Treatment Archives - Page 30 of 31 - Enlightened Solutions

Recovery

Written by enlightened solutions on September 22, 2017. Posted in Addiction Recovery, Family Recovery, Recovery. Leave a Comment

Recovery, to recover, is the journey from the loss of connection to the authentic and whole self. Some say that addiction forms when there is a fracture or a schism that occurs in the self. The coping with substances and other addictions is the attempt to create a bridge to between these two places. This bridge, though, is built on a shaky foundation and with faulty architecture. Recovery is the process of bringing the entire structure down, usually in an act of self-demolition, and mending the schism so that a bridge is no longer needed.

Returning to a state of wholeness is a reality that many addicts have difficulty imagining is truly possible. Even when they can grasp this as possible for others, there are internal psychological mechanisms that block their ability to trust that it could be possible for themselves. They must learn to let this internal dialogue exist while also taking the actions that others have taken to become free. It is often only through the journey of doing recovery actions and experiencing the results when trust in the process emerges.

The journey of recovery is a multi-pronged journey, involving healing on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual planes. The initial process of opening oneself to new ways of living on all of these planes can sometimes be an overwhelming experience. The way of becoming recovered is to begin to know and understand that some suffering, in the case of overwhelm, leads to evolution. Drawing on the image of a baby bird emerging from an egg, embrace the discomfort of breaking out of the shell of addiction so that you may fly free in the blue sky.

There will come a point that the addict will arrive at a place of being recovered. The healing will happen on all of these planes and then, they will continue on the path of recovery by walking this journey with others who need to heal. The point of being recovered is both a peak to a mountain and a plateau. The choice then is to continue onward and deepen in the new life that has been created.

Enlightened Recovery Solutions offers a harmonious approach to holistic treatment, bringing together the best of evidence-based, alternative, and 12-step therapies. Call us today for information on our transformation programs of treatment for addiction and alcoholism: 833-801-5483.

How Anxiety Can be a Motivating Force Instead of a Debilitating One

Written by enlightened solutions on September 21, 2017. Posted in Healthy Living, Mental Health. Leave a Comment

Anxiety is often discussed in terms of being one side of a two-sided coin. The other side is excitement. It a short journey to harness the power that is accessible to a person in recovery through the experience of anxiety. There is tremendous opportunity in learning how to transmute anxiety into excitement.

The first opportunity in this journey is by beginning to use anxiety as a cue. This is a pathway to increasing your awareness about your emotional presence throughout your day. Anxiety is more manageable when you can observe it in its beginning stages. As you move beyond the beginning stages, it gains momentum and power. So, beginning to learn the signals as to when it has begun will be a great tool.

In order to be able to identify anxiety, you will first need to cultivate awareness about how it shows up in your life.

What are the body signals? Some possibilities are stomach pain, neck tension, or headaches.
What are the mental signals? Perhaps you begin to have a repetitive thought pattern or begin to excessively think abou the past or future.
What are the emotional signals? Do you detach? Or do become excessively angry?

These are just two possibilities. Learn what your mind, body and emotions do at the beginning of an anxiety cycle and begin to use these as guides to develop tools to harness the power of anxiety. Once you have cultivated awareness of your early stages of anxiety, you can begin to develop tools to harness this energy and transform it into excitement about your life!

There’s a bit of a bridge between being spun out on anxiety and arriving to a place of excitement. Remember to be kind and compassionate with yourself. You can begin to develop some tools using the following suggestions and guidelines:

Perspective: the bridge between anxiety and excitement is mostly built upon bricks of opportunity. Begin to train yourself to look for the opportunity with that causing your anxiety.
Medicine: once you are aware of your cues, you can use these to build tools by taking opposite actions. For example, if your pattern is to become angry when anxious, teach yourself how to release anger with more ease.

Remember, this is a journey. Allow yourself to blossom within it!

Enlightened Recovery Solutions offers a harmonious approach to holistic treatment, bringing together the best of evidence-based, alternative, and 12-step therapies. Contact us today for information on our transformation programs of treatment for addiction and alcoholism.

Living Sober

Written by enlightened solutions on September 20, 2017. Posted in Addiction, Drugs & Alcohol. Leave a Comment

Sobriety is a new world to those who find their way into it. Living life without substances is unimaginable to many addicts. They arrive at this life that they are unprepared for and the concept of a blank canvas comes suddenly alive.

In the early days of recovery, living sober is often about living in opposition to the way you once lived. It is sometimes spoken in terms of avoiding people, places and things that you used to engage with and is often said that you must change everything to find a way of living sober. This is true for many people as their old lifestyles become triggers for their substances use by virtue of habit. So, success in breaking the habit of addiction, often means surrendering to letting many aspects of our lives also change.

