If it is successfully completed drug treatment, it is a milestone and a major accomplishment. While that milestone should be celebrated, the real work in recovery begins once you leave treatment. The stress of daily life can bring cravings and urges to use to the forefront. To minimize the chances of relapse, you must have solid stress management tools at your disposal as part of your sober living. Yoga and meditation are among the most effective in reducing the stress that can lead to relapse.
Some benefits of Yoga and Meditation in recovery are:
Easy to Incorporate into Your Daily Routine
One significant benefit of yoga and meditation in recovery is that both practices are easy to incorporate into your daily life. While both practices can be more involved, you can master easy meditation and yoga practices in little time. By learning breath focusing or simple yoga poses like standing mountain or child’s poses, you can make these practices a part of your daily routine. Devoting 15 minutes of your daily schedule to yoga and meditation can recharge you and decrease stress.
Yoga and Meditation Can Help Decrease Withdrawal Symptoms
In early recovery, withdrawals from drugs and alcohol are often painful and uncomfortable. Especially methamphetamine withdrawal symptoms! Oftentimes, people experiencing withdrawals have strong cravings and urges to use. In addition to medication and diet, yoga and meditation can help ease withdrawal symptoms that lead to cravings. Both practices increase oxygen to the brain and promote a sense of wellbeing.
To Experience Natural Highs
Using yoga and meditation in recovery will help you replace the artificial highs of addiction with natural highs. These mindful practices teach you to detach from external stimuli and focus on your inner needs. With continued practice, the ability to look inward teaches you to become fulfilled with the peace within you. Ultimately, you are more aware of external desires and the yearning to fill holes in your life through substances. You will be better able to turn away from cravings and towards the natural highs of peace and serenity.
Yoga and Meditation Help to Focus on the Here and Now
One of the most important concepts of recovery is to focus on the present time. It is easy to get caught up in thinking about the failures in your past. It is also easy to be uneasy regarding the future. Both meditation and yoga allow you to focus your energies on the here and now. When you are able to focus on the present, you have a greater ability to connect in the moment and learn more about yourself. Additionally, you are able to become more compassionate and empathetic towards others.
To Build Inner Strength and Determination
Recovery is a lifelong process that is filled with obstacles. When you encounter rough patches in sobriety, it can leave you hanging by a thread. When you practice yoga and meditation on a regular basis, you build inner resolve and determination. Mindful meditation and yoga are difficult to learn at first, but once you master the fundamentals you gain self-confidence. This attitude of mastering yoga and meditation techniques can transfer to your day-to-day life. During those life moments when you feel like giving up, you learn to persevere and breakthrough. As a result, you become a stronger individual.
To Add to Your Support System
Another benefit of yoga and meditation practice is that you meet other people who provide positive influences in your life. Having a solid support system is essential to long-term recovery. In addition to loved ones, recovering peers, and sponsors, those you meet in mindful meditation practices can bolster your support system. Those who teach yoga and meditation have great knowledge and can help shape your life. More importantly, those people have survived traumatic events in their lives. By teaching yoga and meditation, they transform their pain and suffering into serving others. That provides a model you can follow as you grow in your recovery.
You Can Create Inner Peace
Everybody will experience trying times in their lives. For addicts, a coping mechanism for tough times is drugs and alcohol. For those in recovery, yoga and meditation help create a sense of inner peace. By focusing inward and trusting yourself, you will learn how to replace thoughts of using to healthier coping strategies. Regular yoga and meditation practice will help you rewire the pleasure center in the brain. By doing so, you learn to stop reacting to tough situations and learn to respond with positive actions
