If you answered “often” or “very often” on four or more of these questions, you may have a Facebook addiction, according to the researchers. And if you’re dicing with a cocktail of social media, God help you.
In recovery we are often reminded to work at becoming “Right-sized” – see if this helps you consider what that really means!
I have been teaching at the Foundations Freedom and Recovery Conference this week at Hotel del Coronado, San Diego, CA. Wanted to share with you some feedback from a first time conference attendee who came to find out what help is available for loved ones who suffer from addictions….
“First of all I thank God that he led me to come to this conference and thank everyone who organized and planned this conference. I learned so much and met so many good people. I had a wonderful opportunity to attend my first 12-step meeting. Most of all I met Durga and had a chance to participate in her teaching and class. I will try to implement her teaching to my current practice when I return home. I plan to return back to this conference next time again if situation allows me. I can’t thank you and everyone enough.” J.J. MD
The answer lies in your brain: the taste of sweet activates dopamine receptors in the brain, which are responsible for most addictions.
Dopamine is the “I gotta have it” hormone. When you see that chocolate cake or other favorite sweet, dopamine levels rise and strengthen your desire for that sweet.
Read more from an excellent series of articles by Dr John Douillard on Pre-Diabetic conditions
I see so many people in recovery blossom with the work they do, it is a miraculous transformation to witness. We are simply following the flowers, watch how they do it!
http://player.vimeo.com/video/27920977?title=0&%3bbyline=0&%3bportrait=0href=
Happy Spring – rise up and shine
Namaste, Durga
We are having a wonderful Yoga of Recovery retreat down here on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Teaching the first session to the guests, The 6 Tenets of Yoga of Recovery – the roots of our addictive behaviors, one guest commented at the end of the session… “This is the most intelligent discussion I have ever heard on addiction.”
It is such a joy to share vedic wisdom with people in recovery.
Happy Easter
Durga
Received this link today – if you have a few minutes take time out to enjoy it.
Thanks for LA Yoga for this story on the first ever Yoga Room in an airport
Jan 2012, the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) opened the “Yoga Room” The first of its kind in the country, located in Terminal 2, adjacent to the Terminal’s Recompose area. It’s equipped with hardwood floors and Yoga mats.
First DSM (1952) had 106 disorders, the number has almost tripled. Are we getting sicker, or is something else at play?
The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is widely regarded as the bible of psychiatric diagnoses. Its authority extends not only to this country’s schools, prisons, court system, and health-insurance industry, where it is daily invoked, chapter and verse, but also around the world, where it is highly influential in defining mental illness. It’s currently in its fourth edition, and a fifth is due out in 2013. With each edition the number of diagnoses greatly increases, and the thresholds for meeting them are routinely lowered. The number of people who can be defined as mentally ill has grown to the point where Darrel Regier of the American Psychiatric Association says that mental disorders affect some 48 million Americans in their lifetimes. That’s one in six people. And he’s basing that judgment entirely on DSM criteria and language.
Behaviors once understood as reactions to one’s environment and upbringing are increasingly seen as innate conditions of brain chemistry, resulting from problematic levels of neurotransmitters, especially serotonin. Lane suggests that because of the open-ended language in the DSM and the wide range of behaviors it pathologizes, anyone who is shy, as he was as a teenager, now risks being diagnosed as mentally ill. The new disorders were “obviously music to the ears of drug companies,” he says, “insofar as they massively increased the market for their products, which the media greeted with incredible enthusiasm.”
Christopher Lane On What’s Wrong With Modern Psychiatry
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately one in four Americans suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder. Our society has gone further than any other in classifying unwanted behaviors and emotions as diseases demanding medical — and often pharmaceutical — treatment.
Emotional distress is highly individualized, and we shouldn’t come to any general conclusions about it. ..
People who have been taught that “mental illnesses are brain diseases” see psychiatric patients as dangerous and unlikely to recover. And those in crisis are often understandably reluctant to consult mental-health professionals, because the stigma of mental illness is so severe: it’s possible to lose your job, your home, and your family as a consequence of being diagnosed with a mental illness. In cultures that take a social view of emotional distress, by contrast, people more readily seek help because they aren’t as likely to be ostracized and are assumed to be capable of full recovery.
