Touting mindfulness as an offered part of programming in a treatment center for addiction recovery is less about marketing or new age spiritual nonsense than it is proven results. Mindfulness has attracted the attention of the scientific community and undergoes a wealth of studies on a regular basis.
Mindfulness is proven to reduce many of the stressful symptoms we experience each day, helping us to cope with life on life’s terms while reducing the symptomatology of mental illnesses. For recovering addicts and alcoholics, mindfulness plays an important role. Most people in recovery experience difficulty in managing their emotions in life. Mindfulness helps them to compassionately and nonjudgmentally detach from the overwhelming control of those emotions. Instead, they are able to observe, notice, and embrace their emotional states from a place of calm.
Stress is the result of the brain entering fight or flight, an anthropological response to the time when man was the prey and animal was the predator. Adrenaline and cortisol are two stress hormones that kick in in the face of danger in addition to the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Stress doesn’t often complete its cycle. Instead, it gets stored in the body. Stress can lead to heart disease, perpetuate the development of cancers, and weaken the immune system.
Mindfulness practice helps the body relax and combat the effects of residual stress. Strengthening the immune system is one of the benefits of mindfulness practice which helps with stress.
Mindfulness is about redirecting focus. Asking the practitioner to nonjudgmentally pay attention to the world around them, mindfulness helps the mind sharpen focus by practicing a different form of it. The act of noticing and paying attention uses different parts of the brain from everyday focus. Additionally, cognitive biases prevent our brains from working as hard as they can. Mindfulness is a challenge that helps the brain grow, even on a physical scale. Meditation has been proven to increase grey matter in the brain. Grey matter is new and malleable brain tissue, ripe for learning.
Mindfulness meditation in particular is great for anxiety reduction because it helps quiet the mind and the breath. Calm breathing is one of the main tools people suffering from anxiety can use to work through a sudden onset. Anxiety attacks flood a person’s mind with fear, worry, and stress, leaving little room for them to focus on the present or reality. Mindfulness allows the anxious mind to focus on a single object, thought, or even focus on nothing at all. Rather than telling their brain to calm down, which almost never works in an anxiety attack, mindfulness lovingly tells the brain to focus on something else.
Aurora Recovery Centre believes in the practical application of spiritual disciplines to supplement a program of recovery. We offer spiritual mentorship and training including the development of a mindfulness practice. Using evidence based treatment methods in combination with spiritual guidance, Aurora provides a comprehensive and deeply healing treatment program to men and women seeking transformational recovery from addiction, alcoholism and dual diagnosis issues. For more information call 1-844-515-STOP today.