Exploring Holistic Therapy Options in MS
Holistic therapies allow you to supplement your recovery with non-medical treatments. They encompass a wide range of approaches, and many people find them effective. They focus on bringing the mind, body, and spirit into the equation. Treating addiction by using holistic therapy has proven to be useful for many people.
Today, it’s not hard to find a treatment center offering holistic therapies. Using them together with traditional approaches can promote someone’s odds of long-term success. We at Defining Wellness Centers believe in healing the whole person when they enter our treatment program.
Holistic Therapy’s Main Focus
Each therapy approaches treatment and recovery using different techniques. However, their main goal is to promote overall well-being. Restoring someone’s well-being makes it easier to tackle the root cause of substance issues. It helps them feel motivated, rested, and ready.
Improving your well-being helps you improve your odds of a successful recovery. By focusing on the internal world, you can develop the strength to overcome obstacles. So, you’ll feel ready to tackle what’s in front of you.
How Do Holistic Therapies Work?
Each treatment center decides which types of holistic treatment it’s going to offer. There are a ton of different options, but they usually involve treating the mind. Healing the mind seems to improve the odds of long-term recovery. Following a holistic program could make dealing with stress feel easier to you.
Everyone responds differently to particular treatments. Some people love painting, so they’d probably respond well to art therapy. Other people enjoy working with animals, and they’d likely enjoy equine-assisted therapy. Spend a little time researching holistic treatments to see which one of them feels like it’d be the best fit.
Holistic Therapy Options
You could be relaxing in a massage chair, having all your stress pulled away. You could be channeling your inner turmoil or exorcising your trauma through journaling or writing. Or, you could be learning how to take care of horses. Each therapy offers something different to its clients. Finding the right one can take a little trial and error.
Some people respond better to treatments targeting the body. Others prefer mind-centered approaches. Holistic therapies often target both aspects of healing at the same time.
Acupuncture
Acupuncturists place needles along key points in the body, stimulating nerve bundles. Their needle placement can elicit powerful effects in receptive people. Experienced acupuncturists could place them to help reduce feelings of anxiety and stress. Or, they could help relieve tension within your joints. Most of them report enhanced well-being and stress relief as the primary benefits.
Massage Therapy
Massage therapists use a variety of techniques to relieve tensions throughout the body. Knots and tense points are pummeled away, relieving the body of stress. Massage can also help target the body’s lymphatic system, enhancing immune response.
Massage can also be an effective pain-management tool. Using it can help reduce dependence on other sources of pain relief. Myofascial release improves ligament flexibility too, so you will enjoy a greater range of motion and enhanced flexibility.
Personal Training
Structured physical activity has a number of health benefits. You can see the difference in a person’s vitals almost immediately once they start working out. Your metabolism increase when you’re active, and you’ll lose weight easier. You will start to regain some of the muscles that may have atrophied while you were in active addiction. Plus, your body will produce more of the neurotransmitters responsible for happiness, so your body and mood will both feel better after working with a personal trainer.
Cardiovascular exercise promotes the development of a strong heart as well. Substance use disorder has a negative effect on the cardiovascular system, so getting regular exercise will help to repair some of the damage that was done in active addiction. Healthier hearts pump blood more efficiently through the body, distributing nutrients better. A well-nourished heart can even promote improved moods. Supplying your body with all its nutrients can enhance the production of neurotransmitters.
Art Therapy
Expressing what’s inside isn’t something that comes easily for everyone. Sometimes, art is the best medium for them to tell the world about what’s going on. Drawing and painting can be an incredibly soothing form of therapy as can sculpting with clay or working with your hands.
Using art therapy to peer into someone’s inner world can actually be rather effective. It’s been able to help a lot of people begin the process of opening up.
Equine-assisted Therapy
Working with animals can help reduce feelings of depression, anxiety, and stress. Many adherents claim that equine-assisted therapy has been the most successful treatment they’ve had. Using it to treat addictions can help give you something healthy to focus on.
Horses seem to be particularly useful animals for animal-based therapy. They’re very receptive to people, readily forming bonds with them. By the end of a program, you can become pretty attached to them.
Yoga
Yoga has been around for more than 2,000 years in one form or another. Early practitioners believed it brought them closer to the spirit. Today, we can definitely see measurable improvement in a number of health indicators. Practicing yoga can improve your flexibility, strength, and emotional resilience.
A lot of yoga also focuses on the breath. Learning how to control your breathing gives you an incredible stress management tool. Controlled breathing lowers our heart rates and decreases cortisol production.
