Addictions and meditation - pleasure without the pain

Read on for an important article comparing the effects of addictive behaviors to those of meditation.

Meditation Induced Bliss By Richard Miller, Integrative Restoration (irest®) http://www.irest.us.com

I recently read a fascinating research article published by Patricia Sharp on meditation-induced bliss, which differs significantly from addiction-induced bliss. It’s well known that brain-based opiates and neurotransmitters play a vital role in the establishment of addictive behaviors, (i.e., gambling, sex, drugs, nicotine, alcohol, et cetera) through the activation of reward and pleasure centers in the brain. However, it’s also well known that the pleasure derived from these addictive behaviors diminishes over time. Repeated addiction behaviors cause diminished release of brain-based opiates and neurotransmitters, which, over time, leads to anhedonia—the inability to experience pleasure from addiction activities that beforehand offered a felt-sense of reward and pleasure.

While addictive behaviors appear gratifying at first, they ultimately lead to diminished pleasure, and increases in dissatisfaction, pain, and suffering. “Interestingly, meditation also gives rise to the felt-sense of bliss, pleasure, and joy through the activation of the very same brain centers implicated in addictive behaviors. For instance, a study of accomplished Yoga Nidra practitioners demonstrated a 65% increase in brain dopamine release during their practice (Kjaer et al. 2002). However, contrary to addictive behaviors, meditation does not lead to decreases of brain-based opiates and dopamine, nor does it give rise to anhedonia. In fact, just the opposite appears to be the case.

Over time, with meditation, we continue to experience increases in pleasure, bliss, and joy. In other words, meditation is a wonderfully power positive addiction that increases joy with continued practice.

So meditate and yoga nidra on! You’re doing yourself, and everyone around you a great service!.”

Anxiety; Loosening the Grip

Loosening the Grip of Anxiety

The symptoms of anxiety can feel like our thoughts, breath and physical body are being gripped in a vice. The breath might tighten. Thoughts may clamp down into a familiar narrative such as “I can’t”. The emotion of fear may cause us to freeze. A familiar fog descends upon the mind.

Anxiety often shows up alongside perfectionism. It can cause sleeplessness, digestive disorders, cold extremities and panic. It can hit hard after years of striving and pushing through the symptoms in an outwardly successful life. More than ever, it is showing up in our youth as social, academic and familial pressures arise.

From my experience in working with clients of all ages, remarkable progress and relief happens as they learn to meet, greet and allow the symptoms to be experienced as messengers. Like any new skill it may feel difficult at first, so we establish what is needed to feel safe and secure amid the storm of symptoms. Unique to each person, this may feel like a safe haven or peacefulness in which to retreat in meditation or in everyday activities.

Through Integrative Restoration (IRest®), in a group or in private sessions, clients establish their safe haven or inner resource. They gently allow each sensation, emotion, belief and thought to be met and allowed to reveal itself….not as a symptom to be rid of, or fixed, but as communication from the body as it tries to find balance. The associated memories or stories that may come up are acknowledged. But in this work, they are just memories and conditioned thinking, so we come back to the body for inner wisdom.

Symptoms of anxiety can subside quickly. When they are noted early and allowed as communication, appropriate action can then be taken. This may be in the form of self-care, decision-making, words that need to be expressed or perhaps engaging in psychotherapy asa complimentary path to address what is underlying the anxiety.

Much like learning to ski, we might freeze with fear as we learn to assess the terrain. As we develop skill, we welcome more challenging terrain. It is then that ease and joy are unleashed, even among the challenges.

My work is to help you develop skills for ease of being. Life will continue to throw us tough terrain, we can count on that. Now is the time to hone the skills and open the heart to the richness of life.

It this resonates with you, please contact me for a complimentary 15-minute phone or Skype consultation.

That which we fully meet, we will transcend

Reiki; Let Love flow through your hands

Often we do not realise the value of a teaching until long after the book closes, the course finishes or we move on from our teacher. So it is with my journey into Reiki. When I decided to take Reiki Certification Level 1, it was simply out of curiosity. I had heard about “feeling energy” but never quite understood what the fuss what about. I thought perhaps only certain people could develop their senses in that way, and I likely wasn’t one of them. Yet, I couldn’t discount anecdotes of benefits from spiritual healing, ’laying on of hands’, Qigong, Reiki and other energy-based work. There must be something to it. My own body had benefit from the work of gifted practitioners, but I couldn’t quite imagine being one of them. Then, soon after our family dog was attacked by two other dogs in Thailand, I held little Vanilla on the vet’s table, praying for peace and healing for her. I felt her fear shift as she relaxed her body into my embrace while something warm and strong was flowing through me …could it be energy flowing from above? It was palpable but beyond description and beyond my regular sense of myself.

Her wounds were soon forgotten, but not that moment of peace being poured through me into her. Perhaps it was God, or Pure Consciousness or energy, qi or some other word for a wordless experience. With heightened curiosity, I enrolled in my first Reiki training with Cory Croymans of the Asian Healing Arts Centre in Chiang Mai, Thailand. As a former Austrian Diplomat, Cory brought a direct, no-nonsense approach to the teachings as she infused our days with a sparkle in her eye and passion for her work. ‘Fake it till you make it’ could have been my motto through that training. I occasionally felt tingling in my palms but mostly I still wasn’t sure. But it was enough to keep the flame of curiosity alive as I signed up for level 2…then 3….and finally, Reiki Master Training Certification.

The journey between the levels included weekly volunteer work providing Reiki to patients undergoing cancer treatments, psychiatric patients in a hospital and in a residential institute. My confidence grew as I felt energy shifts in the patients as they opened to new ease during the treatments. Their desire and appreciation was expressed in Thai language, or with a sparkle shining from their eyes despite otherwise depleted bodies. Those without verbal abilities would ‘wai’ tenderly (Thai tradition of bowing), shimmy themselves each week into their waiting positions on their beds, and sometimes wedge themselves between me and the next patient I was about to treat. Together with my teacher and other students, we passed instructions and healing ‘attunements’ to caregivers of the patients. I learned from each patient and caregiver and began to trust the teachings of Reiki on a new level. I began to sense different qualities of energy, associated with varying conditions and exposures. Chemotherapy, radiation, heavy medications, anxiety, love…all began to show me consistent patterns. I sensed this work was to infiltrate my life deeply, but not specifically as a healer. I see my life purpose not as a healer but as one who helps others to heal themselves and to learn skills to use in-line with their own life purpose.

So, when I moved back to Canada, I treated some patients but mostly I allowed my Reiki hands to help me in therapeutic yoga work with clients, to be a part of my family first-aid kit, and to restore my energy as needed. I use Reiki to send love and healing energy from a distance, to protect loved ones, my car, a pilot, my luggage, to energise my food….the applications are limitless.

Now, as I appreciate the teachings I received years ago, I am ready to share them with those who are curious. I am fascinated with similarities between wisdom traditions and faiths of varying kinds. Some of the Reiki meditations are similar to those of yoga nidra, with a nature of welcoming and allowing rather than directing or fixing. The more I learn about different paths, the more I see Reiki as not separate, but as a universal form of connection, healing and protecting. My father summed up Reiki best when, somewhere around this 80th birthday, I gave him a Reiki treatment without telling him what it was. When I asked later what his experience was like he replied with misty eyes, “It felt like love flowing through your hands”. My wish for you is that Reiki, or another tool for ease and healing, becomes one of your skills for ease, peace, clarity and joy in your life and those around you.