An Integral Guide to Recovery: Twelve Steps and Beyond - Softcover

Du Plessis Ma, Guy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0990441954 ISBN 13: 9780990441953

Publisher: Integral Publishers, 2015

Synopsis

In the information age of the 21st century, the world has become exceedingly complex. Never before in history have we had access to the sum total of all human knowledge, technology, and wisdom. Consequently, finding the right path and methods to recovery can often be perplexing to the newcomer, as well as the "old timer." This book presents to you the recovering addict a progressive recovery map and toolkit suitable for the complexities of today's world.  This ultra-modern approach to recovery is known as Integrated Recovery, a truly holistic lifestyle approach that provides all the essential structure and knowledge to guide you in working a wholly comprehensive, inclusive, and sustainable recovery program, achieved through an integration of the best contemporary knowledge and personal development tools. Although Integrated Recovery is a novel approach, it has not set out to reinvent the wheel as such, but is a synergistic framework that includes many time-honored recovery practices. Integrated Recovery is a 12-step, abstinence-based approach that is informed by Integral Theory, mindfulness, positive psychology, and existentialism.

What makes the Integrated Recovery approach unique, relative to other holistic and integrative approaches to recovery, is that it implements the revolutionary ideas of the Integral model, developed by the American philosopher Ken Wilber. The word "integral" means comprehensive, inclusive, and non-marginalizing. The Integral model, or Integral Theory, attempts exactly that: to include as many perspectives and methodologies as possible within a coherent view of any topic. The Integral model is capable of helping to design a "recovery worldview" that allows a truly holistic approach to recovery and its practices.

This book is dedicated to showing you how to design, plan, and execute your own personalized Integrated Recovery Program - which can be defined as mindfully practicing your physical, psychological, intellectual, existential, social, and environmental dimensions as part of an Integrated Recovery Lifestyle, that is geared towards continued personal growth in relation to self, others, and our being-in-the-world. We are all unique; therefore our recovery paths will also be unique. One size recovery does not fit all. This book will help you find a recovery program that is best suited to your unique needs.
 
Chapters one and two explore the core influences and philosophies that inspire the Integrated Recovery approach, providing brief overviews of Integral Theory, mindfulness, positive psychology, existentialism, and 12-step philosophy. In the remaining chapters, which cover the practical application of the Integrated Recovery approach, I introduce the various practices, in each of the six recovery dimensions (physical, psychological, intellectual, existential, social, and environmental), that form part of an Integrated Recovery Lifestyle, and explain how all of these practices work together synergistically. The chapters on the recovery dimensions end with suggestions and written exercises that will assist you in designing your recovery practices for that recovery dimension. Chapter nine will assist you in putting together your own personalized Integrated Recovery Program.

About this title

About the Author

Guy du Plessis, MA, has a Master's degree in Psychology, and is a registered counselor at the Health Professions Council of South Africa. He is currently pursuing his PhD degree at the University of South Africa, and conducted doctoral research as a visiting scholar at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven). He has worked in the addiction treatment milieu for over 17 years as an addictions counselor, head of treatment, program & clinical director, trainer, and researcher. 

He is the author of An Integral Guide to Recovery: Twelve Steps and Beyond, An Integral Foundation for Addiction: Beyond the Biopsychosocial Model, and co-author of Mind-Body Workbook for Addiction: Effective Tools for Relapse Prevention and Recovery, and has published academic articles in the fields of addiction treatment and studies, theoretical psychology, and philosophy. 

He is on  the faculty at the School of Behavioral Sciences at California Southern University, and faculty at the Wayne Institute for Advanced Psychotherapy at Bellarmine University, and the co-director of the Experiential-Existential Psychotherapy Research Center. He provides online therapy, training and consulting through his website at guyduplessis.com and can be contacted at guy@guyduplessis.com.

From the Back Cover

"Guy du Plessis has given us a very important book, a terrific example of how to apply the Integral framework to the process of recovery, thus insuring us that the approach will be more comprehensive, inclusive, and therefore effective. Recommended for therapists and clients alike!"
- Ken Wilber author of Integral Psychology.

"An Integral Guide to Recovery offers the reader a path of recovery beyond mere abstinence from addiction, but to live their best life. Following the straight forward defined structure in the book provides the reader with a truly comprehensive and sustainable recovery map. A must read."
-Stanley H. Block, MD, adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He is the cofounder of Mind-Body Bridging and co-author of several books including Come to Your Senses.

"Guy du Plessis' book is brilliant and visionary, and provides a vastly practical guide to an Integral approach to recovery. This book deserves its place in the emerging canon of Integral literature, and is a must-read for anyone interested in recovery, both personal and collective: a road map to recovery in the 21st century."
-John Dupuy, M.A., author of Integral Recovery: A Revolutionary Approach to the Treatment of Alcoholism and Addiction.

"What a rare gift to find an author in psychology who combines both carefully honed intellectual erudition with a vulnerable heart opened by life circumstance. His mind and research are formidable and exhaustive, respectively. Yet it is the rooting of those very forces right down in the "smithy of the soul," Guy's own, which lends this current contribution such significance in the world of psychology. I bow to this good man's incredible generosity of mind and soul in bringing to the streets a message that has been waiting far too long. Consider yourself blessed."
-Robert Weathers, PhD., Curriculum Developer for California Southern University.

"Guy du Plessis does a wonderful job of contributing an Integral perspective to the 12-step traditions--the oldest and certainly among the most powerful ways to treat addiction. This book is highly accessible but never simplistic. In your author, you have one of the true pioneers and best guides in how to bring Integral into our healing. Use this book to broaden your horizons and open up whole new dimensions in what you thought recovery could be and how you can assist others with it."
-Mark Forman, PhD., Licensed Psychologist, Author of A Guide to Integral Psychotherapy

Edition details

• Publisher: Integral Publishers
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0990441954
• ISBN 13: 9780990441953
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272