Mindfulness and Breath Work
Training the mind to let go of everything but the present moment isn’t easy, but regular meditation can make you more resistant to stress. Another mindfulness technique that can be effective is breathwork. Breathing in rhythmic cycles can alter your brainwave’s frequency.
How Holistic Therapy Can Help With Addiction
Treating addiction is different for each person. There are underlying reasons for everyone’s behavior. Getting to the root of these motivations can help us understand what’s driving certain things and why you became addicted.
Many holistic therapies emphasize your internal world, turning your focus inward. By doing them, you’ll be able to clarify things in your mind. This can help you learn how to overcome urges and cravings. Plus, you’ll develop more willpower by sticking with the treatments.
All holistic therapies work best when you’ve stuck with them for a while. It takes time to make them work, so once you’ve found one that resonates with you, stick with it for as long as you can. That’s how you’ll get the best results.
Understand the Source of an Addiction
Getting to the root of a problem always makes it easier to overcome. Drawing how you feel doesn’t sound like something that would help right away. But after putting your feelings on paper, your inner world is easy to see.
Understanding the source of addiction helps you understand how to rebuild. Holistic therapies could help you identify what’s happening inside.
Improve Resistance to Cravings
Everyone who has gone through recovery understands how powerful cravings can be. They’re the number one reason that people slip up after completing recovery programs. Developing more effective coping mechanisms can make resisting cravings feel easier for people during early recovery.
Many holistic therapies involve learning a new skill or hobby. When you’re participating in them, you can enter a flow state. Flow states produce powerful changes in the mind, helping you develop more willpower.
Cravings only respond to willpower. However, they will decrease over time. Practicing holistic therapy could help you develop willpower. With enough willpower, anyone can get through the first steps of recovery.
Enhance Physical Health
Treating the body can improve your mental health as well. Regular exercise builds a strong cardiovascular system. Also, when you’re exercising, hormones and endorphins flood into the bloodstream. All this produces a pronounced change in our moods and sense of well-being.
Develop Social Support
One of the biggest factors contributing to anyone’s success during recovery is social support. Overcoming an addiction is more likely when you’ve got a tight-knit social circle. Joining holistic therapy programs provides an easy way to expand your social circle. You’ll meet people interested in positive things and who’ve had similar life experiences.
Building a strong bond with them can help you drop negative influences from your life. As a result, you can have more success in your recovery efforts.
Combining Holistic Therapy With Traditional Therapies
Often, clients receive a combination of holistic and traditional treatments during their recoveries. Treatment centers blend both approaches to create an evidenced-based plan of action.
The early phase of recovery is the most sensitive. That’s when you’ll see many of the traditional therapies come into play. Combining them can produce better results in people than only using one approach.
Treating addiction using multiple approaches has been successful for a lot of clients. A combined approach might be the most effective way to treat addictions.
Medically-assisted Detox
Some substances can elicit powerful withdrawal effects. Some of them can even be life-threatening without close medical supervision. Medical detox can bring someone through the toughest parts of withdrawal. They’ll receive medical support to make sure that they’re healthy and recovering afterward.
Counseling
Counseling has been one of the primary treatments used in addiction recovery for a long time. There are many different forms of therapy used. Each of them stems from separate branches of thought. They all seek to support clients by helping them uncover what’s going on in their minds.
Some therapy options include group work. Group therapy can be a healthy way for people to learn interpersonal interactions. Reintegrating with society can feel difficult for people after leaving treatment facilities. By participating in group therapy, you can learn healthy ways to interact with people. That can make reintegration feel much easier after you’ve finished a program.
Individual counseling can help you feel well-supported in your recovery efforts. Speaking one-on-one with someone can make it easier to open up. When you’ve worked with a counselor for a while, they can help identify triggers. Knowing about your triggers can teach you how to avoid them. You can also learn how to handle them better when they’re unavoidable.
Support Groups
There are tons of recovery groups around the country. Most of them follow some form of the 12-step program. This teaches people how to work through the pain and negative feelings. Learning how to handle them is crucial during the earliest phases of recovery.
Support groups are all-inclusive, so everyone can find one of them where they’ll feel like they belong. Attending meetings has been helpful for people maintaining recovery. After finishing an in-patient program, joining a recovery group can expand your sobriety network with like-minded individuals and give you a greater chance at prolonged recovery.
Finding a Holistic Therapy Center Near You
Many treatment facilities offer a combination of holistic and traditional care options. Combining them with other treatment methods can make recovery more successful. Plus, many of them combine well with existing treatment methods.
