instructor who calls himself a “sober yoga uncle” and has an Instagram account where he posts himself performing challenging yoga poses.
He also writes openly about his recovery journey and celebrates his progress.
“I just want to be open and honest,” he says. “It’s better to have no secrets than for someone to find out another way.”

Born the oldest of six children in the Philippines, Gannaban studied theatre at university as he wanted a career in the performing arts.
This led him to Hong Kong, where he was part of the performance team that opened Disneyland in 2005. There, he played Li Shang, a character from the 1998 animated film Mulan. He sang live and did stage stunts and martial arts.
After two and a half years, he became disheartened by the lack of career progression, as he had not been assigned any other role.
“I wanted to play a variety of roles, such as Simba and Aladdin, but with Disney, you’re hired based on how closely you look like the character. So the answer to my requests was no.”

One evening, while out in Lan Kwai Fong, one of the city’s nightspots, he met a restaurant general manager who was seeking an assistant manager.
“A lot of restaurants transitioned into clubs after 10pm, and I ended up being the night manager [for his restaurant],” he says.
This career change, however, led Gannaban down a rabbit hole of addiction and substance abuse.
His first encounter with hard drugs came after he and some kitchen staff had a disagreement, and the bar manager proceeded to offer him cocaine.
“In my role, partying is encouraged and normalised,” he reflects. “I would even say it was glorified and celebrated.
“I was in my 20s then. I thought, to participate in that lifestyle, I had to partake. When the bar manager offered me a line of coke, I thought, ‘Well, here’s the only person who feels like my ally in this restaurant, and I better take what he is offering me.’”

Things progressed until he overdosed in 2015 on a cocktail of crystal meth, gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and ketamine, in no small part because of his job’s late nights.
“There was no one to tell me that enough was enough, or I might be spiralling. As night manager, I was in charge of closing the restaurant at 3am. By that time, all my friends would have already fallen asleep. So, I would have to find ways to entertain myself … to decompress after the end of the workday.”
On the day of his overdose, Gannaban was supposed to meet a friend. When he failed to show, his friend checked on him at his home and found him unconscious and in a pool of his bodily fluids.
After the emergency services arrived and found drugs at the scene, Gannaban was sent to the hospital for treatment and arrested. Police officers kept a watch over him for two days and, once he was discharged, threw him in prison, where he went into withdrawal.
“It was very, very cold. You’re on a steel bed, sick as a dog, and the jail cell itself was also very cold,” he said.
This, he says, was where he thought he had hit rock bottom.

After his arrest, his parents consulted a lawyer who suggested he go into rehab to show the courts he was willing to change his ways. It was this or run the risk of spending six years in prison.
He went into a facility in Chiang Mai, Thailand, which cost his parents US$12,000 a month. He also had to fly back to Hong Kong every month to report to a probation officer.
Gannaban lost friends after his addiction came to light, and when his parents revealed that his father had dipped into his retirement fund to pay for rehab, he did not feel grateful for their sacrifice – he felt angry that they were shaming him.
“The nature of addiction is that it seeks to protect itself,” he explains. “Instead of wanting to get better, the addicted mind would find ways to go back to the addiction. Some of my friends were also addicts, and they didn’t want the spotlight on themselves.
“Sometimes, going to rehab becomes part of the cycle, where addicts know how to behave and get out of rehab as soon as possible so they can start taking pills, drugs, gambling or whatever again.”

Gannaban eventually moved to a cheaper facility in the Philippines, where he worked as an administrator to help pay the bills.
“It was here where the penny finally dropped. As part of my 12-step programme, I went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting that was held in a prison and I realised just how much further the bottom was to be. At least my family had the money to consult a lawyer and put me in rehab.”
Another huge takeaway from rehab was finding his love of yoga.
“Despite it being hot and humid in Chiang Mai, I felt so at peace when I was doing yoga in rehab. When I returned to Hong Kong, instead of going out on weekends, I would go to two or three classes a day,” he says. “It started as a replacement for partying, but it became so much more.”
There are specific yoga therapy techniques effective for addressing addiction-related challenges, which include breath control (pranayama) for managing cravings, mindfulness-based meditation for emotional regulation, and restorative postures to reduce stress and promote relaxation.

“Yoga became a critical component of my recovery,” Gannaban says. “There are certain parts of yoga philosophy that reinforce the recovery mindset, which I still apply in my day-to-day life.
“I would feel particularly touched if I had difficulty with some particularly challenging sequences, and the teacher would help me achieve them with some philosophical teachings from yoga to overcome the challenges.”
Gannaban became a certified yoga instructor himself, and he regularly teaches at Pure Fitness and Pure Yoga. This year, he also received his 10-year sobriety chip.
“It was always my dream to become a yoga instructor and help others the same way,” he says.

To spread the word of his recovery through yoga and promote mindfulness, he will hold a three-hour workshop with his recovery partner, Otto Yeung, on September 21.
“Yoga is often marketed with yogis in all sorts of twisted shapes and positions … turning people away from it. I found strength in my recovery through yoga, and I want to share more of that. Yoga is for everybody,” he says.
Sensory Symphony: A Journey of Healing with Otto Yeung & James Gannaban, Sep 21, 2.30pm-5.30pm, Pure Yoga Pacific Place, Shop 101, Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, Admiralty.
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Hong Kong-based James Gannaban reveals how discovering yoga and becoming a teacher helped him recover after hitting rock bottom


Hong Kong-based James Gannaban reveals how discovering yoga and becoming a teacher helped him recover after hitting rock bottom.


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How yoga helped Hong Kong club manager and drug addict turn his life around

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Hong Kong-based James Gannaban reveals how discovering yoga and becoming a teacher helped him recover after hitting rock bottom

Hong Kong-based James Gannaban reveals how discovering yoga and becoming a teacher helped him recover after hitting rock bottom