Customer Reviews

The Spiritual Recovery Manual: Vedic Knowledge and Yogic Techniques to Accelerate Recovery for Addicts, Codependents and Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The yogic techniques Williams describes in "The Spiritual Recovery Manual" are practical and surprisingly down-to-earth, presented in a way that tends to resonate with everyday experience. These subtle mental and physiological roots of recovery provide valuable models for recovery not available in traditional, "Western" addiction/dependency literature.

I admit that when I picked up the book, I thought it might be something lightweight and fluffy, filled with affirmations and good moods but little substance. But it's packed (and I use the word advisedly) with practical techniques (some of which I have since tried and found quite effective) from meditation to preventative Ayurvedic medicine to balanced, balancing diet tips, to architecture (of all things). Williams throws in a surprising amount of solid research on the recovery techniques, which a lot of people will find reassuring. I was particularly interested in his societal framework for addiction ("Healing Society"), in which he ties individual addiction to addictive socities (like America's), and offers solutions to create balance and recovery at that level, as well.

I found this toolset to be of real use in issues around being an adult child of an alcoholic parent, not only in the strict definition of recovery as it's traditionally understood, but -- and this is the great gift of the book -- in taking my recovery to a broader, and more profound level, towards spiritual enlightenment: the "Total Recovery" with which the book culminates.

I hope this book gets into the hands of people in recovery, and particularly that it's read by recovery professionals: I think "The Spiritual Recovery Manual" represents -- yes, I have to say it -- a paradigm shift in thinking about recovery.

We often forget how much we all are attached to our own behavioral and psychological habits. But more often we find that it is very challenging to face our own vices of ignorance which continuously divide ourselves from the most natural state of mind, Bliss. This book truly invites the readers to the most profound Vedic guiding light which can uplift anyone's precious life with its most NATURAL, easy and comfortable techniques. I was very pleased with the simplicity of the author's approach to the physiological mind-body coordination and his "manual" to re-program one's own consciousness.

If you are looking for an EASY and NATURAL way to re-program your-old-self and ready to make a positive change to your old habits, this book would be your must-to-have to start with! "Bring the Light of knowledge and the darkness of oneself and one's surroundings will go away." -Maharishi Mehesh Yogi.

Spiritual Recovery Manual

We all want to get beyond "one day at a time" and put addiction behind us. This book can take you beyond recovery to wholeness.

A good book for those in recovery and his or her loved ones. Very methodically describes the stages of spiritual recovery, and the tools available to help you.

If you're going to do the work of recovering, you might as well have the best advice you can get to help you on your way. In my experience, this is it.

It is rare that I write a book review, but this book is such a poor value based on price and content that I feel a moral imperative.

This book is based on the Maharishi approach to yoga and meditation (TM).

It is not a "how to" book. It is not a self help book.

Rather, it provides "scientific" backing for why you should practice.

It seems like it was an academic paper turned into a book.

It provides lists of things you should do, but no explanation of how.

I understand that TM is copyrighted and must be taught in person, but the author misses the boat by not providing some basic meditation instruction that could prepare someone for additional training.

Essentially, this book is an extended marketing brochure for TM meditation and other Maharishi programs.

Unfortunately, I do not recommend this book to anyone except academics interested in documenting the realm of Eastern-philosophy influenced addiction recovery literature, and perhaps to people who are already committed to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's teachings, who may want background on how it may relate to addiction recovery.

Overall, the first third of the book may be a useful reference point to them as a framing of addiction recovery in the language of a developmental challenge of increasing one's degree of self-referral. I genuinely enjoyed and appreciated this portion.

The rest is only useful if you are specifically looking to have the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on meditation and ayurveda promoted to you, without necessarily learning any of them in any real depth. Especially considering the intended audience, it could leave some people with just enough information to be dangerous.

The first three chapters articulate Williams' framing of addiction and related problems, the recovery process, and how to connect them. Overall, there is a deep familiarity with the entire range of recovery challenges, and many references to more familiar authors -- Whitfield, Woititz, Bradshaw, Beattie, Nakken and Subby.

In the first chapter, Williams sets up the addiction spectrum he attempts to address, recapitulating Dr. Craig Nakken's frame from the book The Addictive Personality.

