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By Susannah Gust
Fall
2007 - Number 13
Addressing Addictive, Compulsive, and Obsessive Behaviors Through Yoga
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Chances are that each one of us feels
driven by some sort of addiction or craving but don't know to shake it.
Addictions are tricky things and there's no fail-proof solution to
overcoming them, however a yoga practice can significantly facilitate this
process.
Whether it is an addiction to cigarettes or food, alcohol or television,
hard drugs or shopping, compulsive behaviors can take us over. The cravings
might be seemingly innocuous ones that lurk beneath the surface of a
functioning life, or they might be immediately and obviously devastating.
Whatever their form, obsessions take us outside of our true natures, and
thrust us to the mercy of our defensive and reactionary selves. For some of
us, these patterns sever relationships, put jobs at stake, and place us in
serious health or financial risk. For others, these habits might simply
impede a sense of physical, mental, or spiritual wholeness. Either way, a
regular yoga practice can help free us of these addictive behaviors. Through
a yoga practice we can learn the tool of mindfulness: the ability to be
present and non-judgmental of the thoughts and sensations of our minds and
bodies. Through a yoga practice we learn to face an experience head-on and
to be comfortable without fleeing. And through a yoga practice we reconnect
to the mind-body system and the beauty there-in, reminding us that we are
something worthy to love and nurture.
I remember my first Vipassana (mindfulness) meditation retreat. Although I
had friends who had done it, who had warned me of its intensity, I had no
idea what I was getting into. I will refrain from droning on about my day to
day, minute to minute, reactions to ten hours of daily meditations, to no
talking, writing, reading, or eye contact for ten days, or to absolutely no
communication with the outside world. I will simply say that it was a
full-on experience of being thrown into something head-first. And after the
sixth day, it became clear that that something was mindfulness. After the
last day, I was the closest to feeling absolutely synchronized between
myself and everything I was doing, between my mind and actions, between my
spirit and my body, as I have ever felt.
At home, I drank too much caffeine and ate too much sugar, although the
first made me jittery, and the second would cause me huge crashes in my
energy level. Although I had "quit" smoking, I still had the occasional
social cigarette. And most obvious, I was in a relationship that I knew I
should not be in. Although I ended it, again and again, I would habitually
go back. But after the retreat, I felt so light, so unburdened, so free of
all of this. For the first time I felt total integration which was my first
glimpse at how this practice might rid me of the habit-behavior that ruled
so much of my life. And indeed, on the last day of the retreat, during the
parting talk, we were told of a prison in Seattle that used these techniques
with inmates overcoming drug and alcohol addictions. In 1997, the Addictive
Behaviors Research Center at the University of Washington found that the
inmates who practiced the mindfulness meditation techniques were strikingly
more successful at shaking their addictions than a meditation-less control
group.
What this study made clear is that mindfulness has a profound effect on
addiction therapy. However, in order to understand how mindfulness (and
yoga) can help combat addictive behavior, let's define the term. Alan G.
Marlatt, in an article in Southern Medicine Journal, defines
mindfulness as "a heightened sense of awareness that is open,
present-oriented, and non-judgmental (enhanced experience of the here and
now) in the experiential quality." In an article published in Yoga
Journal in 2005, it becomes clear how this state is helpful in combating
addiction. The author, Stacie Stukin, describes the work of Peter Stein, a
drug counselor at the Institute for Addictions in Sommerville,
Massachusetts, who uses yoga for treatment. "He directs his patients to turn
their focus inward, to feel their physical sensations and become aware of
their breath. This has a calming effect because each sensation of breath is
simply an experience of the moment, acknowledged without judgment. Thus
habitual responses and defenses, which patients have established in drug
use, attempted detoxes and relapse, are bypassed." The present-ness granted
by a yoga practice helps people observe the cravings, thoughts, and
sensations within the body, without reacting. In her book, Radical
Acceptance, Tara Brach notes that "when desire is strong, mindfulness
goes out the window." And it appears that the inverse is also true. That
when mindfulness is strong, desire goes out the window.
