Many people entering rehab find themselves surprised by the role of alternative therapies in today’s addiction treatment. These methods, such as yoga therapy, provide a mind-body connection that aren’t gained through traditional talk therapies. This pathway to heightened self-awareness also helps you cope with stress and daily life struggles without self-medication. Alternative therapies like yoga provide greater depth to your treatment and give you skills you can use anytime and anywhere you need coping strategies.
Yoga Therapy as an Alternative Approach to Recovery
Yoga therapy is one of the most popular alternative therapies in addiction treatment and other types of behavioral or medical recovery. Other key methods include:
- Mindfulness
- Guided meditation
- Archery therapy program
- Physical fitness therapy
- Outdoor therapy
- Recreational therapy
- 12 step program
Your yoga therapy program at The Ranch helps you build strength against relapse. It also helps reduce your withdrawal symptoms and drug cravings. Through yoga therapy you gain an outlet for coping with daily life stress, triggers and temptations. This practice also soothes your whole whole being while achieving relaxation, calming, healing, meditative effects, higher self-esteem and reduced guilt. Although yoga is a complementary health practice, it is still considered natural medicine. It does not provide a substitute for addiction treatment using behavioral therapies or other evidence-based methods. But it benefits your recovery when used along with traditional substance abuse treatment. You gain specific benefits from yoga that even medications and other therapies do not provide.
What is yoga therapy?
In yoga therapy, a therapist guides you through use of physical postures to help you connect your mind, breath and body for self-awareness and inward focus. About 21 million Americans practice yoga on a regular basis today, double the number of 10 years ago, according to US News & World Report. After you learn yoga in your yoga therapy program, you find it easy to continue using these methods on your own and throughout your life. Many people in recovery build personal strength, relaxation and physical improvement through yoga. Because it requires no special equipment, attire or assistance, yoga is a portable healing method you can practice anywhere and at any time. For many, it becomes one of the most important physical fitness and stress reduction techniques for the rest of their lives.
How Yoga Benefits Your Brain
Using drugs or alcohol on a regular basis changes your brain chemistry and structure. This, in turn, affects how you experience pleasure and emotions. You struggle with making sound decisions, controlling impulses and regulating your mood. But when you stop using drugs or alcohol, your miraculous brain can heal by making new connections and rebuilding itself. Yoga helps in this process of healing and rebuilding brain connections. In fact, the journal Scientific American reports that grey matter and regions of your brain active in stress control, such as the hippocampus, enlarge with regular yoga practice. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine reports that yoga increases GABA levels in your brain, with these levels being key to management of anxiety and stress responses. In drug recovery, yoga helps you improve your symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression.
Yoga Practice in Your Recovery at The Ranch
The Ranch, with addiction treatment programs in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, provides yoga as one type of alternative therapy in a mix of proven methods and approaches. Your individualized and evidence-based treatment at The Ranch includes:
- Inpatient and outpatient rehab treatment
- Medical drug detox
- Eating disorder treatment
- CBT, DBT and EMDR
- Acupuncture, anger management, equine and art therapies
- Family therapy
- 12 step support groups
Call The Ranch now at 1.844.876.7680 to learn more about yoga therapy and other alternative methods used in tandem with behavioral therapies and evidence-based practices. Through a quality mix of modern and ancient approaches, you build your strongest possible recovery at The Ranch.