Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention and Cognitive TherapyIn isolation, addicts find themselves quarantined to their own diseased thinking and therefore anxious, despairing and addicted. Through mindfulness based cognitive therapy, addicts are promised "a reprieve from self" (or self-obsessive thought) based on the maintenance of spiritual living.
As our guests begin to make a practice of presence in their lives, with the earth, and with each other, they will find they have departed the vortex of substance abuse that has kept them sick and addicted. One might say that the practice of mindfulness based relapse prevention techniques and a life of addiction recovery are both synonymous and inextricably linked. Our mindfulness based cognitive therapy program at Jacob's Ladder is not simply didactic, or conventionally educational, but it is experiential and guided. Why clean your room, push in your chair, brush your teeth? Where else do you have to be? If not participating in life, awake and mindful, we tend to live as island inhabitants of the mind where our propensity is to do the opposite. We are self-centered, and self-isolated. We have made a practice of that kind of living and it has unquestionably caused us and our families harm. In our community we will instruct a practice of mindfulness and connectivity to others through work in the fields and with animals. The farm life, and the monastic/ashram model of community, represents a physical connection with the spirituality of the 12 steps. It enables our residents to practice living in communion with their fellows, learning to self-sustain in the most fundamental sense of the word. It is their community, and we as staff are milieu supervisors; not people managers. We believe that planting, watering, nurturing the crop and animals is a fundamentally soothing process. They can witness the fruits of their labor and can be taught mindfulness based relapse prevention techniques while doing so. |
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