HOW DOES MEDITATION HELP?
Both Zen and Vipassana traditions employ techniques such as ‘mindful awareness’ and ‘self inquiry.’ In this, meditators observe and analyse the workings of their own mind.
They are powerful tools for recovery, says Nicholson, who has integrated both methods into the Bay Approach, because they lead to personal insights about the source of cravings. That, in turn, helps to dissolve them.
“Mindful awareness is the process of watching the mind,” explains Nicholson, a psychologist and meditation teacher for over 20 years.
“You observe your thoughts and feelings, without becoming attached to them. From this perspective, you can begin to see the subtle patterns and habits around your addictive behaviour. When you are aware of how they influence you, they have less hold over you.
“Self Inquiry is a process of exploration into the truth,” she adds. “You determine to look honestly at your past and present, for example, the impact your behaviour has had or is having on you and those around you.”
In the Bay Approach, awareness and inquiry are used to help clients overcome addictive patterns. The method is effective because the emphasis is on self-reflection and analysis.
“Combined with psychotherapy, these meditative tools encourage people to take responsibility for themselves. In gaining their own awareness and insight, clients are often motivated to change for the better,” Nicholson explains.
Additional therapeutic benefits of meditation for addiction recovery – points out Kevin Griffin, author of One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps – is that, after some guided practice, the techniques can be applied by people on an ongoing basis in their lives. If practiced regularly, its effects are transformative and long lasting.
“Meditation can be applied to whatever you are doing, wherever you are,” says Griffin.
“In addiction, people turn to drugs to escape from uncomfortable feelings but in meditation, you learn to do the opposite. You sit with yourself, your thoughts and feelings instead of running away. At first, that can be very unpleasant. But with meditation you cultivate a positive relationship to yourself and the world,” he says.
“Only 20 minutes’ practice a day can shift your perspective on what is important. You develop compassion for yourself and a deeper connection. After a while, that is not something you want to let go of.”

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO MEDITATIVE PRACTICES TO HELP FREE ADDICTION
Contact meditation – relating to the present…
People with addictive problems often loose their sense of self in relationship with others, – and even in relationship to themselves. Brendan Healy, addiction counsellor at The Bay, recommends this ‘contact meditation’ to help people come into the present and strengthen their sense of self.
What to do.
Sitting alone or with somebody, focus on the factual sensory information you are receiving from your environment, internally and externally, without interpreting them.
Start with external sounds, smells or tastes, and then move to your inner sensations. If you hear chirping, say “chirping” – deciding it is a bird song is an interpretation, and that would be a secondary step.
Internally, you might feel tension in your belly, or heat in your chest. Describe your feelings physically. Then notice if these physical sensations give rise to you labelling them with an emotion such as anxiety or anger.
If you are with somebody, start a dialogue describing what you sense and feel in the moment and in response to one another. In this way, you start developing a sense of how physical sensations lead to feelings and then emotional reactions. If you use this method as an exercise with a friend or partner, you can become more conscious of your reactions to others while staying present with how you feel.
Awareness meditation – for difficult emotions.
Nicholson recommends this awareness meditation to help stay with difficult emotions as they arise.
What to do.
Spend about 20-minutes daily sitting quietly with you. Watch your breath rise and fall. As you do so, notice the activity of your mind. Watch thoughts come and go. When you realize you have become lost in your thoughts, come back to your breath.
In this way, you can develop a sense of yourself that is not your thoughts or emotions. It is the ‘watcher’ or the awareness that notices emotions and thoughts come and go, like clouds. This awareness is steady and timeless and the more you cultivate it, the more you notice how feelings, desires and cravings come and go. Developing a strong sense of awareness can help you sit with difficult feelings without acting on them.
Loving kindness meditation – developing positive regard.
Loving-kindness is a Buddhist meditation practice that systematically develops the quality of loving acceptance towards the self and others. When practiced regularly, it can help free a troubled mind from pain and confusion and make everyday relationships more meaningful, explains Kevin Griffin.
What to do.
Sitting quietly for 20-30 minutes, begin by developing a loving acceptance of yourself. You might start by imagining a light filled with unconditional love filling your body. Another technique is to imagine inhaling positive light and exhaling dark clouds filled with negativity. Alternatively, think of all the times you felt loved or were appreciated by others.
After filling yourself with love, think of a beloved person in your life. Send love to them. Repeat this with a neutral person and then a hostile person. Finally, imagine sending your love to all your friends, family – and people you hardly know. If you have trouble feeling self-love at first, this is probably due to feelings of unworthiness. Stick at it. Even if you don’t feel it at first, with practice, it will develop.

