Healthcare has been a continuous trend over the past decade. Many people suffer from Depression due to addiction as a fact of life. Here people suffer for a longer time, and there is no particular cure for Depression other than self-healing; you can look forward to having yoga, laughter therapy, meditations to cure the same. There have been continuous approaches, which have got a high standard for the alignment of proper treatment. This is why holistic addiction centers have now been looking for more diverse therapies and offer alternative therapies and traditional medical treatment for addiction recovery.
Understanding the holistic approach
The term holistic can be elaborated as a characterized treatment to a person’s whole body by considering physical, mental, spiritual, and social factors, rather than just treating the symptoms of diseases. When it comes to addiction treatment, a holistic approach can be termed as treating the person as a whole rather than just healing the person for the symptoms of addiction disorder. The holistic strategy centers on the treatment offered to the patients of addiction recovery.
A holistic approach is an essential part of substance abuse recovery that allows the individual to reach full potential while leading an independent and self-sufficient life. The holistic approach comprises therapies like yoga, meditation, art therapy, massage therapy, equine therapy, adventure therapy, psychodrama, etc. these therapies help you recognize the interconnection between your mind, body, and behavior. These therapies serve as a complementary approach that addresses the whole body. The holistic approach is a very comprehensive and practical way that helps in developing a healthy and meaningful lifestyle after the treatment.
Holistic treatment for addiction recovery
Addiction has a significant impact on your mind and body. Holistic treatment for addiction recovery uses a personalized approach and non-medicated methods. Holistic medicine offers treatment for physical, mental, nutritional, and nutritional imbalances. The efficiency of the therapy helps you support long-term recovery and diminishes the chances of relapsing.
Holistic treatment helps the addict deal with sleeping habits, poor diet, and emotional distress. The therapy uses gentle and flexible methods as per the need and requirements of the patient. The primary intentions for holistic addiction therapy include:
- Helps in identifying the causes of addiction treatment
- Strengthens craving resistance
- Improves physical strength and fitness
- Develops self-confidence
- It helps in reducing the pleads for drug and alcohol abuse.
Different types of holistic addiction therapies
Holistic treatment focuses on a more comprehensive physical, mental, and spiritual wellness for substance abuse disorder. Many rehabilitation centers offer alternative therapies along with traditional medical therapies. Some of the effective medicines of holistic addiction treatment are:
Meditation:
The recovery must have a clear mind to recover from addiction. Many rehabs offer meditation with the help of a therapist as a part of holistic treatment to recover from addiction, to help patients with early recovery. Meditation works as a therapeutic treatment that deals with the emotional aspect of a person. Every individual in the present time has one or other desires from life such as healthy relationships, successful career, recognition in society, etc. these desires wrap the individual with unwanted perceptions and leads to emotional sufferings which takes you towards addiction.
Meditation is the most popular practice for mindfulness; it encourages you to focus on your breaths and thoughts when they arise, then brings your focus back to the breath when you release your breath. Meditation helps an individual to live in the present moment without being distracted by emotions. It helps in encouraging curiosity towards your thoughts without being judgemental.
Meditation helps in reducing stress and improving reactive behavior. It also helps in managing cravings, intense emotions, and triggers. Rehab centers provide guided medication procedures that help in recognizing difficult emotions and develop healthy interactions about coping skills.
Yoga
Yoga is the earliest Indian practice that balances your breaths, body postures, and stretching exercises. Yoga helps in reducing stress levels in the body. It teaches you to be kinder to your body while navigating difficult emotions within you. It is essential as addiction most often develops due to emotional imbalance or stress. Yoga can help you reduce stress levels, symptoms of pains, anxiety, and Depression. It can also help in relieving you from the risk of addiction relapsing when practiced regularly. The core components of yoga in the present times are practicing different breathing sequences, meditations, and practicing other body posters.
Yoga has been found effective in regulating adrenaline and cortisol levels in the body, known for lowering stress levels. Thus it’s advised to practice yoga for one and half hours every week to keep a balance of stress and anxiety.
Art therapy
It is one of the fun ways of reducing stress levels within the body. Art therapy arrived in 1950, but in the present time, it has taken a more dramatic inroad for the treatment of addiction. It engages the patients in active activities while the therapists observe their behavior from the piece of art produced by the patients themselves. The piece of art holds the traces of traumas they have suffered. Art therapy significantly helps in identifying and exploring the root cause of addiction. Art therapies can help a patient reduce the denial behavior of the patients, enable healthy communication and expression of feelings, motivates positive behavioral changes, increased quality of life, higher self-confidence, early recovery from past trauma, and facilitates relational connections. Rehabilitation centers combine the spiritual angle with art therapies that encourage the patient to have creative expressions via different genres.
