Each treatment facility you go to will offer a different range of amenities and services one of which can be meditation. Meditation in recovery is very important for your long-term success, and a skill that you can take with you after you leave your treatment center.
Importance of Meditation in Recovery
Meditation has several key benefits for anyone but especially someone in recovery:
- Mindfulness: The most important benefit is mindfulness where you become more mindful of your body, your breathing, and the present moment instead of worrying about the past or the future
- Stress Reduction: Meditation reduces cortisol levels, the stress hormone and this helps you manage your emotions more effectively in recovery
- Focus: When you meditate you are able to learn how to focus your mind where you choose and this type of focus and concentration is essential to creating and keeping recovery goals
- Craving Control: Regular meditation can help you when you are feeling anxious or have cravings by taking time to detach from those feelings instead of acting on impulse
- Sleep Quality: meditation helps you promote better sleep which gives you overall calmness, improved mood, and hormonal regulation
No matter the type of meditation you practice, meditation in recovery gives you the skills to be more self-aware. The more you practice meditation, the more you will learn that you can choose how you respond, you can return to your breath if you are stressed and things are outside of your control, and you can find inner peace no matter what is happening around you.
Types of Meditation in Recovery
While most people think of the term meditation and associate it with a monk who is seated in a lotus position, there are endless opportunities for people in recovery to incorporate meditation on a daily basis.
Traditional Meditation
With traditional meditation you can choose a seated, comfortable position with your spine upright. This is where most people start.
You can also choose a resting position if that’s more comfortable or if you are practicing meditation before bed where you lie down in bed.
Note: When some people start meditation they end up falling asleep and they think they are doing it wrong. While the overarching goal is not to sleep each time (unless you or doing a restful meditation for bed), if you fall asleep periodically it likely means that that’s what your body needed the most and you gave yourself an opportunity to pause and let your body discover that. When you don’t need a quick nap more than anything, you’ll find that your body stays awake during meditation.
Walking Meditation
For those who don’t like sitting still or who find that they are too anxious during a particular meditation session can participate in walking meditation. Originally, Tai Chi was developed as a form of walking meditation as was qigong.
Going through the movements gives you focus on your inhalations and exhalations with low impact body movements designed to keep you meditatively focused on your breathing and the present moment.
If sitting still doesn’t work for you, you can participate in meditation where you slowly walk around the room inhaling with each step of your right foot and exhaling with each step of your left foot.
Tip: If you are participating in a meditation group you might ask permission to walk around the room while everyone else sits and in so doing say to yourself mentally ‘inhale’ and ‘exhale’ with your corresponding left and right foot to keep you grounded in the moment.
Eating Meditation
Each time you eat you can be more mindful of the process by participating in eating meditation as well. This is more of a focus on gratitude practices, where you take the time to reflect on each step of the process that led to your food starting with the sun and the soil leading to the farmers and the distribution process.
You might even take time to mindfully smell the food before you eat it, chew the food and pause to reflect on what you taste and how it feels.
This can be a chance to sit and quietly reflect on your gratitude and all the other reasons you have to be grateful, not just the fact that you have good food or that you have a healthy body.
Driving Meditation
If you don’t have dedicated time to sit or walk during the day and you are in a car, driving meditation is another option. This is a subset where you might focus on a keyword or phrase, repeating it to yourself every time you see something like:
- A stop sign
- A red light
- Brake lights
It can be especially useful to help control high blood pressure or anger and anxiety if you are stuck in traffic by associating things like brake lights around you with an inhale or an exhale.
Finding Meditation in Recovery at Sequoia Detox Centers
At Sequoia Detox, our addiction treatment programs all include a range of therapies designed to help with overall recovery and co-occurring mental health disorders. We believe that having the right tools to regulate impulse control, build emotional resilience, and keep yourself grounded in the present moment goes a long way toward reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.