However, it should be noted that desire, alone, is also a problem. It is
when desires take over, become extreme and unruly, that they turn sour. Even
the Buddha recognized this by choosing the middle path (non-attachment to
desires). There is no need to forsake desire if moderation is intact. In
other words, when we don't know how to handle our desires we fall under the
spell of obsession or addiction. In describing the inmates in the 1997
study, G. Alan Marlatt says, "'The inmates said they were surprised by the
painful memories and fears that came up during the 10 days, but they found
they could stay with them. They learned how to cope by seeing them as
thoughts and learned they didn't have to act on thoughts, urges, and their
cravings.'" (Yoga Journal, 2005)
What emerges in a mindful state is the ability to observe without responding
out of habit. Whether there are urges, cravings or obsessive thoughts, we
can watch them without judging ourselves for having such feelings, and thus
begin to be free of the chronic judgment and shame we form around the
feelings themselves. "The Buddha taught that by being aware of desire, we
free ourselves from identifying with it...we begin to shed the layers of
shame and aversion we have built. . .We see through the stories we have
created, stories about a self who tumbles into unhealthy desires, about a
self who has to have something more, something different from what is right
here, right now." (Brach, p.156) In other words, we learn to be still with
the intensity that is in us and all around us.
Yoga is not the only road to a state of present-awareness but is a good one.
On his website,
mindfulpsychology.com, Thomas Bien writes: "When life hurts or is
difficult, we are tempted to run from life. We seek temporary shelter in
many things, many of them not helpful or even destructive. This is
particularly so when we seek shelter in the false refuge of drugs and
alcohol." The Buddha himself admitted that life is suffering. If not the
suffering in the severest of senses, life is not dependable, and is rife
with disappointments. It is this suffering that leads us to find solace in
our various compulsive behaviors, which might satiate in the short-term, but
tend to snowball into increased suffering in the long-term. In other words,
addictive behavior is an escape. This is where yoga steps in.
Through a yoga practice we are introduced to the idea that "comfort, or at
least tolerance, can be achieved during uncomfortable physical and emotional
states." (Yoga Journal 2005) While mindfulness can allow us to
observe what happens around us and our emotional states without identifying
and therefore have impulsive reactions, it is yoga that can give us the
skills to do so. Without the ability to stick through the intense spots that
arise in mindful observation, we wouldn't remain present. This is especially
true of addicts: "Yoga treats the biology and psychology of an addict.
Addicts are profoundly out of control internally. They have knee-jerk panic
reactions and tempers. The will and determination yoga requires helps people
regain control over their body and their mind," (Yoga Journal,
2005). It is this concept that I encourage in my own yoga students, to learn
to override (usually with the breath) our impulses to come out of a pose.
Whether emotional or physical, we will concoct all sorts of reasons that we
should get out of whatever pose we're in. Yet so much can be learned by
staying with it: the idea that we aren't at the mercy of our fears/desires,
the idea that every state is temporary, and the faith that we can stay with
it. By breathing through any intense asana during our practice, we develop a
tolerance for situations that, previously, we might have deemed unbearable
and treated with some habitual escape-mechanism.
Through our yoga practice we learn not to shirk from our desires, fears,
pains, and anxieties. But even before this point there is another stumbling
point with which yoga is deeply helpful: the ability to identify the
addiction itself and WANT to treat it. If obsessive behaviors are a means of
hiding from the truth, then those of us who are ruled by our obsessions, are
in hiding. Aruni Nan Futuronsky, director of retreat and renewal at the
Kripalu Center for Yoga and health, says: "I see addiction as the ultimate
disconnection from the body," (Yoga Journal, 2005). A yoga practice
can remedy this disconnect and re-unite us with our bodies and our spirits.
To love something, we must know it, and through yoga we learn to know
ourselves again. And because of this knowing we make the first step towards
recovery, knowing that we are worth recovering.
SOURCES:
Stukin, Stacie, "Freedom From Addiction," Yoga Journal, 2005
Bien, Thomas,
MindfulPsychology.com
Brach, Tara, Radical Acceptance, , Bantam Books, 2003
Marlatt, Alan G., Meditation and Alcohol Use, Southern Medical Journal,
Volum 100(4), April 2007, pp. 451-453
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Archive of Yoga Therapeutics Articles:
Summer 2000: Number 1- Introduction to Yoga Therapeutics
Spring 2006: Number 9 - Women’s Health: A Sequence for a Healthy Menstruation
Summer 2006: Number 10 - It is Too Late
Spring 2007: Number 12 - Yoga Therapeutics for Lower Backs
Stress - Helpful Tips
Yoga as an Intervention for Scoliosis
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