The Recovering Body

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

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Physical Properties

Description

Just as recovery requires daily practice, so does physical fitness and a healthy lifestyle. In The Recovering Body, seasoned health writer, Jennifer Matesa ignites the recovery community with the first-ever guide to achieving physical recovery as part of your path to lifelong sobriety.

In our former lives as practicing alcoholics and addicts, we likely punished our bodies as much as our minds. And yet, recovery programs often neglect the physical, focusing primarily on the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of staying sober.In The Recovering Body, popular health writer and Guinevere Gets Sober blogger Jennifer Matesa provides simple, effective ways for addicts to heal the damage caused by substance abuse, whatever our age, lifestyle, or temperament. Combining solid science and practical guidance, along with her own experience and that of other addicts, Matesa offers a roadmap to creating our own unique approach to physical recovery. Each chapter provides key summaries and helpful checklists, focused on: exercise and activitysleep and restnutrition and fuelsexuality and pleasuremeditation and awarenessMatesas holistic approach frames physical fitness as a living amends to self--a transformative gift analogous to the spiritual fitness practices worked on in recovery.

Reviews

The Recovering Body melds real-life experience, practical advice, and state-of-the-art science to help readers understand what addiction does to our bodies and how we can recover ourselvesbody, mind, and spirit.
Katherine Ketcham, coauthor with William Cope Moyers of Broken
The Recovering Body is an engaging commentary on the importance of exercise and meditation for people in recoverybut it is so much more than simply a self-help book. Personal, luminous in its depth of understanding of the human condition, this is a book that would benefit anyone who struggles with self-image. This is a book for all persons who choose light above darkness.
Kaylie Jones, author of Lies My Mother Never Told Me
An essential read for anyone struggling with addiction and compulsion. Matesa has integrated science and stories that provide the reader with critical insight and guidance from every perspective. This book is the roadmap towards fulfillment and happiness.
Shane Niemeyer, Ironman triathlete and author of The Hurt Artist: My Journey from Suicidal Junkie to Ironman
What exactly is recovered during recovery With warmth and intelligence, Matesa suggests that healing the body from physical addiction is not separate from spiritual healing. Through fascinating stories from the field and using her experience as an educator and journalist who overcame her own addiction, she explains how movement, nourishment, sleep, pleasure, and mindfulness pave the road home to yourself. A blueprint for healing, body and soul.
Susan Piver, New York Times bestselling author of The Wisdom of a Broken Heart
The Recovering Body opens our eyes to the next level of recoveryoffering clarity into the great benefits of expanding our wellness as people who have chosen life over the downward spiral of addiction. Whatever your drug or process of choice might be, there is no question that The Recovering Body is a much needed addition to Twelve Step outside literature.
AfterParty Magazine
Matesa writes honestly and clearly about her own recovery and about going deeper into what fitness can bea practice about awareness on a very deep level, from movement to sleep to meditation and awareness. She outlines a plan for strengthening the body to work with the mind and the mind to work with the body. My thanks, Jennifer Matesa, for taking me on this important journey and deepening my own understanding. Don t abandon your body. It is your truthful home.
Patti Digh, author of Love Is a Verb and 37 Days
Matesa, whom I first encountered as the author of the excellent blog Guinevere Gets Sober, and later worked with at the online addiction and recovery magazine The Fix, offers advice to clean up the wreckage and recover the body s health during sobriety.[She] musters a chorus of trainers and exercise-oriented recovery experts to bolster her argument that simple exercise remains the single most overlooked element in most people s recovery programs.
Dirk Hanson, Addiction Inbox
Her writing is very accessible, is not preachy, and unpretentiously conveyed a lot of deep truths that I hadn t considered but seemed self-evident as soon as I read them. the book takes a lot of previously disparate pieces of information that I vaguely knew to be true and organizes them into framework that not only deepened my understanding, but offered a concrete path to continue enhancing and securing my own recovery. I highly recommend it.
Addiction & Recovery News"
"The Recovering Body" melds real-life experience, practical advice, and state-of-the-art science to help readers understand what addiction does to our bodies and how we can recover ourselvesbody, mind, and spirit.
Katherine Ketcham, coauthor with William Cope Moyers of Broken
"The Recovering Body" is an engaging commentary on the importance of exercise and meditation for people in recoverybut it is so much more than simply a self-help book. Personal, luminous in its depth of understanding of the human condition, this is a book that would benefit anyone who struggles with self-image. This is a book for all persons who choose light above darkness.
Kaylie Jones, author of "Lies My Mother Never Told Me"
