What You Need to Know About Guided Imagery

Can going to your “happy place” help your recovery? While it’s a lot more complex than that, guided imagery is a type of therapy that involves visualization and guided images to create positive changes in thoughts and behaviors. 

More rehabs are using guided imagery as part of a comprehensive treatment plan. The mind-body intervention works by activating the connections in your brain, nervous system and visual cortex to impact your emotional and physical state. Guided imagery is often used with meditation and mindfulness.

Under the guidance and direction of a trained addiction specialist, an individual can learn to listen to someone else’s voice and consciously generate images in his mind to reduce stress and promote calmness. You can also use audio recordings, create your own recordings or use your inner voice and imagination.

The Academy for Guided Imagery (AGI) classifies guided imagery into three categories:

• Stress reduction and relaxation.
• Active visualization or directed imagery (for improving performance, changing behavior, or influencing an outcome).
• Receptive imagery (in which words and images are brought to consciousness to explore and give information about symptoms, treatments, moods or illnesses).

The Benefits of Guided Imagery

Guided imagery can help you relieve physical tension and psychological stress in minutes and be a healthy distraction from daily stressors. In this way, it can also help you develop a positive mindset and coping mechanisms for maintaining resilience during difficult times. Other study-proven benefits of guided imagery include: 

• Decreased need for pain medication
• Reduced fear and anxiety
• Better stress management skills
• Headache & migraine relief
• Improved sleep and reduced insomnia

Holistic Addiction Treatment by the Sea

Guided imagery is part of our alternative treatment schedule for both men and women at Complete Harmony. We also offer other complementary therapies, including yoga, meditation, mindfulness and acupuncture, in order to address every aspect of health: mind, body, spirit and social. To learn more, call today: 866-930-4673.

4 Complementary Addiction Therapies to Try

More and more treatment facilities are turning to alternative addiction therapies for a holistic approach to recovery. While these techniques can’t do the job alone, when used in conjunction with traditional treatment, they have been proven very effective in addressing the physical and psychological impact of addiction. 

Here we take a look at some study-proven methods and why they work to help patients during active recovery and years after to maintain lasting sobriety. 

Yoga: Through physical postures, breath work, and meditation, yoga helps those in recovery align the mind, body, and spirit and find inner piece and comfort. 

• Reintroduces physical sensation
• Relieves anxiety, stress and depression
• Regulates stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline
• Releases tension and alleviates mental fatigue
• Redirects thoughts and wards off harmful cravings

Massage therapy: Research into the benefits of massage therapy as an addiction treatment is ongoing, but studies have shown that this therapy is gaining traction for people recovering from substance abuse disorder.

• Raises “feel good” endorphins
• Improves circulation and rids body of toxins
• Relieves the stress and anxiety that’s a natural part of the withdrawal and recovery process
• Balances natural neurochemistry after extended periods of substance abuse

Acupuncture: Some practitioners use auricular (ear) acupuncture in addition to whole-body acupuncture to treat points on the ear associated with the nerves and organs that become weak and unhealthy with prolonged substance abuse, including the liver, kidney, lung, and nervous systems.

• Balances and restores function to the body
• Reduces stress and anxiety
• Alleviates withdrawal symptoms, pain, and cravings
• Combats insomnia

Meditation: An integral part of Buddhist tradition, mindfulness meditation has been shown to help substance abusers prevent relapse by teaching them to become aware of their feelings (good or bad) without reacting to them. 

• Improves decision-making and impulse control
• Relieves stress and anxiety
• Heightens awareness of cravings and triggers for better management 
• Pushes away thoughts of self-criticism and blame

Finding Holistic Treatment for You
At Complete Harmony, we encourage the use of many different cutting-edge techniques to help patients recover, including acupuncture, yoga, mediation, massage therapy, and others. To learn more about our treatment center and our approach to addiction recovery, call today: 866-930-4673.