meditation

Breathwork

June 25, 2018 // by Lauren// Leave a Comment

Breathwork is an Ancient Active Breathing Practice used for healing blocks or stuck energy by moving the breath through physical, emotional or spiritual challenges. The breath bypasses the intellect and takes you on a journey where you are able to experience deep profound transformations.

At AToN Center I get to work with our clients individually and in group Breathwork sessions allowing them to experience a tool that they can use moving forward in recovery. This creates an active meditation practice that can provide healing and ongoing transformational experiences.

Some benefits that are noticed include:

Self Acceptance/ Self Love
Deep Relaxation
Euphoria/ Joy
Forgiveness of Self and Others
Connecting to a Life Purpose
Developing Intuition
Opening and alignment of the Chakras
Feeling a true connection to Spirit, Higher Power, Creator, or God
Inner Peace and Harmony
Letting go of Difficult Challenges

Many people find the Breathwork is helpful for healing anxiety, depression, past trauma, grief and loss, shame, physical pain, and spiritual emptiness.

Kristin Colton CADC II
Chemical Dependency Counselor
AToN Center 888-535-1516

Poem About A Healthy Balanced Trinity

April 16, 2018 // by Aton Center

Who’s this “we” that will rescue me

From beneath this deep dark sea

Not God nor Buddha will help me be

To bring me back to sanity

No, God or Buddha please let me be

I need more time beneath the sea

To find my way to restore me

A healthy, balanced, trinity.

Chris McDuffie, MA CADCII
Chemical Dependency Counselor
AToN Center 888-535.1516

Published from The Fix.

Holistic Recovery

December 10, 2017 // by Aton Center

The holistic approach to recovery addresses the needs of the whole person.

In order to successfully treat the whole person, AToN Center focuses on a person’s physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and social needs. The way we address physical needs is through possible detoxification, medication, nutrition, sleep/rest as well as an understanding of what the body will go through during the different phases of recovery.

Emotional needs are nurtured through learning to identify feelings and communicate them honestly as they arise. Recovery is a learning process and mental health returns as coping skills build. Spiritual growth is achieved through spiritual practices and explorations of beliefs and is the inner strength that fuels our success. AToN Center addresses social needs by encouraging regular interaction with others, especially people who are also in the early stages of recovery.

AToN Center offers our residents four holistic sessions a week and have an array of holistic services to choose from. AToN Center strives to encourage the connection between the physical body as well as the emotional and spiritual components of self.

Kate Judd

CD Counselor

AToN Center 888-535-1516

Creativity And Problem Solving At AToN Center

November 23, 2017 // by Aton Center

At AToN Center the residents create beautiful floral arrangements as part of a mindfulness and meditation exercise. The exercise illustrates the unique way each individual approached problem solving.

Residents find the opportunity to tap into their creativity, to embrace nature and its natural flow, and to learn a healthy coping technique for reducing stress and developing balance.

Beautiful floral arrangements created by AToN residents.

AToN Center 888-535-1516

Meditation, a Practice of Listening

November 15, 2017 // by Aton Center

Inhale through the nose, hold for a count of 4, exhale through the mouth…

When we sit quietly and focus on the breath we might also add a feature of asking for guidance. If we are able to then stop and listen to what comes, to allow it to flow, to hear intuition, we may be surprised to find what is available to us.

I was taught to practice a listening meditation that when guidance comes I am to write down the messages that come to me. We write so we can later see what might be messages from the Spirit vs the self. This practice has been profound and extremely helpful to me and many others that have chosen to practice this type of meditation. It can be as simple as setting an alarm on your phone for 5 minutes, asking for guidance in something specific or something unknown, and then stopping the asking, sitting quietly focusing on the breath, until messages come. As you hear anything enter the mind, write it down on paper or in a journal.

The more we practice meditation the more we get out of it. Enjoy the Journey.

Kristin Colton, CATC II
CD Counselor
AToN Center 888-535-1516

Benefits of Meditation

June 1, 2017 // by Aton Center

How would you like to:

1. Be calm

2. Be emotionally aware

3. Be more in control of your emotions

4. Be able to discover what is truly important in your life

5. Find out where you are in life

6. Find out where you are going

7. Become more tolerant

8. Become more tranquil

9. Remove anxiety

10. Overcome stress

Did you know that these are benefits of Meditation?

But just how do you meditate?

The following seven steps provide a simple guide for meditation.

STEP 1. Sit quietly in a comfortable position.

STEP 2. Close your eyes.

STEP 3. Deeply relax all your muscles. Take a deep breath. Imagine your muscles are limp and relaxed like spaghetti. Let your whole body become limp, relaxed, and calm. Think of a calm, pleasant scene, such as a quiet pool or fountain, a park with green grass, or clouds moving across the sky. Pretend you are in such a place.

STEP 4. Breathe through your nose. Become aware of your breathing. As you breathe out, say the word one or some other word such as ommm or peace silently to yourself. Breathe easily and naturally.

STEP 5. Continue repeating your word, silently, for about twenty minutes.

STEP 6. Don’t worry about whether you are “successful.”

Set aside some time to meditate each day. This only needs to be 10 to 15 minutes at first, but will increase to 30 minutes as you become more experienced. The best time to meditate is first thing in the morning before the mind has had a chance to become cluttered with the events of the day, but the evening is also suitable, and any time is better than none.

Every day you can feel better and better. If this helps you please let us know!

