By Catherine Baz (she/her), Youth Advisory Board member
In recovery, there are multiple pathways to sobriety, and there are multiple pathways for dealing with cravings once sober. This series will explore a Holistic whole-body approach to dealing with cravings. A Holistic approach to recovery recognizes that addiction is an illness of mind, body, and soul. In recovery from addiction, these are areas we work on in order to maintain our sobriety.
In this series, I will be guiding you through these holistic practices that will bring you into the center with yourself. I am a person in long-term recovery and have used the method of healing that I have described. It is my personal philosophy that addiction can be considered as a spiritual, physical, and psychological problem that must be addressed using a multi-prong approach. As a person who experienced trauma and lives with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], these practices have allowed me to become grounded and brought me back from the dissociation and anxiety I experienced. These practices are each part of a wider spiritual tradition, while they are taken here as part of a multimodality method of healing.
The main approach to these forms of recovery is to heal the connection between your mind and body. While it is often thought that the mind is fully in control of the body, the body also is a storehouse of memories and tension. There is often a disconnect between the mind and body, sometimes the mind is fully absent from the present moment and self, other times being fully absorbed in the body and its pleasures, such as I experienced during active addiction. I found that my trauma took me away from what was happening in my day-to-day life and into a swarming head filled with worries. These practices have allowed me to balance and heal what distanced me from fully immersing in my life.
These are:
● Embracing healthy eating and living
● Yoga, and exercise
● Chanting
● Meditating: walking meditation/forest bathing, traditional sitting meditation, breathwork
We will be discussing all of these topics in the following blogs. Each post will also have an interactive component, where we will guide you through these practices. Follow along to implement these practices and experience their benefits.
Additional posts coming soon
