Yoga can be an effective way to help supplement the recovery process.

Yoga teaches people to let their mind and body work together in positive ways, helping them to release anxious thoughts and stress. As addiction treatment centers begin making use of more holistic approaches to recovery, programs such as yoga are becoming recognized as effective ways to supplement the recovery process.

How Yoga Helps Recovery

In addition to uniting the mind and body, yoga helps with addiction recovery in a number of other ways — primarily, in improving mental and physical health.

A few benefits include:

• Stress relief
• Sharpened concentration
• Mood improvement
• Improved heart and circulatory health
• Increased energy
• Improved metabolism

Yoga helps people manage negative or anxious thoughts, making it a perfect aid for overcoming addiction.

Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security, making you feel helpless in a dangerous world. Psychological trauma can leave you struggling with upsetting emotions, memories, and anxiety that won’t go away. It can also leave you feeling numb, disconnected, and unable to trust other people.

Traumatic experiences often involve a threat to life or safety, but any situation that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and isolated can result in trauma, even if it doesn’t involve physical harm. It’s not the objective circumstances that determine whether an event is traumatic, but your subjective emotional experience of the event. The more frightened and helpless you feel, the more likely you are to be traumatized.
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Emotional and psychological trauma can be caused by:

Are you someone that needs multiples coffees to get you through the morning? Have energy drinks made their way into your routine? How about that 4 p.m. crash when you start searching for sweets and refined grains?

If any of these ring a bell for you, take a look both at the quality and quantity of sleep you’re getting, and how you fuel your body every day.

Resorting to processed foods with added sugar for energy will only make us feel worse. Natural whole foods can provide us with the boost we need to keep us feeling light and energized… without the crash.

Fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and foods high in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants flood our body with nutrients that help counteract fatigue and sustain us throughout the day.

Take a peek at my favorite foods for a burst of natural energy!

Whether it’s a jolt after a cup of coffee or drowsiness after Thanksgiving dinner, most people have personally experienced how food and drinks can affect their energy and alertness.

With as many as 35% of American adults suffering from symptoms of insomnia, it’s understandable that there’s a strong desire to take advantage of food and drinks for better sleep.

Both diet and sleep are complex, which means there’s no silver bullet or single food that is guaranteed to help with sleep. However, there are some foods and drinks that may make it easier to get a great night’s sleep.

Staying on task can be difficult, but it can be particularly challenging when you are surrounded by constant distractions. In today's always-connected world, diversions are nothing more than a click away, which makes it that much more difficult to figure out how to focus.

Even during quiet moments, distraction is literally at your fingertips as you find yourself checking your social media notifications or the latest news updates.

But being mentally focused is essential for success. The ability to concentrate on something in your environment and direct mental effort toward it is critical for learning new things, achieving goals, and performing well across a wide variety of situations.

Whether you are trying to finish a report at work or competing in a marathon, your ability to focus can mean the difference between success and failure.

Most pet owners are clear about the immediate joys that come with sharing their lives with companion animals. However, many of us remain unaware of the physical and mental health benefits that can also accompany the pleasure of snuggling up to a furry friend. It’s only recently that studies have begun to scientifically explore the benefits of the human-animal bond.

Pets have evolved to become acutely attuned to humans and our behavior and emotions. Dogs, for example, are able to understand many of the words we use, but they’re even better at interpreting our tone of voice, body language, and gestures. And like any good human friend, a loyal dog will look into your eyes to gauge your emotional state and try to understand what you’re thinking and feeling (and to work out when the next walk or treat might be coming, of course).

​Pets, especially dogs and cats, can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression, ease loneliness, encourage exercise and playfulness, and even improve your cardiovascular health. Caring for an animal can help children grow up more secure and active. Pets also provide valuable companionship for older adults. Perhaps most importantly, though, a pet can add real joy and unconditional love to your life.

“I’ve been interested in the 432 Hz conspiracy theories for a while,” began an email from my editor at VAN. “Would you like to spend some time using the 432 Player, a website that adjusts all your music to 432 Hz?”

I consider myself a very online person, and yet, through a mixture of willful ignorance, immediate distrust of poor graphic design, and YouTube algorithms utterly determined to show me every single one of Frank Lampard’s best corners, I’d never encountered the 432 Hz phenomenon. Its lore has all the hallmarks of your archetypal conspiracy theories. No one version dominates, but most accounts include a selection of the following tropes:

You know that feeling just as something bad is happening that you can’t control, when your stomach does a backflip, lurches up into your throat, and then drops into your toes?

I experienced it one day snapping back to full consciousness as my car glided off the left shoulder of the freeway and spun in a full 360-degree circle on the gravel.

I’d logged a very busy week at work, been to a music group practice, done some freelance editing, and gone for a few runs in preparation for a marathon. Now I was headed to a weekend event with my spiritual community.

​There I was, zipping down the freeway in the fast lane on a crisp and sunny fall morning. I felt drowsy, so I flipped on the car radio to keep myself alert.

In retrospect, I should have also sung along at the top of my lungs. Or, you know, pulled off the road to rest. But I didn’t want to be late for the start of the gathering.

​The last thing I remember thinking was “There aren’t any cars close by. I’ll just close my eyes for a second or two."