We are no strangers to feelings of intense sadness, helplessness, listlessness, breathlessness and sinking sensations. When they persist for days, weeks or even months, we feel overwhelmed. In such a phase, any illness or untoward event can be capsizing, and depression is likely to be one of the outcomes.
The Light of Yoga
Research has shown that yoga is one of the best ways to deal with depression. Practicing yoga regularly under the right guidance along with proper treatment can help eliminate depression. Let’s look at how yoga can be the circuit breaker in some commonly occurring loops that worsen symptoms of depression.
1. Negative Feedback Loop
In these loops negative emotions get magnified. It helps to catch the signs early and counteract with a series of backward and forward bends, as well as inversions, including legs up the wall, to stabilize your emotions and give them a timely upturn. The physical movements practiced in yoga with breath awareness, increase the oxygen uptake and cerebral blood flow, both of which have been reported to be scant during depressive states.
2. Fear and Anxiety
In this loop one’s threshold for stressors gets lowered triggering a recurrence of depression. An energetic sun salutation practice can be immediately effective in restoring a sense of wellbeing. Although it might be tough to transition from a sense of doom straight onto the yoga mat, yet if there has been a past experience of yoga coming to one’s aid, it will be infinitely easier.
3. Anger and Irritability
Everybody has an emotional rhythm, but a mood disorder is much more than than a rhythm gone awry. The decreased dopamine and serotonin levels in the brain typical of mood disorders can severely alter one’s behavior, impacting self-esteem and happiness levels.
Yoga stimulates the brain to release feel good chemicals. Yogic breathing is the most natural and effective way to breathe to bring an immediate change in one’s physical and mental state of being. It is done in savasana or the corpse pose. Inhaling, one expands the abdomen, without moving the rib cage. Exhaling, the abdomen is sucked in towards the spine. In 20 minutes, this breathing can change the mind-body chemistry, instilling peace and calm. Yoga helps with self acceptance.
4. The Need for Control
Impaired mental health leads to low adaptability to situations. This increases the need to control one’s surroundings. The practice of yoga fosters a powerful connection to the body and mind. Doing a challenging yoga class with a teacher takes the energy levels spiraling. The mastery experienced over one’s body while executing yoga poses gives a sense of accomplishment. The fear of things going out of control diminishes in the light of courage and confidence that an energetic yoga practice imparts.
5. Procrastination
The discipline needed to step up for one’s own well-being is hard to muster and postponing action often is the only recourse in a fragile mental state. Yoga is a practice that seizes the now. Bhastrika is an excellent pranayama to banish procrastination. Sitting in any meditative posture, with closed eyes, with the inner-gaze pinned to the eyebrow center, Bhastrika is a pranayama in which the focus is kept on the abdomen, expanding and contracting rhythmically with the breath. The pumping action should be performed by the abdomen alone. Inhalations and exhalations both of equal length and volume occur through the nostrils. This practice done slowly and conscientiously transforms inaction into action.
6. Isolation
Social interactions, while loved and enjoyed, are not enough to end one’s natural retreat into isolation in daily life moments. This builds a cycle of inadequacy in the mind which hits one’s physical, emotional and mental wellness. Psycho-social distress can be quite overwhelming. Mindfulness practices with breath awareness still and calm the mind. Yoga activates the relaxation response which immediately reassures the nervous system that all is well.
Answers Lie Within
The fallout of being caught in these loops is inflammation, random pains, headaches, gastrointestinal irritation, altered sleep, decreased immunity, and libido. A basic half an hour session of yoga can be refreshing leaving one cheerful, no matter what is going on in life. This is because the practices of yoga first address the key process of homeostasis, a built-in intelligence entrusted with the function of keeping our bodies in a state of balance.
The answers lie within. Ultimately real success comes from non-judgmentally facing one’s patterns and letting the rest fall into place.
A steady yoga practice does change one’s response to triggers and stressors. Why fill your life with struggles when a single yoga class a day can take your troubles away?