There is a crossroads in how this level of dramatic change can be oriented to: it can be viewed as a devastating loss or it can be viewed as a creative opportunity. Sometimes, it may be a process to shift from one perspective to another. The truth is that living sober and change many of the significant elements of your life truly does give you a creative opportunity to re-craft your life in the image that you desire.

In some cases, people give up certain experiences and relationships temporarily while they build the foundation of their recovery. It is later an important part of their recovery to rejoin these elements and explore how to relate to them differently. In other cases, some people will commit to not doing any of the activities they did in their using life, ever. The way that addiction overtakes the lives of different individuals is vastly different, so these different expressions of sober life are all valid.

One key practice to a successful sober life is to learn from others who have restructured their life successfully. Find others who have a life that you would like to emulate and ask them to guide you. Similarly, when you have arrived at this place of a truly sober life, be willing to share your experience as to make the journey more accessible to those behind you on the path.

5 Critical Reasons for Taking a Holistic Approach to Treatment

Written by enlightened solutions on September 19, 2017. Posted in Alternative Therapy, Healthy Living. Leave a Comment

In many ways, the journey from the prison of addiction to the authentic self is inherently holistic. Addicts have lost their internal sense of belonging because they have become excessively focused on self. The pathway to recovery is paved with methods for returning as an integrated member of their communities, our families, circles of friends and professional associations. They heal by getting out of the cycle of physical dependencies and taking actions to be reunited with others. Holistic approaches can support these challenges with greater success by bolstering the recovery process.

Recovery is really hard, so why not do it once.
Getting clean and sober is one of life’s greatest challenges. Holistic treatment can support greater success in staying clean and sober at the first attempt.
Getting beyond survival and into thriving.
When the whole person is not considered, recovery can sometimes become about getting back to grind. With holistic approaches, the patients are given access to the wholeness of their internal self. They can engage with their creative and visionary self, creating a more fulfilling life for their recovered self.
Every person is here for a reason, so live it.
Fundamentally, every person is born to live out some certain societal contribution. When we get lost in an addictive cycle, we lose touch our purpose. A holistic model can support you in getting free from the addictive cycle. It can also support reconnection to this deeper sense of purpose that lives in the union of body, mind and spirit.
There’s a lot to make up for, so go for the greatest vitality.
Many people in recovery have lived in their addictive cycles for a long time. Holistic models of treatment offer the opportunity to elevate the health and well-being to previously unknown levels. In many ways, this part of recovery, as we make amends to all aspects of ourselves.
There’s one life, that we know of, so live it as fully as possible.
In many cases, when someone enters recovery, they are not only discovering freedom from addiction, they are also on the journey of breaking intergenerational cycles. Holistic models offer opportunities to re-learn some of the core behaviors that have been learned in our families, facilitating new possibilities for future generations as those in recovery teach what they learned.

10 Foods that Feed Mind, Body, Spirit

Written by enlightened solutions on September 18, 2017. Posted in Healthy Living, Recovery. Leave a Comment

Food can tend to multiple needs simultaneously – emotional, physical and mental. Learn to consider what is healthful from a perspective of adaptability – every food choice may nourish us in different ways! Some things to consider about food is that our bodies’ needs may change over time based on where we are in our recovery journey or where we are in our life journey. With this groundwork of the context of our life considered, we can then look at some specific healthy foods choices:

Water: this a key first priority, especially when detoxifying. It is our natural state and can bring forward fluidness in our spirit.
Avocado: This green beauty is a powerhouse of a nutritional meal! Avocado’s are full of good fat which improves the health of your heart and the sustenance will last a long time.
Dates: sugary and comfort foods can be a way to sooth the emotional healing process in recovery and dates are a great plant-based source of sweet. Combine with nut butters to slow down the metabolization for a snack that sustains longer.
Raw Nuts: a great snack to have on the go! When you find yourself in a state of hungry-angry-lonely-tired (HALT), you have a healthy snack on hand to bring your physical body back into center.
Goji Berries: these are a powerful food that satisfy the desire for sweet and offer detoxification support to the liver. Play with eating one berry at a time and fully experiencing it with all of the sensation of your mouth!
Passion fruit: remember, it isn’t ready to eat until the outer shell is wrinkled. Once it arrives at this place, you can open it and empty the fruit into your belly. Mix with almond milk and freeze for a fun spin on ice cream.
Millet: this powerful grain cooks much quicker than other whole grains and has a bread-like texture that can satisfy the desire for comfort foods.
Greens: this means a lot of different foods: lettuces, spinach, kale, chard and more! These foods are fabulous for their mineral content and positive impact on your digestive system.
Beets: these lovely Fall root veggies are sweet and easy to prepare! You can wrap them in tin foil, whole, and pop them in the oven at 350 for 45 minutes. Allow them to support you in becoming rooted in your purpose.
Chia pudding: this delicious food can be dessert while also working as a fiber to carry toxins out of the digestive system.