Website Link: http://www.buddhistrecovery.org

Now the hard science has caught up: a comprehensive scientific study showing that deep relaxation changes our bodies on a genetic level has just been published.

What researchers at Harvard Medical School discovered is that, in long-term practitioners of relaxation methods such as yoga and meditation, far more ”disease-fighting genes” were active, compared to those who practiced no form of relaxation.

Immunity
Relaxation appears to boost immunity in recovering cancer patients. A study at the Ohio State University found that progressive muscular relaxation, when practiced daily, reduced the risk of breast cancer recurrence. In another study at Ohio State, a month of relaxation exercises boosted natural killer cells in the elderly, giving them a greater resistance to tumors and to viruses.

Blood pressure
A study at Harvard Medical School found that meditation lowered blood pressure by making the body less responsive to stress hormones, in a similar way to blood pressure-lowering medication. Meanwhile a British Medical Journal report found that patients trained how to relax had significantly lower blood pressure.

Inflammation
Stress leads to inflammation, a state linked to heart disease, arthritis, asthma and skin conditions such as psoriasis, say researchers at Emory University in the US. Relaxation can help prevent and treat such symptoms by switching off the stress response. In this way, one study at McGill University in Canada found that meditation clinically improved the symptoms of psoriasis.

Switch off stress
How can you use relaxation’s healing powers? Harvard researchers found that yoga; meditation and even repetitive prayer and mantras all induced the relaxation effect. ”The more regularly these techniques are practiced, the more deeply rooted the benefits will be,” Jake Toby says. Try one or more of these techniques for 15 minutes once or twice a day.

Body Scans: Starting with your head and working down to your arms and feet, notice how you feel in your body. Taking in your head and neck, simply notice if you feel tense, relaxed, calm or anxious. See how much you can spread any sensations of softness and relaxation to areas of your body that feel tense. Once your reach your feet, work back up your body.

Breath Focus: Sit comfortably. Tune into your breath, follow the sensation of inhaling from your nose to abdomen and out again. Let tension go with each exhalation. When you notice your mind wandering, return to your breath.

Sitting quietly with eyes closed for 15 minutes twice a day, and mentally repeating a simple word or sound such as Om can evoke mantra repetition the relaxation response.

Guided Imagery: Imagine a wonderfully relaxing light or a soothing waterfall washing away tension from your body and mind. Make your image vivid, imagining texture, color and any fragrance as the image washes over you.

Website Link: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/relax–its-good-for-you-20090819-eqlo.html

Anyone can write whatever they choose about spiritual matters and everyone is entitled to their own opinion and form of worship, belief or ceremony. Ancient sacred Tribal rituals however, are another matter. American Indian Creation stories and language translations very often appear poorly represented in the public media as individuals retell them who are sadly misinformed. As the result, many indigenous peoples become less likely to share ceremonies with outsiders. We may feel inspired to share only in a general way, about the gratitude we feel for our culture and heritage without revealing particular sacred aspects of the ancient ceremonies. We do this because of some of the horrible misunderstandings that have occurred throughout history. The spirituality of our ancestors is not a fantasy world and neither does some native people experience the dreams and visions. Many of us hold a deep and reverent respect the workings of the Creator in our everyday lives.

When we attend 12-step meetings we often hear people describe various spiritual experiences, from a variety of religions or belief systems. There are hundreds of different types of Christianity, Judaism, native and many others. They are all good. None are wrong. We do not criticize the faith of anyone. We respect each other. We are grateful when anyone feels the presence of a loving Power that can keep them clean and sober. Our text reminds us that the book was written for the purpose of helping us find a Power greater then ourselves that can solve our problems.

