Picture this: You’re deep in the trenches of despair as an addict. You not only battle with a suffocating substance use problem, but you also contend with depression – or another mental health issue – and have a heart-wrenching cynical outlook on life.
One day, a tidal wave of perspective and reality crashes on top of you, and you realize you are done. Done feeling dead inside; Done breathing in the toxic fumes that your addiction billows out; Done throwing all personal accountability for your health and future to the gusty wind.
You got real, professional help and committed to getting clean. Indeed, you turned your life around and began to thrive.
Where are you in this scenario? If you’re ready to achieve sobriety once and for all and glean the most liberating outlook – one that promotes your overall health and helps you remain sober – learn about yoga for addiction in outpatient therapy.
Leave Your Excuses at the Door. Outpatient Addiction Therapy Caters to Your Current Lifestyle
We understand that inpatient addiction therapy is a huge commitment. While inpatient rehab is undoubtedly worth every moment spent absent from home, stepping away from your job, family and day-to-day responsibilities is undeniably hard to do.
An alternative option is outpatient addiction therapy. Outpatient treatment delivers substance use disorder treatment in a meaningful and effective therapeutic environment, while allowing recovering addicts to maintain familial, professional and social obligations and responsibilities.
When you arrive in therapy and begin to incorporate your individualized treatment plan into everyday life, there is one supplemental component you’ll want to make sure is part of your recovery journey.
Healing Addiction with Yoga
Yoga – a group of physical, mental and spiritual poses, disciplines and techniques – is arguably the best complement to outpatient addiction therapy efforts.
A tremendous holistic tool to support clinical interventions for substance addiction, the ultimate goal of yoga is to be liberated, or moksha.
Addiction therapy is all about teaching you how to quit your substance, manage additive cravings, avoid triggers, establish new coping mechanisms and develop a new, positive outlook. When healing addiction with yoga, you will elevate your recovery efforts and bring your understanding of full-body health and well-being full circle.
Yoga teaches you how to practice mindfulness, controlled breathing, relaxation, meditation and mind, body and spirit realignment. Simultaneously, it empowers you to let go – of negativity, hurt, toxic relationships and harmful self-talk and self-perception.
Yoga is rooted in the art of self-discovery, self-acceptance and self-liberation, and – if practiced with an open, honest and vulnerable mind – can help you achieve improved health, true perspective and so much more.
Discover some of the most important benefits of yoga for addiction:
Benefits of Yoga for Addiction Recovery
Yoga helps recovering addicts:
1. Reduce Stress.
Stress is one of the biggest reasons why individuals begin and continue using drugs and/or alcohol, and it’s the number one relapse trigger.1
Your yoga mat can be the best place to retreat to when you need to release stress and regroup. Since yoga is an exercise, the movement and blood flow that this practice promotes significantly helps regulate dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine – vital neurotransmitters in the brain that controls everything from pleasure and reward to movement, emotion and memory.
Additionally, and equally as important, yoga is largely a meditative practice. Meditation and mindfulness can considerably reduce stress, even if yoga is practiced for just a few minutes.
2. Relieve Pain.
Addiction rehab is crucial for safely and successfully detoxing from prescription pills, and outpatient therapy is incredibly effective at helping recovering addicts learn how to manage cravings and build a life that doesn’t depend on these drugs. But, of course, recovering addicts can still experience physical pain from time to time, or daily, depending on their personal situation.
This is where yoga becomes imperative. Yoga can teach you how to holistically manage and defuse pain, because it targets every muscle in your body and aims to relieve muscle tension and pain. It can teach your mind and body how to experience painful sensations differently by increasing your muscular strength and range of motion. Essentially, yoga can help you adopt new, healthier ways to respond to pain and any uncomfortable situations.
3. Sleep Better and Have More Energy.
Your substance use completely rewired your brain and rearranged the natural processes of your body. While sleep is one of the most crucial elements to your overall health and energy levels, your addiction threw your circadian rhythm out of sync. In turn, your brain and body systems were never able to achieve the deep, necessary rest they required for optimal functioning.
Yoga has been proven to help evade insomnia and help recovering addicts achieve better sleep. In turn, you will possess more energy and embody an improved perception of your quality of life.2
4. Improve Emotional Regulation.
Your addiction cravings, triggers, coping mechanisms, perceptions and habits are largely based in emotion. When you learn how to fundamentally change how you react to situations – especially ones that are highly emotionally stimulating – you will be better apt to avoid damaging thoughts, destructive behaviors and, ultimately, relapse.
Because the practice of yoga is profoundly effective at engaging the body and mind at the same time though movement, mindfulness meditation and deep, controlled breathing, your entire being will become more self-aware and you will relearn how to experience and control your emotions.
5. Decrease Mental Health Symptoms.
Substance abuse may intensify a pre-existing mental health condition, and, similarly, a pre-existing mental health condition may lead to increased drug or alcohol use or an addiction.
Since yoga is a mindfulness practice that teaches you how to control your breathing, relax and meditate, it can systematically help you reduce anxiety, raise you from depression and aid in decreasing a multitude of other mental health disorders and symptoms.
6. Avoid Relapse.
With as common as relapse is – between 40 and 60 percent of individuals who successfully complete addiction treatment end up relapsing3 – the reduction of cravings and impulsivity is key.
From all the previously stated benefits, your yoga practice will arrive you here: avoiding relapse. Yoga can help you first acknowledge your emotions, cravings, triggers and impulsive desires, and then finally empower you to release these feelings before they claim power over you.
Holistic Outpatient Treatment at Ranch Creek Recovery
Do you feel you would benefit from an outpatient drug rehab program? With customized treatment plans that fit your unique recovery needs and offering an alternative to the traditional twelve step program, Ranch Creek Recovery’s holistic treatment services will help you stop abusing drugs or alcohol and forge a fulfilling, clean future.
From the moment your start therapy, we will help you every step of the way. This includes suggesting things to do when you’re not in session. We have several amazing yoga studios in the area and can help you find your Shanti.
Learn more about Ranch Creek Recovery’s all-encompassing Temecula Outpatient Rehab.
Have questions? We’re here to help. Contact us today.
CALL NOW: (877) 293-8607
Resources:
1 National Center of Biotechnology Information. Chronic Stress, Drug Use, and Vulnerability to Addiction. Accessed September 20, 2018. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2732004/.
2 National Sleep Foundation. The Connection Between Yoga and Better Sleep. Accessed September 20, 2018. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/the-connection-between-yoga-and-better-sleep.
3 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Psychiatry. Relative Efficacy of
Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention, Standard Relapse Prevention, and Treatment as Usual
for Substance Use Disorders. Accessed September 20, 2018.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/1839290.