Bringing Meditation to Every Area of Life

Written by enlightened solutions on September 15, 2017. Posted in Healthy Living, Mental Health. Leave a Comment

Meditation is a powerful and accessible tool for someone in recovery. It transforms their state of presence and creates space to make an intentional choice in every moment. With choice, recovery begins.

Meditation is many things. To beginners, it is commonly thought to be a period of time sitting on a meditation pillow. Meditation is much more and can express in many other ways. It can be explored in the following the realms: physical body, mental body and emotional body.

Physical body: the body as a moving meditation, for example, when walking down the street. You can engage the following focal points:

Notice when your heel is in contact with the ground and when the ball of your foot is in contact with the ground.
Play with making big movements with your body – exaggerate your steps or swinging of your arms, or exploring the full core length as you move.

Mental body: engage the mind to cultivate ‘the witness’ which is to create space between you and your mind. You are not your thoughts. This awareness is the bridge to resisting cravings which can save lives.

Throughout the day, write down your thoughts as you notice them.
In a seated-meditation, notice your thoughts, explore the space between ‘you’ and your thoughts, allowing your thoughts to be clouds drifting by without attaching to them.

Emotional body: one challenge is the habituated avoidance of emotions. The emotions are a great playground for taking contrary actions to our habits:

When you notice an impulse to avoid, pause, and simply do the thing that you desire to avoid, even in the smallest measure. For example, if you typically avoid eye contact, make eye contact intentionally, even if only for a few seconds. Small changes lead to bigger changes, so celebrate the smallest contrary actions!
Remember emotions are simply energy that needs to move in order to be released. As you feel an emotion, allow yourself to connect to the image of a wave, washing in and out. As with waves, emotions will always change.

With these simple focuses, you can bring more attention to many areas of your life. You can begin to live with more intention by taking these small, tangible ways of being more fully with yourself in every moment of your precious life.

Tips for Managing PTSD

Written by enlightened solutions on September 14, 2017. Posted in Healthy Living, Mental Health. Leave a Comment

Post-Traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD) is very common with individuals who are in recovery from addiction. It is an experience of reliving a traumatic life-event that has occurred in the past. PTSD is most commonly associated with combat veterans but can also occur with a myriad of other experiences, including, but not limited to, physical fights and rape, car accidents, natural disasters, unusual health challenges, naming just a few.

When dealing with PTSD, it is very important to be aware of the principle of trauma-informed, especially when choosing a therapeutic practitioner. To be trauma-informed is the recognition of the effects of trauma on a person’s reactions and life experiences. This is a critical awareness when dealing with PTSD to mitigate the false beliefs that can form about the self of the person dealing with PTSD. To be trauma-informed about PTSD is to recognize that the experiences of PTSD is not who the sufferer is.

Once some foundational work has been done with a therapeutic practitioner, individuals can be an active participate in their own ongoing healing from PTSD through the practice of mindfulness. Once the baseline awareness of a PTSD response has been established, the person with PTSD can be cued to recognize when they will need to access mindfulness tools.

The Frozen Lemon

It can be supportive to use a frozen lemon to break a PTSD episode. This simple tool is very powerful for bringing the person experiencing PTSD out of the mind and back into the body. By holding a frozen lemon in one’s hand and closing the fist around it, the intensity of sensation lessens the hold of the mind on the past experience, bringing it down to a level of manageability.

Making the Image Black and White

When the PTSD takes someone into a critical moment of the traumatic experience, use the imagination to turn the image into black and white. Many people find that this will reduce the intensity of the experience.

Changing the Position

When the PTSD memory involves another person, the person experiencing it can engage the imagination to change the position of placement of themselves and the other in the memory. For example, if someone is standing over the person with PTSD and it makes them seem more powerful, the imagination can be engaged to make them stand below you, minimizing the power that they hold in the memory.

Lavender Should be Everywhere in Early Recovery

Written by enlightened solutions on September 13, 2017. Posted in Addiction Recovery, Recovery. Leave a Comment

Lavender is a vital herbal support for anyone in early recovery. It can bolster early recovery process through medicinal, self-care, mindfulness and spiritual applications. Like many herbs, it can be explored in its living plant form, dried herbal form or also as an essential oil. When engaging the essential oil, remember to mix it in a carrier oil, such as coconut or almond, to avoid sensitive skin reactions.

Medicinally, lavender can support many of the physiological challenges that the body faces as it begins to detox and restore itself. Some of the medicinal properties of lavender are anxiety reduction, digestive support and as a support to insomnia. In herbalist terms, lavender is an analgesic, anti-allergenic, antibacterial, antirheumatic, antispasmodic and a central nervous system sedative.

