Rep. Ryan explains how mindfulness can help with addictions

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

CHAMPION

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan has used mindfulness since 2008 to improve his life, has advocated for its use to help children avoid destructive behaviors, and has read research suggesting that it has helped veterans returning from war and others.

As the keynote speaker at Friday’s ASAP drug summit at Kent State University at Trumbull, Ryan, of Howland, D-13th, told about 200 people why he thinks it has the potential to help drug addicts or potential addicts to change critical behaviors.

He pointed to the successes found in the children in Warren schools as an example.

Warren used money provided through a $1 million grant Ryan secured in 2009 to teach youngsters to “de-escalate” challenging situations, he said.

The school district issued 215 out-of-school suspensions among students in kindergarten through third grade at one point but have issued only 14 so far this school year, he said.

In the brain, the amygdala controls the fight or flight response, causing a person to respond to a threat – something lethal like a wild animal. But when the amygdala takes over the brain, the executive level that controls thinking can’t function well.

“Why can’t these kids learn? Because we have kids in a classroom in a constant state of stress,” Ryan said. They are under constant low and middle levels of stress, which also makes them prone to heart disease and high blood pressure, he said.

Mindfulness is a meditative practice that focuses on “the present moment” instead of worrying about the past or the future, but it’s a lot like what he saw when as a child he visited his grandparents, who lived nearby his Niles home.

“It would be completely quiet,” he said. “The two of them quietly praying the Rosary,” he said of a Catholic prayer involving ritual prayers and beads. “It was a special place. They had this all figured out,” he said.

Ryan said his training in mindfulness took him back to his days as a high school athlete – times when he was doing well “and the mind becomes quiet.” He would later publish the book “The Mindful Nation” in 2012.

By using quiet time and techniques to shut out distractions, mindfulness has helped the children in Warren “catch themselves before they do something stupid,” he said. “You’re rewiring the brain.”

Many Silicon Valley companies and Aetna, the huge insurance company, have used mindfulness to help make employees healthier, he said.

And reasearch from the National Institutes of Health has indicated that mindfulness may be effective in treating pain, which can be an important way to reduce the amount of medication people consume, he said, noting that it’s well established that addiction is a frequent result of using opiates for pain.

Mindfulness has been successful in helping to reduce drug- and alcohol-abuse relapses, he said.

“Why does it work? We’re not giving you a pill. We’re teaching you how to be a human being,” he said.

“I’ve seen this technique used to heal veterans who’ve come back traumatized from war,” he said.

The summit featured about six presentations throughout the day.