Bringing Meditation to Every Area of Life

Meditation is a powerful and accessible tool for someone in recovery. It transforms their state of presence and creates space to make an intentional choice in every moment.  With choice, recovery begins.

Meditation is many things. To beginners, it is commonly thought to be a period of time sitting on a meditation pillow.  Meditation is much more and can express in many other ways.  It can be explored in the following the realms: physical body, mental body and emotional body.

Physical body: the body as a moving meditation, for example, when walking down the street. You can engage the following focal points:

• Notice when your heel is in contact with the ground and when the ball of your foot is in contact with the ground.
• Play with making big movements with your body – exaggerate your steps or swinging of your arms, or exploring the full core length as you move.

Mental body: engage the mind to cultivate ‘the witness’ which is to create space between you and your mind.  You are not your thoughts. This awareness is the bridge to resisting cravings which can save lives.

• Throughout the day,  write down your thoughts as you notice them.
• In a seated-meditation, notice your thoughts, explore the space between ‘you’ and your thoughts, allowing your thoughts to be  clouds drifting by without attaching to them.

Emotional body: one challenge is the habituated avoidance of emotions. The emotions are a great playground for taking contrary actions to our habits:

• When you notice an impulse to avoid, pause, and simply do the thing that you desire to avoid, even in the smallest measure.  For example, if you typically avoid eye contact, make eye contact intentionally, even if only for a few seconds.  Small changes lead to bigger changes, so celebrate the smallest contrary actions!
• Remember emotions are simply energy that needs to move in order to be released.  As you feel an emotion, allow yourself to connect to the image of a wave, washing in and out.  As with waves, emotions will always change.  

With these simple focuses, you can bring more attention to many areas of your life.  You can begin to live with more intention by taking these small, tangible ways of being more fully with yourself in every moment of your precious life.  

Enlightened Recovery Solutions offers a harmonious approach to holistic treatment, bringing together the best of evidence-based, alternative, and 12-step therapies. Call us today for information on our transformation programs of treatment for addiction and alcoholism: 833-801-5483.