An Ojibwa professor at Bemidji State University, Anton Truer, says, “The Great Spirit is both male and female and more, a force beyond our full comprehension.” I agree with his description for my own concept of a loving Higher Power but do not deny the concepts of others, no matter how different they sound to me. I have learned the value of open-mindedness and look for the similarities, rather than the differences between others and myself. This attitude makes it possible for me to know that spirituality is not fantasy, but rather the reigning grace of a loving God shared equally by everyone in recovery. Any of us who believe we can recover this way are truly blessed. We have made that impossible leap from the seemingly hopeless state of body, mind and spirit, to standing securely within the sunlight of the Spirit.

Website Link: http://frandancingfeather.com/fantasy/

In retrospect, I don’t remember ever saying to myself; I just want to run my own life, God, so butt out. But in reality, that’s how I was living. One decision at a time, I was taking charge of my own life and controlling things to suit me. I was putting my own ideas and my own thinking into action.

Being candid here, I thought it was being responsible; I was stepping up to the plate. I was taking charge, being invested and being smart, even. I was accomplishing things that were on my goal list, wasn’t I? What’s so wrong with that?

Just count the number of times I’ve used I or implied I in the previous paragraph. Yup. I, I, I…

That’s the problem. Its called playing God. (I had no clue.)

The way out was to get a clue by examining my thought process. I thought I was supposed to be in charge of my own life, so I was. Look where that got me: drunk and suicidal.

My way of thinking is what got me on the wrong path. My self-will took me further and further down a destructive trail towards an inevitable dead end.
It was going to take a flat-out decision on my part to remedy my predicament, my self-willed life, before I prematurely ended it.

I finally hurt enough to make this flat-out decision. The motivator was the pain. The pain is why I was lying flat out on the carpet in an empty room at the Fellowship Club. Without the crippling pain, I never would have made the decision. I know there are people who don’t have to reach such a crisis point to make this decision, but I’m the kind that does.

Maybe it’s the Irish redheaded stubbornness in me. Maybe it’s the German bull-headedness. Maybe it’s the 4th of July birthday. Who cares? I’m just so thankful I finally flat-out decided to take Step 3.

If my life was the result of bull-headed wrong thinking and stubborn wrong action, then I could have a remarkably different life by taking Step 3 seriously. Step 3 bears careful reading, and not just because I’m an English major, either.

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.”

As Joe and Charlie say, “We don’t turn anything over to God in Step 3. We make a decision to do something in Step 3, and the decision itself implies we’re going to take some further action to carry it out.”

Read Heidi’s Blog: http://goodlifenoalcohol.wordpress.com/

We drove through the most beautiful pine-covered wilderness I have ever seen to meet with elders and attend other small meetings and ceremonies and walk through sacred burial grounds. I was introduced to the backcountry of some members of my extended family. The land was wealthy with the powerful medicine of the First Nations here. I was humbled and more honored that anyone deserves to be honored. I was taken to the Abiinooji Aki Cultural Healing Center, where ancient ceremonial lodges were guarded by a fine stand of Ponderosa pine, as though the trees were the ancestral centennials, guardians of the old ways and language of the people.

We hiked miles through thigh-deep, damp light green fern in a thickly forested unmarked pathway to the burial sites of generations of Tribal medicine people. Even in physical death, their love and prayers permeated deep into my living soul and I surrendered to this precious and powerful moment in time. I was grateful for every surrender during the years of my recovery from alcohol and drug addiction that carried me to this extraordinary series of events. Every time we got back in the car we headed northwards to reach our final destination along a snaking route past the Great Lakes that looked more like the shorelines of an ocean with beaches containing the tallest pines in the entire world. I was completely enraptured by the endless wilderness around me. The small Canadian reserve was near the shoreline and across the huge body of water before me was the home of my family’s ancestral matriarchal clan. I completed my committed obligation to the local Tribe during the morning hours of my second day at the reserve. We were gathered in the Tribal hall and a buffet of salmon, cream cheese, and other native delicacies awaited my hungry indulgence. As I took a plate to fill, the hand of another woman, who asked me to please wait before eating and come with her, covered my hand. Again I surrendered…reluctantly I surrendered.

