Substance abuse can bring mental, spiritual, and physical chaos into your life. Even if you are able to appear to be holding it together on the surface, important things get lost in the chaos. During active addiction, the mind and body are often moving constantly. During treatment, finding the ability to simply sit and be with yourself – mentally, physically, and spiritually, can be very powerful.
Making It All Stop
Sitting in congested, noisy traffic for hours. Attending a loud, crowded rock concert. Working in a busy hospital emergency room during a crisis situation. All of these situations conjure up mental and physical sensations of chaos. Yet during active addiction, you may have just adjusted to living in similar chaotic conditions internally and not even realized it. At some point, for whatever reason, you decided to make it all stop.
Like the sounds and sensations of car horns, loud music, or the sound of medical equipment will still reverberate through your body long after those experiences, the chaos of addiction will still reverberate in your mind and body after detox. As you begin to heal, your mind and body will begin to calm, but the healing process takes time and effort before you are able to find peace, to be able to find the ability to be still.
Reconnecting With Your Body
Addiction often distances you from your body’s needs. You learn to listen to the cravings for substances rather than the basic needs of food, sleep, and exercise. The chaos often separates you from basic sensations, like noticing the wind rushing through your hair or the way the sand feels between your toes at the beach. You forget to notice when your body aches or has pain that needs attention.
As you begin the healing process, reconnecting with your body is an integral part of the process. Using basic grounding techniques to help you get in touch with your senses again and notice what is around you will help you push out the chaos and bring balance back into your body. Yoga is another great way to help your body heal, as it helps to reconnect your mind, body, and spirit.
Finding Quiet Time in Your Mind
Learning to keep your body still is a big enough challenge, but taming the mind after addiction can be particularly difficult. The noises of emotions, thoughts, shame, guilt and more can create constant mental motion that is difficult to stop. Quieting your mind takes a lot of practice and discipline, but by working on it every day, you will soon find mental peace for a few minutes, then a few minutes more, and eventually have more control.
Being able to quiet your mind can be achieved through mindfulness meditation, breathing exercises, and other relaxation techniques that help you clear your mind and focus on one thing at a time. As you practice these techniques, your mind will become stronger, and these skills will also help with relapse prevention.
Getting in Touch With Your Spirituality
Another separation that occurs during addiction is the loss of touch with your spirituality. Not to be confused with religion, your spirituality is your sense of peace, your purpose in life, and feelings such as hope. The chaos of addiction tends to drown out the quiet and peaceful anchors of spirituality.
When you reconnect with your body and you are able to quiet your mind, the next goal is to be able to get in touch with your spirituality. Often, this can be achieved through practices such as mindfulness meditation and yoga, which serve to heal the whole person – mind, body, and spirit. These practices help you learn to be still and be able to sit with yourself simply.
Why Being Still Is So Powerful
Being able to be still is the antidote to the chaos of addiction. Sitting with yourself allows the healing to flow through your body, mind, and spirit. Through stillness, you become more self-aware and more cognizant of your potential as a human being. Stillness clears away all of the judgment, all of the emotional drama, all of the doubts and fears, all of the shame and guilt. All that is left is you.
The power of stillness heals in the moment and in the future. When you learn to be still and just be with yourself, you are also strengthening your mind and body to prevent relapse. You are taking your mind, body, and spirit back from the chaos of addiction and giving yourself the gift of peace and healing.
There is great power in being still after the chaos of addiction. Being able to reconnect your body, mind, and spirit and simply sit with yourself can increase self-awareness and help with relapse prevention. Being still allows you to find inner peace and healing. The Ho Tai Way – Recovery For Women is a detox and residential treatment program that treats women with addiction and co-occurring disorders. We focus on healing the mind, body, and spirit to help you find self-awareness and peace. Our trauma-informed care offers you safe, non-judgmental, compassionate healing. Our facility is a quiet refuge for healing located in Costa Mesa, California, where you can learn to be still and sit with yourself. Our goal is to provide a safe place for you to find your way again. Contact us at The Ho Tai Way at (714) 881-8931 to learn more.
