In this week’s blog, I’ll be covering the underlying factors of addiction, ways to clear and rebalance the body matrix to treat addiction holistically, and self-help tools to support your system to reclaim empowerment, truth and choice when addictive tendencies arise.
Addiction comes in many forms, from alcohol, drugs, pharmaceuticals, food, sugar, sex, codependent relationships, shopping, internet, video games, gambling, work and others. No matter how it shows up in reality, there is a similar underlying energy associated with it. And these underlying issues must be treated across the Body Matrix in order to alleviate the hold addiction can have on all states of being.
Addiction is defined as being physically and mentally dependent on a particular substance. It is also used to describe an enthusiasm or devotion to a particular thing or activity. Addiction shows up in many forms, but independent of the substance, behaviour or thing the energy of addiction stems from similar root causes that are often missed by traditional approaches.
Addiction is complex and fundamentally stems from how connected we are to ourselves on all levels of being. The biggest way I see recovering addicts failed in their treatment approaches is to only treat it from a physical and emotional/mental perspective. In my opinion, this is why the addict relapse statistics are upwards 40 – 60%.
Abstinence-based treatment 12-step programs have been used successfully for nearly 100 years. And I have seen these programs give so many people back their lives, and I fully support the healing collective energies these programs hold. Yet as we evolve in human consciousness, it is time to expand our approach to treating addiction since it continues to grow yearly from 5 – 15% worldwide. This would suggest the approach being used need some support to bring deeper and more expanded treatment options.
As humans, we are all on the addictive spectrum given how we are wired. Some are healthy addictions, others are more destructive. The spectrum of addiction can be from mild to severe, and the treatment approaches will vary depending on how long its been present, the substance involved, and how deep childhood trauma runs in the person’s system.
Treating addiction from the entire Body Matrix perspective (physical, energetic, emotional ancestral and spiritual) can help alleviate addiction in mild to severe cases. When traditional and holistic approaches are used to complement each other, the ability to support recovery and full healing from addiction becomes a real option for anyone caught in the cycle of it.
For example, addiction has a strong tie to our ancestral past that reverberates through our family soul through our ancestral body. It also has a strong association with disturbances in our energy body. From an emotional body perspective, childhood trauma must be healed in order to release the hold on the system. Addiction is often called a crisis of spirit, or a fracture of the soul, so healing the connection to the pure divine spiritual energies with the spiritual body is needed to fully treat addiction. From the physical body perspective, there are physiological aspects to addiction that must also be treated to help smooth the edges of the transition from active addiction to recovery.
I developed consciousness medicine on this key principle. Any issue must be worked from the entire body matrix perspective (physical, energetic, emotional, ancestral and spiritual) before true transformation can occur with lasting results.
The first place to start in eliminating the attachment to addiction is to honour the ways that the actions of addiction ‘benefits’ the user. What I mean by this is that we can never have a 100% unwanted state. If it is happening in our reality, some part of us is resonating with it, desiring it for a very important reason tied to safety, belonging and survival. These are buried deeply in our subconscious mind and become encapsulated there since our system equates them with life and death. When we can understand how they are serving some part of us, we can allow for the preservation of the value while we work to transform the dysfunctional thinking, behaviours and actions into more empowering ways to feel safe, connected, present and in control. In doing this we lessen the hold the addiction energies have over the system, which restores the ability to make a choice in situations where we are faced with acting out the addictive tendencies.
Some benefits of addiction I see most frequently in my clinical practice are to relieve stress, connect with others, ground, relax and self-medicate oneself from repressed emotional and physical pain.
Seeing the addictive substance as a form of medicine is a good first step in reframing the powerlessness addiction can bring with it. The addict is trying to lessen some pain they feel and the substance provides relief from repressed emotions, memories, childhood trauma, stress and difficulties. In order to get someone off their addiction we must treat the underlying causes on the whole person level.
When this happens the addiction they are using as self medicine no longer is needed and they can feel the toxic effects more fully. It is this place where the person will make a choice for themselves to let go of their addiction. Because the addict cannot be fully healed until they make the choice for themselves that the substance, behaviour, or thing is hurting them rather than helping them.
Choice is essential to healing addiction, since getting off the substance is the easy part it is the management of the impulses to relapse where the real healing happens.
When the consequences of the actions can be assessed before the action is taken. This allows for personal empowerment to be activated when the addict makes a choice to abstain because they can fully see and feel the negative impact it has on them and those around them. The choice must come from the person in order for recovery to be permanent. If they are quitting for someone else, the odds of relapse will be high. Ultimately the addict must be empowered enough within themselves to make the choice to stop.
Since addiction is an underlying energy a useful way to promote healing is to repurpose that energy into something healthier. Addiction is a misdirected creativity, so bringing a creative outlet in will help recovery. Art, cooking, writing, dancing, music anything that gets the creative juices flowing will help repurpose the addiction energies in a healthy way. Healthy exercise, fitness and competition is also a way to redirect these energies into something more positive. Connecting with a like-minded community is also essential for healing addiction. This can be difficult because when an addict goes into recovery this means letting go of the people & places associated with the addiction. It is an opportunity to build new healthy connections since social interaction has been proven in studies to alleviate addiction. In short, test animals were given addictive drugs in their water bottles. Those isolated got addicted. Those in a community didn’t.