I cannot relate the details of the next few hours without dishonoring the sacredness of the healing ceremony I attended. A complete stranger again drove me in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, deep into the ancient wilderness to a cabin near a ceremonial house. A medicine woman and her apprentice performed the ceremony in the language of the people. I had never learned the language but it was somehow supernaturally infused into me and I was able to communicate fluently and easily throughout the entire visionary experience. I witnessed a healing which would be considered by modern medicine, as completely impossible. When we surrender to the service with which we are presented, miracles beyond human comprehension may occur. We may journey to places and intimate dimensions of our culture that reach far beyond our most wild and drunken dreams. Surrender and expect a miracle of healing and it will come!

Exploring Native American Wisdom: by Fran Dancing Feather
Link: http://frandancingfeather.com/surrender/

For those of us in recovery from addictions, fear seems to have a special place in our lives. The literature of recovery and much of the prevailing wisdom speaks constantly about fear and how our lives are “shot through with it.” There is actually research showing that two of the areas of the brain affected by (or perhaps causative of) addiction are the amygdala, specifically, and the overall limbic system, of which the amygdala is a part as well as the prefrontal cortex, the primary decision-making center and most evolved part of the brain.

I was driving in my car through downtown St. Paul many years ago and well into my own recovery from addiction, and I was experiencing an inordinate amount of fear. Anxiety. Panic. Call it what you will — they are all members of the same family. I cannot even remember what it was about. I do remember the insight. Up until that point, it had been so difficult for me to admit that I was feeling afraid. Not because I was not aware that I was feeling fear. No, I was well aware of the fear that would regularly visit me. In fact, for the last several years, I had even become accustomed to talking about that fear with a select group of men and women, privately and usually in the basement of some church. In those groups fear was not only respected, it was expected – even from men! I could admit it to the people in those basements more easily than I could admit it to myself, because I knew they would not make fun of me for having it.

Over the years I have heard from men in recovery from all walks of life who — when they are able to be gut-wrenchingly honest — talk about how much of their lives have been spent in fear. Former drug-dealer turned patent attorney. CEO of a national criminal justice organization. Former bodyguard for a smalltime Chicago “businessman.” Priest. Judge. Real estate magnate. Teacher. Psychiatrist. Nurse. Musician. Author. The list goes on, ad infinitum. Most of these men spent an inordinate amount of time focused on trying to show themselves and the rest of the world that they were not afraid. And so we all walked around thinking that none of us were feeling fear — and, in truth, it was killing us and all of our relationships.

Remember those stickers that used to be everywhere, most often on those big trucks that most people need a stepladder to get into: No FEAR! They shouted to anyone driving close enough to them: I AM A REAL MAN! The words in ominous writing meant to further communicate how much we, men, don’t want to — no, shouldn’t — have any fear in our lives. Of course I have come to realize that some of the most fearful men are the ones driving around the big trucks with stickers saying “No FEAR” on them.

If you are like I was and have aspirations of someday being fearless – as in not experiencing fear – that day, sadly, will never arrive. But, if you instead wish to simply fear less, well, that is available to you any time. The only catch: you have to be willing to acknowledge that the fear is there and for many men that can feel tantamount to admitting they are not men.

Today it seems easier for me to see other men’s fear, probably because I have become so intimately acquainted with my own fear. My relationship with this emotion is one that has become mostly amicable — I notice its presence and respect it, but have made it clear it is not going to run my life anymore. As is the case with so many things, in recognizing and facing my fear, it has much less power over me. So go ahead and do it, get honest about your fears — what are you afraid of?

Dan’s Blog: http://dangriffin.com/

The only thing that calmed me was going to meetings and reading the AA book. That’s why I sometimes went to 13 meetings a week. Life was too scary outside the rooms. I still didn’t want to ‘say the words of one who kneels’.