This touches on three stages of addictive personality development, from Internal Change to Lifestyle Change to Life Breakdown. And also three categories of addiction, from Category 3 -- Strong Ingestive Addiction, encompassing traditional substance abuse -- to Category 2 -- other behavioral addictions (which he calls Indirect Mood-Altering -- including co-dependence, adult child emotional/behavioral patterns), to Category 1-B -- subtler patterns where "we distract ourselves from unresolved emotions, but we do it internally" without a substance or external behavior, by incessantly daydreaming or obsessing on situations or problems.

The subtlest, Category 1-A, is described as follows:

"Stuck in a rut of repetitive mental activity -- thoughts, moods or desires -- that won't stop. A person free of Category 1-A addictions is free of compulsive thinking. It is no longer: one thought leads to another thought leads to another thought... until we are too exhausted to think and go to sleep. This is not how our brains were designed to work. Between thoughts there should be silence. The importance of silent consciousness cannot be overemphasized."

I found covering this spectrum from the point of view of consciousness work an interesting and useful theoretical framing.

The second chapter presents a few interesting definitions and a number of related diagrams. He writes:

"Self-referral describes any process whereby a system dynamically interacts with itself to maintain existence, balance and progress."

He relates self-referral on multiple levels from biological homeostasis to higher-order mental and emotional functioning required for personal fulfillment.

He writes, in contrast,

"Object-referral is outwardly directed awareness that does not include enough self-referral to support (perfectly) normal functioning of mind and body."

Thus, he sets up addiction and related spectrum problems as a journey from extreme object-referral toward consciousness grounded in total self-referral.

Additional interesting definitions are:

"The Self is the silent, creative, powerful center of intelligence and organizing power deep within each person. Experience of the Self is characterized by pure awareness, silence, unboundedness, bliss, satisfaction, contentment, complete harmony, unity, being. Synonyms: self-referral awareness, pure consciousness, unbounded awareness, Being, transcendental consciousness, simplest form of awareness, source of thought, Creative Intelligence, the Absolute."

... and ...

"Enlightenment is characterized by spontaneous and unbroken experience of the Self. We don't lose complete self-referral no matter how dynamically we act or how deeply we sleep. It is the most natural state of life, free of past conditioning."

These are interesting definitions that are based in Eastern philosophy approach to psychology, which are not often brought into sphere of addiction recovery literature, and they are presented well here, with supporting theory, models, and diagrams. Again, I found this to be a compelling discussion.

In the third chapter, Williams covers his view of the various models of addiction. He does not ascribe fully to the biomedical or biopsycosocial disease model of addiction. Instead, his model is framed as a "biopsychosocial spirtual developmental problem" which incorporates disease but also transcends it. He writes,

"Understanding the developmental component of addiction is the key to total recovery. A disease can be recovered from, then caught again and again. But you don't usually go back to previous developmental stages.... To grow out of our addictions, we need a new style of cognitive functioning, one that doesn't include in its repertoire the ability to make the mistakes that keep us unfulfilled. I don't believe addiction is a purely developmental problem. I believe it is a complex problem that has spiritual, biological, psychological (including behavioral), sociological and developmental components. All these have to be addressed... We have to update the disease model ..."

In broad strokes, I agree with this approach, and only wish he developed it further. Williams concludes the third chapter with this statement of his central thesis:

"The rate, quality, and extent of recovery are determined by the frequency, and especially the depth, of self-referral experiences of total integration of mind, body, and consciousness."

I think most anyone with a deep experience and understanding of addiction recovery in the 12-step or psychological framework could agree with this, so long as the notion of "self-referral" is properly understood or translated into the framework of "conscious contact with the God of our understanding", or into the psychological framework of choice, in terms of developing authentic experience of one's highest-level of self.

Unfortunately, from this promising beginning, Williams veers into three chapters on the benefits of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation technique, without ever describing in even a general way the technique itself, and then spends the final three chapters glossing over the entirety of the science of Ayurveda, particularly as espoused by the Maharishi.

None of these latter chapters present much directly useful information to those who aren't already actively familiar with these topics or willing to seek additional expert advice. Some of it, including the pulse diagnosis section on Ayurveda, presents the very misleading notion that self-diagnosis should be attempted by those entirely unfamiliar with Ayurveda, which is foolish at best.

Most disappointingly, there is not much especially oriented toward the dynamics of addiction recovery in light of these techniques.

Great book that outlines and helps one to understand a lot of the fundamentals to addiction. Some of it is a little intellectual but then returns back to earth to help individuals create a more stable life for themselves emotionally, physically and spiritually.