What Is Meditation?
I never knew anything about meditation. I had always assumed it had to be some sort of scam taught by people who were trying to make money. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I learned more about meditation when I first arrived at Circle of Hope, and now it’s an integral part of my recovery.
The Many Benefits of Meditation
The overall benefits of meditation are wide-ranging. It can influence every aspect of your life. You can be more grounded and appreciate the power of patience.
You are less quick to react to things emotionally. I was skeptical at first. How can meditation help with addiction? It can go a long way when you are trying to stay sober.
Staying sober is all about mindfulness. It’s important to understand what triggers you, and why you react to situations the way that you do. In a lot of cases, people turn to drugs and alcohol because they are unable to handle stressful or traumatic situations in a healthy manner.
Mindfulness and meditation are very closely linked. One of the most important things you will learn in recovery is to be mindful of the way you react.
When you have the urge to get high, you must stop and ask yourself why you are having those feelings? The answer can reveal a lot about your circumstances, as well as provide an opportune moment
There are a lot of impulsivities when it comes to substance abuse. Getting high or drunk may seem like a quick fix to your issues. What’s difficult to understand is the lasting effects that those quick fixes can have.
A daily meditation practice for recovery is extremely beneficial. It forces you to slow down and look inward. You typically have a specific time set for the length of your meditation.
Sticking to that time schedule will help you gain discipline. If you’re going to meditate for ten minutes, you need to sit there for ten minutes and put all of life’s other distractions to the side for that time.
Types Of Meditation
There are a number of different types of mediation that can help you in your recovery:
Guided meditation is the most common type that you will come across in treatment. Guided meditation is typically led by an instructor, and there is usually a different theme to each session.
The instructor will paint a mental picture for you to process and reflect on. It will typically involve some sort of imagined scene or landscape in order to give you a specific image.
For example, it could be a beach landscape or a forest wilderness. You will close your eyes and imagine yourself in this scenario and use your imagination to make up your own story.
Breathing meditation is another form that a lot of treatment centers use. This requires you to focus on each breath as you meditate. You will breathe deeply and slowly, keeping your mind on each breath that you take.
This will help clear out all the mental clutter that you have built up.
Mantra meditation involves a specific sound or phrase repeated over and over again during the meditation process. This can calm your mind and allow you to achieve full relaxation.
With mindfulness meditation, you will be in a quiet setting where you will work on focusing your attention on the present moment. The object of mindfulness meditation is to focus on the thoughts and feelings that come into your mind at each moment.
A great book to check out on this subject is “24 Hours A Day”. This is often referred to as “the little black book” in the recovery world. Since the 1950s, this book has been a staple for addicts in recovery.
This book offers daily meditations that can offer you great insight into yourself and your recovery. Beyond a meditation for the day, the 24 Hour A Day book offers thoughts of the day that can help your overall attitude.
These thoughts can be applied to all aspects of your daily life beyond just staying sober. The one I enjoy the most talks about not giving in to the temptation to judge or blame others when you are trying to help them.
That one thought has helped me be a much more compassionate and understanding person.
Daily Meditation Practices for Recovery
Meditation is a practice much like sobriety is. It can be a great way for you to establish a routine. Routine is very important in the world of recovery. I try to start my day off with mindful meditation in order to put myself in the best possible place mentally.
A combination of this and a daily reading from the “24 Hours A Day” puts me in the right mind frame where I feel that I can tackle the day. Daily meditation readings can be the perfect way for you to hold yourself accountable.
Achieving sobriety requires you to try several things you didn’t ever see yourself trying. The idea that sobriety is boring couldn’t be more wrong. You are opening yourself up to so many new experiences and ways of thinking.
You can’t just go through recovery and then never work on your sobriety. In my experience, that usually leads people back to substance abuse. There needs to be a sense of purpose when it comes to your sobriety.
You need to make it an essential part of your lifestyle. Finding the right support group is also key. By meeting more and more people in recovery, you can learn new skills and new types of recovery meditation.
One of the biggest aspects of sobriety is to look inward and learn self-awareness. The benefit stems from an understanding of what led you towards addiction in the first place.
It’s very valuable to recognize the progress that you have made. Whenever I have the urge to relapse, it isn’t hard for me to think about everything that I have achieved so far.
Everything that I’ve learned along the way has made this process more than worth it. I plan on continuing my sobriety journey and continuing to learn every day so that I can be the best version of myself possible.
