Bookmark Page Send link to friend!

Wholistic Rehab News

Meditation for Addiction Recovery

Meditation can be a powerful tool in relapse prevention and can become what one therapist called a "positive addiction" that provides a healthy alternative to addictive behaviors. People also report that meditation leads to new insights about the source of their cravings and helps to dissolve them.

In their book, Mindful Recovery: A Spiritual Path to Healing from Addiction, Drs. Bein and Bien offer ten "doorways" to recovery, from journaling to meditation, and they present dozens of specific meditation exercises based on their experience as therapists and meditators. Their book says: "People use addictive behaviors to avoid facing what hurts them. The Buddhist mindfulness practice offers a gentle way to begin facing pain and working with it to establish a new relationship to life. Mindfulness helps in two ways: first, by becoming aware of yourself and your environment, you understand what hurts you, what 'triggers' you, and second, by befriending your triggers, you can disarm them. Mindfulness provides a larger purpose, a broader context in which to see a problem. And then things fall into place more gently. If you are awake and relaxed and enjoying your life, there is less need and desire for your addictions."

Kevin Griffin writes about Buddhism and the Twelve Steps saying this: "Buddha said that the cause of suffering is desire, and the Twelve Steps try to heal people from desire gone mad: addiction. Both systems ask you to look at the painful realities of life, to understand them, and to use this understanding as the foundation for developing peace, wisdom, faith, and compassion. The practical aspects of Buddhism are one of its main corollaries to the Steps." His book, One Breath at a Time, is an exploration of how the two systems can work together, and he offers meditation techniques based on Vipassana and Metta practices.

"Zen is the ultimate and original recovery program," says author Mel Ash in his book, The Zen of Recovery. "It exposes our denial of true self and shows us how all our other diseases and discontentment's flow from our fundamental denial of unity with each other and the universe."

...

Retrieved 05 August 2008 from http://www.meditationspot.com/recovery.html