The World Health Organization did an international study comparing outcomes for patients diagnosed with schizophrenia in “developed” countries — including the U.S., the United Kingdom, Denmark, and others — and in “developing” countries such as Colombia, Nigeria, and India. To their astonishment, they found that outcomes were much better in the developing countries. As often happens when a study produces unexpected results, the findings weren’t believed at first. So the study was repeated a few years later with a more stringent definition of what constituted improvement for the patients. The results were the same.
Two hypotheses have been put forward to explain these findings. One is that developing countries don’t use medications over the long term because they can’t afford it. Without long-term medication, patients don’t become chronically disabled. The other hypothesis is that people in developing countries are more likely to be cared for at home and be a part of their community, rather than being isolated or sent away to a hospital, and this helps them recover.
Read more of this interview with Gail Hornstein, a Mount Holyoke College professor of psychology
The reStart Internet Addiction Recovery Program– a first of its kind center in the U.S. — recently opened in Fall City just a few miles away from Microsoft’s headquarters.
Tthe creators of reStart say Internet addiction is a growing problem. The 45-day program (cost $14,500) is designed specifically “to help internet and video game addicts overcome their dependence on gaming, gambling, chatting, texting and other aspects of Internet Addiction”.
Similar programs are already on offer in places like China and South Korea.
Today a young woman from NY showed up at the Vietnam ashram asking for Durga. She is in recovery, and in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) for 2 weeks to help her sister move here. She wrote a friend in NY (YoR retreat guest) who told her we were here, so she came on 2 buses and a motorcycle taxi to visit. It was lovely to share our experience, strength and hope together. She’s taking our YoR and Vietnam ashram brochures to her new recovery friends in Ho Chi Minh City now - small world eh?
I am grateful for fellowship and connections
Peace
Durga
Here is the link to AA in Ho Chi Minh City, http://www.aahcmc.com/
This is a wonderful 20 minute talk on “The Power of Vulnerability” from Brene Brown, compliments of TED.com
We often get to these kind of discussions and realizations in our Yoga of Recovery sessions, it is amazing to be around people who are becoming open to accepting their vulnerability and all the gifts it offers.
I enjoyed reading this blog post from David Crow, author and founder of MedicineCrow and Floracopeia Aromatic Treasures. David is an expert in the field of botanical medicine, natural health and ecological sustainability. He is a master herbalist, aromatherapist and acupuncturist with over 30 years experience and is an expert in the Ayurvedic and Chinese medical systems..
I am comfortable on my meditation cushion, wrapped in the silent darkness and shining constellations of winter Solstice.
Many wise teachers have shared their contemplative practices with me, but there is one practice I come back to more than the others: listening to the heart. No one taught me this, however; I discovered it myself, which is like saying I discovered that I am breathing. So many spiritual insights are like this, yet we think illumination somehow lies outside the fabric of our own being.
I am listening to the pulsation of my heart. Join me…it is easy and very profound. My right thumb is resting on the radial artery of my left wrist, where the pulse rises and falls.
The artery undulates as the waves of nutrient fluid pass through it. If we listen attentively, the wandering mind will gradually become calm and steady, and in this flowing together of heart and awareness there are many revelations waiting to be known.
Below is a link for an article written by one of our Yoga of Recovery counselors, Alicia, from our NY July 2011 course. It is for a contest to win a scholarship for a yoga teacher training. The winner of the article is the article with the most votes.
It’s a great article from a dedicated fellowship sister. To vote, please read and leave a comment or share on Facebook or Twitter.
Here is the link: Yoga One Day at a Time
om shanti
The therapist I saw in early recovery (12 years ago) sent me this,
made me laugh and we need a sense of humor in life!
When I see this it makes me wonder about all the resons we have this much medication that needs to be safely gotten rid of – are they overprescribed? people are not ‘compliant’ with them? they improve without them? they seek other ways to feel better?
http://www.drugfree.org/join-
Here is a great introduction to dosha-balancing yoga from Banyan Botanicals.
This is a great lecture about recovery from mental disorders from Patricia Deegan. It addresses recovery aspects that also can apply to recovery for alcoholics and addicts.