Identifying the benefits and having an outlet to repurpose the addictive archetype help to support the person’s system so that deeper work can be done to heal the wounds that have created addiction in the first place.
When I teach case studies to my students in the Consciousness Medicine (CxM) courses, I train them how to work three rounds across the body matrix, each round going a layer deeper while simultaneously creating a network of support for the person’s system to allow us to access the root of the issue gently and in a way that allows the system to transform into a new way of being minimizing any healing crisis type energies.
Here is an example of how we work across the Body Matrix to holistically treat addiction. Remember this is a complementary approach and for severe cases, additional trauma counselling and abstinence-based recovery programs should be considered. For milder cases, paying attention and working on these aspects through self-help or with a skilled practitioner is a great way to bring complete and lasting healing to alleviate addiction.
From the physical body perspective, it is important to start by detoxing the system from the toxic residues that can be biochemical, physiological, electromagnetic and hormonal in nature. Supporting the organs associated with elimination such as the kidneys, liver, and lymph system is essential when detoxing otherwise the toxins released will be reabsorbed if not eliminated. The endocrine and nervous systems must also be supported to help restore balance so that it is easier to face & heal the deeper emotional aspects wrapped up in addiction. Using NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) approach to rewire the brain chemistry to disrupt the habituated patterns established in active addiction.
The energy body is one of the places where treatment is often overlooked in traditional approaches. Yet this is where the addictions originate, spin and perpetuate throughout the system. Healthy and aligned chakras, auric layers, and central channels are the foundation for allowing a person to achieve the full embodied presence of being needed to be able to reclaim their choice when addictive tendencies arise.
Addictions are always related to disturbances in the root chakra. This is the base chakra found on the body from the bottom of the pelvis to the feet. It is associated with safety, self-confidence and self-esteem. The root is developing in the first 5 years of life so anything significant or traumatic that occurs during these ages will create patterns of disturbance in the root chakra. Working to clear and balance the root chakra is essential for releasing addictions. The solar plexus is another important energy centre to heal when treating addiction since it is the centre for personal empowerment and boundaries. These two qualities are needed to support recovery. It is developing during the ages of 8-12, so treating childhood imprints during this age range is necessary to take back choice and power over addiction energies.
Once we have the energy body aligned, intact and flowing we can more effectively focus healing energies on the emotional/mental body. This usually involves looking for ages on the person’s timeline where trauma in childhood was experienced. The deeper the trauma the stronger the addiction. It is the emotions associated with these childhood imprints that the addict is using the addiction to self-medicate. Trained therapists, NLP practitioners and trauma counsellors should be consulted when working with the emotional and psychological components of addiction. When we can bring the emotional body into harmony then the need for addiction to self-medicate is lessened and ultimately eliminated.
The ancestral body plays a huge part in addiction. When ancestral entanglements are present, when the addict feels the emotion from childhood they then get hit with the tidal wave of all the emotions of the ancestors who also felt that emotion. This quickly overwhelms the psyche, nervous system and emotional body of the addict where they will use their addictive substance as an escape from the intensity of the emotions. Using the Movements of the Family Soul Family Constellation approach to healing addiction in the ancestral body allows for the truth of the individual to shine through so they can make the choice to release the burden they carry for others and create the life they want, addiction free. From the ancestral perspective, addiction is considered a weakness of the masculine line, where men left the family never to be seen or heard from again, went off to war, died young or was disrespected in ways that they were excluded from the family or family history. This will weaken the presence of masculine energies across the family soul. Connecting the ancestral strength of 8 generations back to help to restore the masculine line helps strengthen the person and alleviate addictions.
From the spiritual body perspective, once we have cleared and aligned the energy body, and have released ancestral entanglements the person’s system is now able to welcome in the pure life force energies needed to heal fully from addiction and create the life they want. Using shamanic healing methodologies we can also heal fractures of the soul that can cause the crisis of spirit that underlies addiction.
In my experience, healing fully from addiction can only be achieved when we work on all aspects of being. This approach is also a natural evolution to treating addiction, by taking a broader and deeper look at the underlying causes of addiction. Honouring and preserving how the addictions have benefitted the person also allows for full inclusion of the light and shadow aspects of being that are essential for inclusion, completeness and harmony within the mind body and spirit. Working towards setting clear boundaries with self and others is key to accessing the empowered states of being needed to make good choices when addictions come knocking.
If you or someone you know has been touched by addiction, I hope this information helps to know that treatment options beyond the traditional approaches are available enriching the healing potential for addiction in all forms and severity.
If you’d like to learn more about my consciousness medicine and family constellation offering that can help heal addiction, please visit my website, www.consciousness-medicine.com, for a full list of on-demand and in-person courses, healing and yoga retreats and 1:1 sessions.
_____________
Upcoming summer retreats, courses, workshops and 1:1 sessions.
Sign up for my e-newsletter and stay connected on social media with links on the homepage.