An essential read for anyone struggling with addiction and compulsion. Matesa has integrated science and stories that provide the reader with critical insight and guidance from every perspective. This book is the roadmap towards fulfillment and happiness.
Shane Niemeyer, Ironman triathlete and author of "The Hurt Artist: My Journey from Suicidal Junkie to Ironman"
What exactly is recovered during recovery With warmth and intelligence, Matesa suggests that healing the body from physical addiction is not separate from spiritual healing. Through fascinating stories from the field and using her experience as an educator and journalist who overcame her own addiction, she explains how movement, nourishment, sleep, pleasure, and mindfulness pave the road home to yourself. A blueprint for healing, body and soul.
Susan Piver, "New York Times" bestselling author of "The Wisdom of a Broken Heart"
" The Recovering Body" opens our eyes to the next level of recoveryoffering clarity into the great benefits of expanding our wellness as people who have chosen life over the downward spiral of addiction. Whatever your drug or process of choice might be, there is no question that "The Recovering Body" is a much needed addition to Twelve Step outside literature.
"AfterParty Magazine"
Matesa writes honestly and clearly about her own recovery and about going deeper into what fitness can bea practice about awareness on a very deep level, from movement to sleep to meditation and awareness. She outlines a plan for strengthening the body to work with the mind and the mind to work with the body. My thanks, Jennifer Matesa, for taking me on this important journey and deepening my own understanding. Don t abandon your body. It is your truthful home.
Patti Digh, author of "Love Is a Verb" and "37 Days"
Matesa, whom I first encountered as the author of the excellent blog "Guinevere Gets Sober, " and later worked with at the online addiction and recovery magazine "The Fix, " offers advice to clean up the wreckage and recover the body s health during sobriety.[She] musters a chorus of trainers and exercise-oriented recovery experts to bolster her argument that simple exercise remains the single most overlooked element in most people s recovery programs.
Dirk Hanson, "Addiction Inbox"
Her writing is very accessible, is not preachy, and unpretentiously conveyed a lot of deep truths that I hadn t considered but seemed self-evident as soon as I read them. the book takes a lot of previously disparate pieces of information that I vaguely knew to be true and organizes them into framework that not only deepened my understanding, but offered a concrete path to continue enhancing and securing my own recovery. I highly recommend it.
"Addiction & Recovery News""
""The Recovering Body" melds real-life experience, practical advice, and state-of-the-art science to help readers understand what addiction does to our bodies and how we can recover ourselves--body, mind, and spirit."
--Katherine Ketcham, coauthor with William Cope Moyers of Broken
"The Recovering Body" is an engaging commentary on the importance of exercise and meditation for people in recovery--but it is so much more than simply a self-help book. Personal, luminous in its depth of understanding of the human condition, this is a book that would benefit anyone who struggles with self-image. This is a book for all persons who choose light above darkness."
--Kaylie Jones, author of "Lies My Mother Never Told Me"
"An essential read for anyone struggling with addiction and compulsion. Matesa has integrated science and stories that provide the reader with critical insight and guidance from every perspective. This book is the roadmap towards fulfillment and happiness."
--Shane Niemeyer, Ironman triathlete and author of "The Hurt Artist: My Journey from Suicidal Junkie to Ironman"
"What exactly is recovered during recovery With warmth and intelligence, Matesa suggests that healing the body from physical addiction is not separate from spiritual healing. Through fascinating stories from the field and using her experience as an educator and journalist who overcame her own addiction, she explains how movement, nourishment, sleep, pleasure, and mindfulness pave the road home to yourself. A blueprint for healing, body and soul."
--Susan Piver, "New York Times" bestselling author of "The Wisdom of a Broken Heart"
""The Recovering Body" opens our eyes to the next level of recovery--offering clarity into the great benefits of expanding our wellness as people who have chosen life over the downward spiral of addiction. As the Big Books says, "More will be disclosed" and I believe in Jennifer Matesa's "The Recovery Body," it already has."
-- Afterpartychat.com


""The Recovering Body" melds real-life experience, practical advice, and state-of-the-art science to help readers understand what addiction does to our bodies and how we can recover ourselves--body, mind, and spirit."
--Katherine Ketcham, coauthor with William Cope Moyers of Broken
"The Recovering Body" is an engaging commentary on the importance of exercise and meditation for people in recovery--but it is so much more than simply a self-help book. Personal, luminous in its depth of understanding of the human condition, this is a book that would benefit anyone who struggles with self-image. This is a book for all persons who choose light above darkness."
--Kaylie Jones, author of "Lies My Mother Never Told

Author Bio

Jennifer Matesa, a seasoned health writer, authors the award-winning blog Guinevere Gets Sober and contributes regularly to TheFix.com. In 2013 she became a fellow of the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Jennifer lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.