Meditation also helps to expand a person’s perspective, allowing them to assess their thoughts and feelings from multiple angles. This can help you “get out of your head” and view your experiences through a more well-rounded and empathetic lens. An “anchor” keeps you linked to the present and helps you to regulate your thoughts. However, an anchor can be anything the practitioner chooses, such as sounds they hear around them or their own bodily functions. The key is to find something that keeps you centered and helps you avoid having distracting thoughts. Once you find your anchor, stick to it, and it will become easier and easier to keep yourself focused.
Once you’ve grown more comfortable with meditating on your own, consider signing up for in-person or online meditation classes. This can help introduce you to new techniques and can provide a way to meet other people who share your interest. If meditating brings up any stressful thoughts or feelings, write these down as well. You can mention these to a licensed therapist and work on addressing them in your sessions.
Learn More About Mindfulness and Other Holistic Approaches to Addiction Recovery
Beyond helping with reducing stress, meditation has also been shown to help boost a person’s mood. This can help create a more consistently positive mindset as you conduct your daily activities. Though mechanistic research on MBIs has begun to amass, there are few psychophysiological and neuroimaging studies of MBIs as a treatment for addiction. Thus little data exists to either support or refute the neural mechanistic models proposed in this section.
It has substantial benefits when practiced short-term and long-term. When you practice meditation and mindfulness while on the road to recovery, you can help your body and your mind defend itself against anxiety, https://ecosoberhouse.com/ depression, withdrawal symptoms, and cravings. At the heart of all recovery programs is the goal of rewiring the brain. Meditation has been proven to be very effective at rewiring neurological pathways.
The Benefits of Meditation in Addiction Recovery
If you’re willing to accept yourself and what you’re feeling, develop a bigger social support network, and be there for others, then you’ll be able to understand yourself more and have a place to go if you need help. This alone means that your odds of relapse are lowered since there won’t be as many negative loops, meditation for addiction recovery and you won’t feel so alone in handling your addiction. We all have that voice in our heads that tells us we’re doing things wrong, and that voice can stick around even when we’re trying to meditate. When meditating, it’s important to be nonjudgmental and give ourselves the freedom to simply exist as we are.
- Although it has many forms, meditation is usually practiced by sitting and quietly observing your body or thoughts.
- Coming full circle, MBIs are some of the newest additions to the armamentarium of addictions treatment.
- Meditation techniques can be implemented in any type of addiction treatment program.
