Jacqueline Bourbon is a world renown energy healer. Taking residencies at retreats and working closely with doctors to incorporate more spiritually based healing, she is considered a leader on the healing arts, as she likes to call them. In an interview with Vogue, Bourbon talked about the role spiritual healing has in western medicine, especially in the face of criticism. “My belief and experience is that illnesses are diseases of the mental, emotional, or spiritual bodies, which if left unheeded,manifest in the physical as an illness.”
In the integrative philosophy on addiction, the mind, body, and spirit are included in the model of addiction as a sickness. “The Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous was one of the first texts to touch on this holistic affect and created the 12 steps as a spiritual program of recovery. “Our liquor was but a symptom,” the authors wrote. We talk a lot about “underlying issues”, trauma and dual diagnosis in recovery. Most often, addiction and alcoholism are not isolated events. Addiction and alcoholism don’t develop in a vacuum. There are distinct reasons- mental, emotional, and spiritual- which contribute to the brain becoming more fond of drugs and alcohol than life without drugs and alcohol. When the authors and founders of Alcoholics Anonymous were working on their book, science was at a loss to explain what was happening inside the minds of alcoholics and addicts. The simple spiritual solution presented by the early members of recovery was accomplishing spiritually what doctors could not accomplish scientifically.
Bourbon explains, “Spiritual healing can reach the parts that medicine and surgeries cannot as it works simultaneously on all those levels.” Interestingly, Bourbon mentions how she encourages doctors she works with to give her their “… ‘hopeless cases’ where the condition consistently recurs, or is believed to be terminal.” Throughout “The Big Book” are references to alcoholics of the “hopeless” variety and how the founders of AA sought those alcoholics specifically, because the spiritual solution would work best for them. Bourbon offers a vision for the future in which Western and Eastern medicine work side by side, offering scientific and spiritual healing as one modality.
Addiction recovery is often criticized for its incorporation of the 12 steps and it’s connection to spirituality through the 12 steps, yoga, energy healing, pranic healing, and other forms of spirtual healing. Modern recovery is based on the spriitual discovery of the men and women in Alcoholics Anonymous and cannot ignore the deep impact the spiritual life has on the mental and physical effect of drugs and alcohol.
Lakehouse Recovery Center incorporates recovery and non-recovery activities in addition to integrative activities to offer a full spectrum of healing and care to our clients. From our residential detox to our 12 month aftercare program, our philosophy emphasizes the solution to addiction as multi-faceted and inclusive. For information on our programs, call us today: 877.762.3707