May 26, 2016
“The Recovering
Body” was presented on May 24, 2016, by Jennifer Matesa;
author, educator and speaker. Discussions of abstinent addiction
recovery often focus on developing spiritual approaches to life’s
problems and challenges. But, this virtually ignores the experience
of the body. The facts are that the body undergoes serious changes
and damage during active addiction, and many recovering people wind
up frightened that they have wrecked their neurology permanently.
Full recovery asks us to change the ways we relate to our bodies,
beginning with the discipline of resisting the mind’s obsession
about external “solutions” and grounding oneself inside one’s body,
which lives only in the present. This presentation explores five
approaches to addiction recovery that combine physical practices
with the traditional spiritual enlargement of 12-step abstinent
recovery. These approaches have abundant scientific research
backing them, making them not only a way to gain confidence and
“feel better” in recovery but also to prevent relapse and become
fit to contribute to society.
Jennifer Matesa has been writing and speaking about addiction and
recovery since 2010. Her most recent book is The Recovering Body: Physical and Spiritual
Fitness for Living Clean and
Sober (2014). Her forthcoming
book about sexuality in recovery will be published in 2016. She has
written about health and life transformation for more than twenty
years, including two previously published
books, Navel-Gazing: The Days and Nights of a Mother in
the Making, chosen by Lamaze International as a top-ten
childbirth resource, and Knowing Stephanie, a
biography of a young breast cancer patient. Her journalism and
essays have appeared in many publications. In 2010 she established
the popular blog Guinevere Gets Sober (www.guineveregetssober.com), for which she interviewed
many scientists, practitioners, authors, and ordinary folks with
fascinating stories about recovering from addiction. Since 2012 she
has regularly educated groups of medical students about ways to
prevent, identify, and respond to addiction in their patients. In
2013 she was awarded a year-long fellowship with the federal
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA),
in recognition of her writing and public speaking about the human
potential to heal.
This program is part of the Dawn Farm Education Series, a FREE,
annual workshop series developed to provide accurate, helpful,
hopeful, practical, current information about chemical dependency,
recovery, family and related issues. The Education Series is
organized by Dawn Farm, a non-profit community of programs
providing a continuum of chemical dependency services. For
information, please see http://www.dawnfarm.org/programs/education-series.