The Addict Brain & Yoga

Posted by Elise Mitchell on July 07, 2014

The yoga mat teaches you something about yourself every time you get on it. We can use these lessons toward any personal journey we undertake. In the case of addiction and recovery, the mat is an excellent place to challenge the addict brain. It reveals our knee-jerk reactions to discomfort and our over-indulgent behaviors toward pleasure. Like a mirror, the mat shows us our strengths and weaknesses not just in our physicality but also in our character. The lesson does not stop with a casual glance at our short-comings. Oh no! At this point, we have only taken out our notebooks and pencils.

The lesson is objective yet highly personal.

How it Unfolds

The teacher has just requested you to extend your leg in a particular position. Sweat begins to appear on your brow. A rather intense sensation unravels from your hip to your toes. You have just tapped into a tightness and soreness in your leg you didn’t know existed. You are sure your muscles have somehow calcified into bone and you are about to break every one of them. The teacher’s voice is irritatingly calm and collected while every muscle in your chest, throat, shoulders, and face is clenched in discomfort. Your breath is short and tense. You are now experiencing an element of powerlessness while this crazy person, posing as a yoga teacher, is telling you to breathe deeply and just “be present.”

Here is the Test

What do you do with discomfort, with pain? We are all wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. In the case of addiction, this behavior has become out of control. Impulsivity, poor choices, subsequent guilt and shame regarding the aftermath of these choices perpetuate the endless cycle of numbing out and finding greater pleasure. Over time, the executive function of the brain becomes “flabby” and ill-equipped to handle life on life’s terms. Good news — we have the capacity to develop and change the executive function of our brain (choice-making) by how we act or react to situations that challenge our most primitive impulses.

At this moment on the mat, you get to witness your first instincts — cringe, give up, get panicky, feel defeated and worthless, get angry with the teacher, push harder to impress the guy next to you? In this moment, the addict brain is in the driver seat desperately trying to get you to drive down that same neural pathway to avoid the discomfort. If this pose is a metaphor for your life, you probably would have reached for that drink, popped that pill, or hooked up with that girl/guy by now.

The Mid-Term

Can you breathe through the discomfort? Can you relax your face, shoulders, breath, and be okay with this moment of stress? Can you be uncomfortable and not distract or numb yourself from it? If you can relax and breathe then something once thought impossible has occurred. You have used a different neural pathway and made it stronger! Do it again (remember you still have to stretch the other leg) and you’ve started a new habit! Continue practicing poses you don’t like, witnessing your distress and not reacting to it, you’ve changed your brain! Choosing a different response to pain is building a new pathway while neglecting and eventually atrophying the old one.

The Final

Are we still talking about yoga? Not exactly. The way in which you’ve began to shift the patterns in your brain while dealing with discomfort on the mat can help overcome the challenging “poses” in life – rejection, grief and loss, catastrophes, etc. The lesson, while more complex and far grander in scale, remains the same: Can you breathe through this moment, stay with the body, relax and make the next best decision? Can you witness your experience and not fall victim to it?

The Pay-Off

Like a yoga practice, life unfolds as it is going to. Everyday hands us something different. Our choice to relax, breathe, stay present, and not run away from our practice in a yoga class translates to the outside world. In both body and mind, you will become stronger, more graceful, more capable, more flexible, more centered, more at peace with whatever pose comes next. Breathe deeply and just be.