Paul Aguirre
BA (CSAC) Chemical Dependency Counselor
AToN Center 888-535-1516

Using Meditation for Anxiety, Stress, and Panic Attacks

February 14, 2017 // by Aton Center

A Lesson by Mingyur Rinpoche

Panic attacks, acute moments of anxiety, can feel very threatening and crippling. Meditation is the practice of visiting, seeing, and identifying one’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions. How might you use meditation to help calm your anxiety, stress, or panic attacks?

Tibetan Buddhist Monk and meditation master, Mingyur Rinpoche offers his suggestions on this two part video: Click to View

Master Mingyur Rinpoche offers the following causes of suffering during a panic attack and how to use particular meditation practices to help mitigate the attack itself. His lecture included the following thoughts:

There are two ways that we create more suffering during a panic attack:

First, you tend to believe in the panic, telling yourself that everything is to be feared fearful, that everything that is happening during the anxiety is really scary. In effect you are following the panic and allowing panic to become your malevolent boss.

Second, you don’t like your panic. You tell yourself that this feeling is not good, that it is terrible. You tell yourself that because of this panic you have lost all of your opportunism. And, out of fear you race to find a way to rid yourself of this panic.

The problem is that you are creating your own suffering. If you don’t like the panic and suffering, if you have an aversion to the pain, pain becomes stronger. Your mood becomes more sensitive. It then appears that you cannot avoid the panic attack.

Mingyur Rinpoche then pivots to offer the following help: In short, do not allow the enemy to become your malevolent boss or enemy. Rather, attempt to make the anxiety your friend. Mingyur Rinpoche suggests using and practicing three, specific meditation practice.

These practices, he argues, will help you to make a friend of your panic:

a) Samatha Meditation (calm-abiding)

b) Loving-Kindness Meditation

c) Vipassana Meditation (gaining correct insight).

The attached link explores the benefits of Samatha Meditation which helps make you calmer and more relaxed. Mingyur Rinpoche states that practicing these three specific meditations will help address: depression, anger, fear, doubt, loss of self-esteem.

Benefits of Meditation in Recovery

February 9, 2017 // by Aton Center

At AToN Center, we strive to educate our residents on how to balance the mind, body and spirit. One important tool that many of our residents utilize is meditation. Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years, and for good reason! It can help with stress reduction and anxiety management.

During a meditative experience, the goal is to focus the mind and let go of competing thoughts that can cause unnecessary distractions. I will often say to our residents, “Notice any sounds that are distracting, let them go, and return your attention back to your breath.” This continued process can result in increased physical, spiritual and emotional well-being.

According to the Mayo Clinic, the emotional benefits of meditation include:

Gaining a new perspective on stressful situations
Building skills to manage your stress Increasing self-awareness
Focusing on the present
Reducing negative emotions

Research also suggests that meditation may be beneficial for physical conditions such as:

Allergies
Asthma
Binge eating
Cancer
Depression
Fatigue
Heart disease
High blood pressure
Pain
Sleep problems
Substance abuse

The most important thing to remember is to not judge your meditation skills! There is no right or wrong way to meditate, what matters is that you are attending to your personal needs by taking a break and practicing self-care.

Cassandra Cannon, Ph.D. – Licensed Clinical Psychologist
AToN Center 888-535-1516

The Many Benefits of Practicing Meditation

February 26, 2016 // by Aton Center

AToN Center prides itself on offering a holistic approach to maintain wellness in sobriety. Residents are afforded a host of recovery based practices, among them holistics that include: meditation, mindfulness, acupuncture, yoga and physical fitness. A recent New York Times article discusses recent scientific research that explores the many benefits of practicing meditation.

Sobriety affords the recovering person the benefit of thinking more clearly, practicing empathy for others and exploring healthy options to solve daily challenges. Including meditation in one’s sober efforts helps remind the person have meaningful, reasonable responses to current challenges or dilemmas. It is our hope at AToN Center that a newly sober individual will find peace and happiness in their sobriety.

I encourage you to read this article that explores the science behind the benefits of practicing meditation.

Chris McDuffie, MA, RRW
Chemical Dependency Counselor
AToN Center 888-535-1516

Making Meditation Simple

September 7, 2015 // by Aton Center

Meditation and healthy living help those in recovery. A person in early recovery is likely to experience triggers, stress and the compulsion to drink alcohol or use drugs. These triggers can be more easily managed with the aid of healthy eating habits, rest and meditation. Some find it difficult to meditate. Cambridge University educated Peter Russell offers simple guidelines to follow to make meditation easy, enjoyable and effective.

Peter Russell states, “For many of you, it might sound strange to hear that meditation should be effortless. If anything, you probably feel you’re not trying hard enough. But the opposite is actually true. Meditation works best when there’s no trying or effort. It’s about allowing the mind to relax.”

Meditation and Mindfulness based practices help the person in early recovery “regroup” and avoid living life on “automatic pilot”. The act of taking a five minute break at several points throughout one’s day can ground the recovery person. These mindful efforts actively engage their sober efforts and remind them to use their recovery tools that we have taught them while at AToN Center.

Peter Russell offers the following advice for making meditation simple: “While trying harder may help in many day-to-day tasks, when it comes to meditation, the harder we try, the more tense our minds become. And this defeats the entire purpose of meditation. Once you stop all effort and striving, you’ll find the mind settles down naturally into a state of quiet.”

So consider simply relaxing the body and your breathing the next time you meditate. If thoughts come into your mind that are distracting, that is ok. Simply, try to redirect your thoughts to the task at hand, focusing on your breathing and resting.

Chris McDuffie, RRW
Chemical Dependency Counselor
AToN Center 888-535-1516

Some benefits that are noticed include:

The Joint Commission

Affiliations

Licensure and Certification

AToN Center – Proud Supporter

Drug and Alcohol Treatment for Men and Women