Step 3 for me actually started between two meetings. I went to the sunrise 7 o’clock meeting at the Fellowship Club. As with all newly sober alcoholics, I was experiencing agonizingly raw feelings that previously I had numbed. That morning both rage and fear gripped my mind and paralyzed me as soon as I left the corner meeting room.

Avoiding the coffee club in the hallway, I ducked into the first empty room and shut the door. I curled up in the corner and cried, before lying down prostrate * on the carpet. It didn’t smell good. I remember that. My life stunk and it felt right to be there, though.

I cried and I prayed. I gave up. Gave it all up. I was done trying to control, trying to make sense of my life. I made a decision that day. Come whatever, I wanted God to control my life. There was not one thing I was withholding from Him any longer. I gave up. The decision was made.

Admittedly, I had no idea of the cost, the process or the outcome of taking Step 3, but I had the heart for it. I had trust that He could and would help me out of the mess that was my life.

I made a decision, once and for all to do whatever the program prescribed. I was going to take the Steps, and take them like my life depended upon it, because that was true. It did. I was done trying to do it my way. And those are the words of one who kneels.

PS: What was your theme song?

* I was a drama coach while I taught high school English, so while this didn’t seem overly dramatic for me, it wouldn’t fit for most people.

Good Life: http://goodlifenoalcohol.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/step-3-part-3-decided-to-stop-singing-i-did-it-my-way/

What Bill Wilson originally penned and what ended up coming off the presses as the text-book for AA does differ, slightly. Sometimes editing changes are insignificant; sometimes they change the tone and blur the passion, if not the intent, of the author.

You may have read the following sentence before, if you’ve studied the history of the Big Book, but it’s no longer in the pages of our text. It not only gives us a clue to Bill’s forceful personality, but also sums up his convictions concerning the principles of AA. I laughed out loud when I heard it.

If you aren’t convinced of these vital issues, you ought to reread the book to this point or else throw it away!

Amen! I would have loved to have met the guy.

What he meant by vital issues is on page 60 following the 12 Steps:

a. That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives
b. That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism
c. That God could and would if He were sought

Bill’s suggestion of re-reading the book up to this point for those who are not convinced of the ABCs, is not a blustery attempt at humor. The statistics of alcoholism are on the rise and the demographics have broadened dramatically since the first publication of the text in 1939.

We alcoholics are fighting for our lives, or else in a gesture of defeat, we’re drinking ourselves into an early grave. There’s no riding the fence for an alcoholic. To drink is to give up; to drink is to die or slowly become brain-damaged and disabled first, and then die a tragic alcoholic death. I’ve met a lot of sober alcoholics that quit drinking for the sole reason that they didn’t want to die like that.*

Of course, there’s another option. We can just put the cork in the jug and live an emotionally crippled life without the numbing effects of alcohol but with the craziness of alcoholic thinking. We can choose to be a dry drunk, going on emotional binges and isolating ourselves while we nurse our grudges and focus on maintaining our pride, refusing to change. This is not recovery.

On the other hand, to believe that the ABC’s are true, means that we can look forward to learning new ways; changing our lives, walking forward with hope and help, and into new solutions for living.

It’s a choice. We can choose to remain victims of alcohol by volunteering for the role of victim and continuing to drink; or we can discover a better way of living by assessing the reality of our situation and taking the 12 Steps to recover.

It’s not quite as easy as my quick summary sounds, but it’s not real complicated, either. It’s simple…very simple. It’s not easy.

It all starts with the ABC’s. Elementary. It’s so foundational that a recovery without using the ABC’s is not the recovery Bill had in mind. I don’t know about you but my definition of recovery is his. I couldn’t have my recovery without these. It would be like writing a post without being able to use A or B or C. For me, it wouldn’t work. Without them, I would have given up. Many do.

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Alcoholics Anonymous, 2012, p 60

PS:If you want to pull back the curtain of grief that is alcohol, I would suggest you take a look at Danger-alcohol, a post by a young woman who fights daily to become a survivor of alcoholic grief.

