The Tao of Recovery: Qigong, Trauma, and Rebalancing Addiction from the Inside Out with Doug Hilton | Gateways to Awakening

Dear Friends,

In this episode of Gateways to Awakening, I sit down with Doug Hilton, a counselor with over 30 years of experience supporting clients through trauma, addiction recovery, and couples/family dynamics, and a Certified Universal Healing Tao instructor who has integrated Qigong into his clinical practice for two decades.

Doug is also the co-author (with Master Mantak Chia) of The Tao of Addiction and Recovery, a book that reframes addiction through a Taoist lens: not as a moral failure, but as a system-level imbalance—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Together, we explore:
- Why Doug describes addiction as an imbalance in the system, and how that insight emerged through Taoist training in Thailand
- What Taoism is (and what it is not): a spiritual system rooted in living in harmony with nature, without dogma or forced belief
- How addiction develops through natural human tendencies (adaptation, denial, pain avoidance) that can become exploited over time
- The Taoist view of recovery as harmony over willpower, and why inner balance reduces the “need to medicate”
- A practical, grounding Qigong entry point: breathing into the lower Dantian (“Where the mind goes, the chi follows”)
- The Inner Smile Meditation and the elemental organ system—how sequencing (wood → fire vs. water → fire) supports balance
- Doug’s work bridging Western therapy and Taoist energetics: EMDR, trauma, and Taoist Emotional Recycling (TER)
- A simple guided TER eye-movement practice you can try (when you are not driving) to support emotional clearing
- Shame, guilt, relapse, and how restoring flow through the “garden hose” system of energy channels changes recovery outcomes
- Why sexuality and sexual energy are often neglected in mainstream recovery—and how Taoist practices help integrate it with care
- Doug also shares his personal journey—how Taoism “found him” long before he fully understood it—and why he believes this work matters not only for people facing addiction, but for anyone touched by it.
Resources & Links
Doug Hilton: fullcirclehealing.ca
Thailand program: balancerhehab.solutions
Book: The Tao of Addiction and Recovery 
Tune in to Gateways to Awakening for more conversations with leading thinkers, creators, and spiritual pioneers shaping the future of consciousness. For more from me: follow my writing on Substack (substack.com/@therealyasmeent), find me on Instagram @TheRealYasmeenT, or visit InnerKnowingSchool.com