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Posted by: isabow27 on 2006-05-11, 04:21:46
Here's one of the homeopathic remedies I found: Hatha yoga, the yoga of postures—where people hold positions for varying lengths of time, stretching and contracting their muscles and breathing deeply—is one component of the ancient practice of yoga. It simulates the relaxing effects of the parasympathetic nervous system and removes tension from all the major muscle groups. According to Joseph LePage, founder and director of Integrative Yoga Therapy in Aptos, California, certain postures actually massage internal organs, helping dispel toxins that may have built up in the liver and kidneys from substance abuse. "Hatha yoga allows people to get back in touch with themselves, and get into a frame of mind where they can experience what it is to be well, and not drug dependent or anxious, " explains Peter Stein, M.A., addictions specialist at the North Charles Institute for the Addictions, a private treatment facility in Boston, Massachusetts. According to a recently completed clinical trial by Howard Shaffer, Ph.D., director of the Division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School, hatha yoga is as effective as traditional group therapy in treating heroin addicts enrolled at a Boston methadone maintenance clinic. Those who practiced yoga for 75 minutes once a week and received individual therapy once a week reduced their drug use, criminal activity, and cravings as much as those who went to group therapy once a week and had individual counseling. Joyce, 37, a manager at a gourmet food store in the Boston area, has combined hatha yoga with talk therapy for four years as a part of her methadone maintenance program. Although methadone has been essential to her getting off heroin, she now wants to give it up. "Yoga helps me become more aware physically, and then become aware mentally of what's going on with me, and of how the things I do affect other people, " she says. "Five years ago, I'd have told you I'd be on methadone for the rest of my life. But now I'm in a different frame of mind. " Joyce has begun slowly detoxing off methadone, which is itself a physically addicting drug whose withdrawal symptoms are cold sweats, inability to sleep, impatience, and discomfort. "In yoga, you have to hold postures for so long, and while you're holding them, you're saying to yourself 'I know this hurts, but I know I have to do it, I can and want to do it myself.' " That experience of feeling and withstanding the physical pain in hatha yoga helps Joyce know she can withstand the physical pain of methadone withdrawal. |