Lavender can also be engaged in soothing self-care practices which are essential to early recovery. A significant layer to the healing journey of the addict is to learn to be peacefully with their internal self and self-care practices are a safe way to explore this. Self-care practices that can be engaged with lavender are to take a warm bath with some drops of lavender essential oil. Another application can be to mix some drops of lavender oil in with some oil and practice self-massage. Massaging the feet can be especially powerful to support the grounding and calming effect of lavender.

Lavender as an essential oil can become a mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is the practice of slowing or stopping the mental chatter and more fully occupying your body and senses in the present moment. The simple act of smelling the lavender essential oil will expand your mindful presence. It is powerful bridge to our mindfulness that we may not be able to access without this important tool.

If possible, also get to know lavender in its living plant form. There are many varieties and they often have some kind of beautiful soft lavender bud on a gentle green stem. Sometimes, the buds will have tiny, darker purple flowers on them and are velvety to touch.Lavender represents the softness that we seek on this healing journey and models powerfully the practice of pruning and new growth that is available through it.

Why You Should Consider Eating Organic if You’re in Recovery

Written by enlightened solutions on September 11, 2017. Posted in Addiction, Addiction Recovery. Leave a Comment

Recovery is a challenging yet beautiful quest to returning to one’s wholeness. It is a journey of physical, emotional and spiritual healing. All of these layers of healing are critical to arrive to a state of true recovery. Yet, in early recovery, it is valuable to bring some extra attention to physical healing as it is the foundation necessary to have the resources for the intense process that is engaged in emotional healing and spiritual discovery.

The recovery process can be intense for many people on the physical plane. In many cases, the body has been subjected to long-term and often daily ingestion of toxins through the addict’s drug and alcohol use. When this ingestion stops, the body will undergo a multi-phased process of healing itself. It has an extraordinary capacity to heal itself, given time and adequate resources, to complete the healing process. It is critical to understand that the body has a finite amount of resources to both, continue sustaining itself and to heal itself. It can be helpful to think of this as an energy currency.

When we make the decision to heal, we can empower the body with more resources for the healing process by choosing what we ingest for our food resources. Our bodies require a certain amount of currency to run the daily systems to sustain life from one day to the next. The food choices we make more resources available for the actual healing process. This is especially true with organic foods. Organics do not have pesticides and other toxins that non-organics contain. The absence of chemicals in the food means that there is less work for your liver, kidneys and digestive system to do in making nutrients available for the rest of your bodies functions. It creates more resources for your body to heal itself.

Organics are sometimes more expensive than non-organic foods due to the absence of toxicity and what this means to the cost to farmers in the agriculture process. If cost prohibits one in purchasing organics, consider purchasing organics on foods that do not have a thick outer peel or shell. For example, lettuce, berries, etc are more exposed to toxins than an avocado or banana. Organics will support someone in early recovery in feeling better sooner and lay a solid foundation for the life-changing emotional work that lies ahead.

Yoga as a Spiritual Lifestyle

Written by enlightened solutions on September 8, 2017. Posted in Addiction, Alternative Therapy. Leave a Comment

Yoga has diverse ways of being expressed in the lives of people. In simplicity, yoga is usually a framework of physical movements called postures. They function to offer the practitioner, yogi, to have a spiritual experience breath, body, focus and senses. Many people will practice yoga fashioned after the philosophy of a specific spiritual teacher. There are people who become devoted to one philosophy of yoga and others who study many forms of yoga and integrate them into a personal expression. Both are authentic avenues of yoga as a spiritual lifestyle.

When beginning the journey of yoga as a spiritual lifestyle, it is supportive to take classes at a yoga studio after treatment. The structure of classes, experience of community and relationship with a teacher will allow yoga to become an integrated experience. Overtime, the student may discover that yoga came alive in their life and the decision to maintain these structures will become optional.

When this transcendence occurs, one may find themselves reflecting on what it means to take the yoga practice off the yoga mat and into the world. The student may return to reflect on these core principles: breath, body, focus and senses and play with them in everyday non-yoga contexts. For example:

Breath: be deeply connected to your breath in the rhythm of walking to the bus stop.
Body: discover internal connection to your upright spine as you sit at your laptop sending email.
Focus: playing with the dimensions of seeing and listening as you have a social conversation that is not optimally enthralling to you.
Senses: explore ways that you can experience layers of taste with appreciation of the healthy meal that you prepared.

In addition to exploring yoga off the mat, you can also consider Karma Yoga which is the way that bring what you have learned onto the mat into the lives of others. Sometimes this is sharing your practice or the way it has influenced your life. Other times, it is simply being of service to the needs of the community that may seem unrelated to yoga. With all of this woven together and adapted to, one has become a yogi.

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