Re-Blogged from: http://goodlifenoalcohol.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/step-3-part-2-abcs-of-aa/

The second thought that jumps up my brain is: Oh, yeah. Obviously everything happens for a reason. The reason I got into a car accident is so that my car should be wrecked. The reason my day is ruined is so I don’t accomplish any of the things that I need to do today. The reason my insurance is going up is so I can have less money to buy food for my kids. How does that help me?

Knowing that there is a reason for everything that happens doesn’t take a genius to figure out, certainly there was no need to enlighten me that every event has a consequence. What if there is The Reason behind every event?

So, if everything happens for The reason, not just A reason. And The reason is God’s master plan for his universe, then what am I to do with my predicament?

God created the physical world so that humans can transform it and elevate it to a spiritual state. We have the power to experience people, places and things in a Godly way, thus changing their composition from merely physical to a new spiritual dimension. The only reason bad things happen to us, is because we are challenged to elevate that situation from the annoying (to humans) to the pleasurable (to God).

In other words “Everything happens for a reason” are not words of consolation, but a call to action. If I got into a car accident it is because there is something that I can do in that situation that can make a difference in God’s master plan for his universe. It’s up to me to figure it out. It’s up to me to make it worth it. It’s up to me to take action, and walk the talk. It is up to me to understand “The Reason” and take action.

We were committed. The fire had been lit at sunset that would burn throughout the deepest, coldest and longest night of the year. It was the Solstice time when we would honor the frozen earth. We were committed to stand barefoot on the icy ground around the fire and pray. These are ancient scared rites and if they are done properly, no one suffers but all are renewed by the experience of the ceremony. Holy herbs are offered and burned as we sing in a language that is nearly forgotten in the modern world. We were near the top of the sacred mountain where the Creator is known as the “Greatness of All Things”. We were sober natives from various Tribes and we made our prayers in the wilderness where we would remain unobserved by outsiders. The purpose of our prayers was for the next seven generations of the keepers of the mother earth, to have the strength to endure the coldest winds of winter and keep our traditions alive. They were also for our elders to survive this year’s winter purification and for our ancestors who have gone before us.

Winter is the time for storytelling. We pass on those stories from our ancestors to our children and grandchildren. They help us to know who we are and why we are here. We re-tell Creation stories about how our people came into this world. We tell personal stories and some funny stories. An old woman told me that storytelling is a dying art. Before she died, Margaret told me to keep storytelling alive for the children. Tell these things in an animated way with different voices for every animal and sound effects. Do not be afraid to be animated because this way the stories will be remembered. They will entertain the listeners. The elders told them around the central fire in the longhouse where the family gathered during the long winter nights to stay warm. The extended family was drawn close to each other in this loving way. The elders were magical in their storytelling. Some of the stories were about healing herbs or animals or beings who crossed into other dimensions to find answers for the villagers. The stories contained very descriptive accounts of sights, sounds, smells and other sensations so the listeners could really see and feel the lessons contained in them. It was like watching a good movie to hear these stories. They inspired in us the desire to paint the characters, or write songs and poetry to express our love of the characters who came to life for us on those cold long winter nights. The best stories had moral teachings woven between the lines so they were educational as well as being a great way to keep warm and pass the time.

In recovery we learn to tell stories of experience, strength and hope to inspire each other to stay sober. It’s how we carry the message to others. These stories also carry a moral lesson between the lines. It is the most important lesson we can learn. Our stories make us into an extended family of sorts, who loves and cares for one another. Our personal winter solstice was the end of our drinking, the darkest and longest night of the soul. If we survive that dark cold time then every day afterwards we are heading for the renewal of springtime and new life. Getting sober is like standing barefoot on the frozen ground unafraid of the future because we are now resting in the loving hands of our Creator. We trust the process; the purification and healing that come from patience and tolerance and moves us into happy, joyous freedom. We are not afraid of our pain and we enter into it with the courage to change. The stories of others who have made it through the dark night guide us like a light through the fear and unknowing. We learn to trust each other and eventually tell the stories of the steps that are lit by the adventures of our own experience. My Grandpa said the meeting was like the ancient council fire where the people came together for healing and wonderful things came to pass for them and countless others.

Link to website: http://frandancingfeather.com/solstice/