Crossing Healthcare Fitness Center

At Crossing Healthcare, we don't duplicate; we innovate. Our Fitness center equipment is designed to help those with substance use disorders. We use cardio, free weights, and yoga to increase dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphin response. This mind, body, exercise (MBE) regimen will aid in preventing relapse in the following ways:

Realigning Your Mentality

One of the first ways MBE can help with substance abuse lies in how it reframes your thinking. If you have a substance use disorders, you likely have a long history of negative thinking. Your brain has spent a significant amount of time under the "control" of something other than your conscious thoughts. MBE changes this by providing a flow of thought into action. It becomes clear that you can choose to take action and see that action play out through an effort of will. This is in direct contrast to the pattern of substance abuse, which reinforces pessimistic and fatalistic thinking.

Setting Reachable Goals

Climbing out of the most bottomless pits of substance abuse can seem like a struggle toward an invisible speck of light. It's hard to see where the end-point lies. With MBE, almost anything can be a milestone. You can set goals from a cardiovascular workout to gaining X amount of muscle mass and anything in between. MBE retrains your brain to arrange and meet reachable goals and break distant ambitions down into everyday realities. That's an invaluable skill for the substance abused brain to learn. It shows that achieving anything is a matter of attaining many smaller steps. You can't solve any major problem all at once — inching toward daylight is the only way to climb out of the pit.

MBE also establishes the power of positive reinforcement. By celebrating your achievements rather than bemoaning your failings, you start to see the world in a different, empowering way.

Displacing Substance Abuse

While substance abuse is a product of the body and mind, it also has a vital behavioral component. A typical example lies in smoking, where smokers often miss the "ritual" of smoking and discover a sense of pent-up energy without it.
MBE for substance abuse helps alleviate this behavioral component by turning the pent-up energy into the dynamic power of exercise. Your exercise regime can also replace the ritual in a literal sense by occupying the same mental "spot" as a regular, comforting activity.

Reduce Stress in Recovery

MBE is one of nature's relievers of stress in early sobriety, making it an effective weapon against society's modern stress epidemic and all the behaviors that emerge from substance use. Stress reduces our ability to tolerate attacks on our willpower. As we grow more stressed, we're more likely to give in to cravings or "treat" ourselves to work through them. In the case of someone kicking substance use, this can mean a relapse.

By reducing stress through MBE, former substance users can shore up their willpower. Recovering from substance use is the repetition of a single question: "Can I overcome?". The better you equip yourself to answer "yes," the more times you'll do it — and the more likely you'll kick the substance use altogether.

Improving Sleep Efficiency

Science shows us that MBE helps us sleep better every night. That's not surprising. We evolved for movement, and our modern lives often constrain that movement. That leaves us with an excess of physical energy (if not mental energy) by the end of the day. A lack of sleep can cause a wealth of knock-on effects. It damages our physical and mental wellbeing, reducing our ability to resist temptations. It also negatively impacts our mood. Sleep forms the bedrock of our day, an aspect of our life on which all else depends. By cleaning up your rest, you can clean up your life.

Strengthening Your Body

It's no secret that withdrawal can play havoc on the human body. As with diseases, a more muscular body is often better placed to resist the impact of withdrawal symptoms. If you've been struggling with substance use, your body might be paying the price. Substance use can dramatically impact the liver and digestive system, which in turn can affect your overall health. Building your physical health back up forms a vital part of returning to everyday life.
Studies tell us there's an innate link between mental and physical health. By strengthening the body, you're removing physical stress. MBE improves mental resistance to addictive impulses.

Feelings of Achievement

Perhaps one of the most overlooked interplays between MBE and addiction lies in the sense of achievement MBE can enable. Overcoming substance abuse is a process with little feedback. At any point, substance abusers feel they might relapse in the span of a weak five minutes. Meaningful milestones can help substance abusers overcome their feelings. Through MBE, individuals can hit their targets and discover a system of positive rewards in stark contrast to the negative feedback loop of substance use.

Reasserting Control

The most subtle yet powerful aspect of overcoming addiction through MBE lies in the control exercise that helps to reassert.
Substance abuse is a tyrannical force that steals control away from those caught in its web. The best way to deal with a lack of control in life is to take action. Much like regaining the initiative in a sport, you can stop "playing defensively" and start scoring by switching your thinking from passive to active.
MBE switches up your thinking by showing you that you can control a surprising amount of your day if you set your mind to it. You alone can choose to get up and exercise. When you achieve your targets, it's you who made it possible.

How to Conquer Substance Abuse Through MBE

MBE can't erase substance abuse overnight or reduce the effort required from someone looking to achieve sobriety. Still, it can provide new levels of focus and clarity to those wondering how to battle substance abuse. These traits are invaluable in a battle of wills and could mean the difference between kicking substance abuse and relapse.