Eighty-five percent of people relapse within the first year of drug and alcohol treatment. However, some things can be done to help reduce the risk if you have recently completed treatment.
Holistic relapse prevention offers a chance to explore things like energy healing, nature therapy, yoga, and meditation as ways to manage triggers and cravings and cope with your new life.
Casa Serena is a premier women’s drug and alcohol rehab in Santa Barbara.
Holistic Relapse Prevention: What Options to Consider
When you are looking for ways to prevent relapse, you need to consider both how to manage cravings associated with substance abuse, as well as environmental triggers.
Depending on the substances that were abused, things like cravings can persist for several months after treatment. Cocaine withdrawal, for example, usually results in up to six months of cravings after treatment.
Holistic relapse prevention is effective in providing coping strategies that enable you to avoid stress, triggers, or cravings in the first place rather than trying to substitute addictive behavior with a secondary addiction.
Yoga and Meditation
Yoga and meditation are two of the most effective forms of holistic relapse prevention. These two practices complement one another as elements of mindfulness.
Yoga utilizes several forms of exercise, stretching, and assuming poses while focusing on your breathing. This keeps you grounded in the present moment rather than worrying about past mistakes or future anxiety.
Moreover, different holistic practices can encourage you to breathe through temporary discomfort associated with assuming different poses. This teaches you to recognize that discomforts like cravings or the emotions tied to triggers are temporary and that staying mindful and present at the moment can help you move beyond those temporary feelings.
Meditation offers dozens of mental and physical health benefits.
For example, individuals struggling with cravings or triggers might experience high levels of anxiety and fear, which can lead to things like panic attacks or hyperventilating.
Hyperventilation is often exacerbated by individuals who start taking shallow, clavicular breaths from the top of the chest rather than deep in the belly. Knowing how to meditate offers an opportunity to recognize when you are struggling with clavicular breathing and to change it into that deep breathing that tethers your body to reality and the present moment.
Not only does this help circumvent things like anxiety attacks or triggers, but it’s good for:
- Blood pressure
- Circulation
- Cortisol levels
- Caving management
Nature Therapy
Nature therapy is much like yoga and meditation in that it helps you focus on the present moment while also boosting positive neurotransmitters that can overcome symptoms of secondary mental health issues like anxiety or depression that are often contributors to relapse.
Another benefit is that nature therapy, alongside yoga or meditation, can be designed to fit any skill level. With nature therapy, for example, individuals can go on regular walks in a nearby park, along a river, or other natural environment.
Those who are looking for something more advanced to boost endorphins while also providing physical exercise that overcomes stress, cravings, and triggers by focusing the mind on the present and on achievement can turn to things like:
- Walking
- Hiking
- Camping
- Bicycling
- Rock Climbing
All of these require the development of new sets of skills, goal setting, and the benefit of self-reliance and meeting those goals. Each incremental improvement contributes toward overall success after therapy, decreasing the risk of relapse.
Energy Healing
Energy healing is a form of holistic relapse prevention that focuses on more traditional Avenues of the mind-body approach. With this form of therapy, you can work to restore balance in your body, recognizing that energy flows through your body at all times and bad energy from things like trauma, depression, or addiction can remain stagnant and disrupt that flow much the same as a blood clot can disrupt the flow of blood.
Get Holistic Relapse Prevention with Casa Serena
With Casa Serena, you can immerse yourself in all of these forms of holistic prevention treatment in group settings. Not only do you reap all of the benefits of each activity, but you add to it the benefit of overcoming feelings of isolation and loneliness, which are two of the most significant contributors to relapse after treatment.
Figuring out which of these prevention measures you like best or works well for you can enable you to find things like community groups, online resources, and classes that can provide continuing support after treatment.
Reach out to Casa Serena today for more information on relapse prevention and our lifetime aftercare program.