Massage therapy
Stress is a part of everyday life, but for people suffering from past trauma, such as parental abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, and several other events can trigger the ability of a person to live a healthy life. This could result in numbing of physical and mental emotions by substance abuse. Massaging therapies help an individual to heal with the power of touch. It has been found beneficial in restoring moods by balancing serotonin and dopamine levels, promoting relaxation by reducing stress level hormones, relieving body pains, and improving your sleep quality. It also helps in elevating the immune system by strengthening the sense of overall well-being. There are four different types of massage therapies; you can choose them according to the goals you want to accomplish, such as improving body postures, stimulating blood circulations, proper functioning of organs and tissues, boosting energy levels, and relieving the body from pains. Massage therapy is ideal for early sobriety from drug and alcohol abuse while observing physical symptoms in the recovery process.
Equine therapy
You might feel this is a strange process, but the treatment has been efficient in helping people to recover and connect to their internal feelings. These therapies use horse-guided interactions that help in stimulating self-emotional growth, which is an essential element in the path of recovery from substance abuse. The treatment has helped the patients in several ways by developing a feeling of self-efficiency, self-confidence, self-acceptance, developing trust, impulse control, social communication skills, self-efficacy, and much more. Here, the therapist observes the client’s behavior when they have communication with the horse; this helps the therapist understand the emotional reactions and patterns so that he/she can work in a manner that could help build healthy relationships with friends, family co-mates, etc. The joyous union between the patient and horse can help the patient improve the outcome of the therapy. The therapy has proved efficient in mastering new skills, creating body awareness, maintaining posture and balance, developing focus, memorizing skills, encouraging group responsibility, and changing the attitude towards people and things. The therapy has helped aid both mental health and addiction and helps build healthy relations and understand responsibility. Suppose you are suffering from any kind of mental health issue. In that case, you must look forward to considering the benefits of Equine therapy, which offers dual diagnosis treatment of co-occurring mental illness and substance abuse. The treatment has been helpful for the ones who are seeking new hobbies in their path of recovery.
Nutritional therapies
a healthy body is essential for recovering from addiction. Addicts usually develop the habit of consuming low nutritious food due to loss of appetite within them. This is why the most efficient of the therapies even goes inefficient due to lack of proper nutrition. Nutritional deficiency while recovering can result in a weak immune system, improper functioning of the brain, obesity, diabetes, nervous disorder, metabolism issues, and cardiovascular diseases. This is why a proper diet is given in the rehabilitation centers during detoxification to improve the outcome of the therapy and fulfill the nutrient requirement in the body. This helps overcome the physical and biochemical changes and leads to a fresh start to their body to overcome addiction.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing(EMDR)
EMDR therapy has been proved efficient in easing the symptoms of anxiety, trauma, Depression, and several other challenges. The therapy doesn’t work to eliminate the harsh memories from the past but works on the parts essential to eliminate those factors but works with those parts of the brain that helps in fighting those factors. The therapy has been efficient in helping train your mind to feel safe and stress-free when those situations arise. The therapy enables you to express and communicate about your negative feelings without letting those feelings affect you negatively. A therapist here will help you with a particular set of bilateral eye movements that helps in staying grounded in the present moment. The therapist makes you exercise 5-10 repetitions for the eye moment in his/her presence so that you can feel safe during the reprocess.
Solution-focused therapy
It is a highly successful therapy for addiction treatment that aims to provide an assumption solution to clients that makes life better. This therapy involves a conversation with the patient that helps the therapist acknowledge, gratitude, validate, complement the clients’ requirements by identifying their strengths and weaknesses; thus are a great source to help the patient achieve their goals.
Acupuncture therapy
The therapy is used as an alternative to stroke rehabilitation. They are beneficial to treat joint pain, backaches, arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, and other types of pain. These therapies are based on a philosophy used to block pains along the nerves and improve nervous, cardiovascular, and digestive systems. These therapies have served efficiently to reduce pain, reduce cravings, ease withdrawal symptoms, reduce anxiety and stress, reduce aggression, and help in the purification of blood while detoxifying. Researches have proved that acupressure helps increase the endorphin levels in the body, which helps relieve cravings and thus helps treat addiction. The therapy has served efficiently as compared to methadone as it has been more efficient as it reduces the risk of transferring addiction from one substance to another.
Fitness and exercise
Exercises help in easing Depression which is sometimes the reason behind substance abuse. Movements have efficiently reduced the cravings from substance abuse and serve as a tool that allows the release of positive chemicals in your mind. These positive hormones get exhausted once you fall into the trap of addiction. Exercise and body fitness here helps in adding competition to your everyday schedule, particularly in the early days of recovery. Exercising daily will help in reducing stress and strengthen your body. This is why daily exercising is encouraged in many holistic rehabilitation centers.
Conclusion
Addiction is a complicated issue that affects the functioning of the overall mind and body. There have been successful recovery from addiction with the help of holistic rehabilitation centers and their different methodologies. These therapies and treatments help understand the issues behind substance abuse, which holds the roots for long-term recovery. Holistic therapies can help you know your substance abuse from several angles, thus are helpful in mental, physical, and spiritual healing. These approaches are great compliments for the individuals who are looking forward to recovering from addiction.