Yoga for Depression - A Compassionate Guide to Relieve Suffering Through Yoga

[hedgewitch_13]

I'm currently reading a book that is having a powerful impact on me. "Yoga for Depression - A Compassionate Guide to Relieve Suffering Through Yoga" By, Amy Weintraub is a wonderful resource for anyone going through tough times.

When my marriage fell apart, I found I defaulted to that old eating disorder mindset. I downplayed my experience and put on a brave face. I wore a mask of self-confidence. I talked the talk. When my disassociation wore off I was confronted with the emotional reality of my situation. Inside, I felt like I was crumbling... falling apart at the seams.

I think initially, I was in complete shock. The unravelling of my marriage was brutal and abrupt. I was completely blindsided. The level of betrayal was intense. I was left reeling... wondering who was this man I had been sharing my life with for 13 years and even more so... who the hell was I to have been so unaware of what was staring me in the face all along? My life was in crisis... a crisis I continue to emotionally sort through.

The experience was confusing, disorienting, and devastating. Despite my attempts to remain positive and upbeat, I knew the piper had to be paid. I could not ignore the truth of my situation, nor the gravity of my feelings. I spent months in grief. I continue to grieve and feel very much like what I refer to as "my young self". It's almost as if I am pushing the restart button on my life and have to learn everything all over again.

Not wanting to carry any baggage into my future, I've been sitting with the discomfort. It hasn't been easy. The nature of my situation has been somewhat isolating. That in and of itself has been tremendously difficult. I have not been able to attend my weekly ANAD group or eating disorder therapy for three months now. I didn't realize what a tremendous support this had been for me until that very support was stripped away.

It didn't take long for me to realize that I was falling into a depression. I felt hopeless and try as I might to look for the silver lining, all my eyes could take in were skies of gray. Each morning I woke with this painful sinking feeling in my chest and wondered how the hell I was going to drag myself through another day. Nothing gave me pleasure anymore. I felt like I had been cast as an actor in my own life. The show had to go on and I needed to put on my game face. Circumstances were calling on me to hit the ground running and keep it glued together. This only made me more aware of my pain because I felt inauthentic and yet, to some degree showing a stiff upper lip to the rest of the world was necessary. I couldn't allow myself to collapse into the grief. I had to continue to function in the world.

I did my best to keep it moving. I stayed in contact with friends and family. I continued to come to the "Through Thick & Thin" forum for support. I made sure to spend time in nature to be reminded of the cyclical nature of life even on days when all I wanted to do was pull the covers up over my head and sleep away the pain. One day when I was downtown, I popped into a used bookstore and came across this amazing book. Desperate for a solution to this dismal fog that had blanketed my entire life, I decided to purchase it. I had nothing to lose.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who has been struggling with hard times and bitter tea. The woman who rung me up commented that it had been a really rough start to her new year. She had eyed this book when it first came in. In fact, so many people I know are going through difficult transitions. We're talking major paradigm shifts... no small potatoes. I've heard of so many marriages and long-term relationships disintegrating. People have lost their careers, their homes, their faith. There seems to be a universal theme of upheaval running through the lives of so many. It is time to discern what is meaningful. When I intuitively tap into this collective shift I feel it is a call to move away from fear and to align ourselves with love. An awakening drawing us back into our hearts so we may live from that wide open emotional space. We are creating authentic lives and casting aside all the 'shoulds'. Each of us, in our own way, are coming into our truth and living from that space.

Of course, in making this choice our entire lives come up for review. Whatever is inauthentic and not in alignment with the integrity of our heart's truest desires will be surrendered.... willingly with grace, or brutally with resistance. Nothing can avert the fire of truth from burning away what is false when you choose to follow your heart. It can be tough because this choice calls us to confront our shadow and all that is the mirror opposite of love... our fear, attachment, insecurity, feelings of worthlessness... everything that creates a barrier between who we have settled to be and who we were born to be.

"Yoga for Depression" has been a lifesaver for me. I cannot express how much this compassionate book has lovingly held me through these soul-stretching times. It's a must read for anyone facing a major life transition and certainly valuable for those who have struggled with chronic depression. The author, Amy Weintraub, suffered with clinical depression for many years. Through the path of yoga and meditation, she was able to recover. In fact, she has not had a depressive episode or the need for medication since 1989. Amy has maintained her recovery even in the face of crisis which inevitably surfaced in her life over the years since she came to the path of yoga.

She now teaches at the Kripalu Institute and works with people struggling with all degrees of depression... from depression brought on by traumatic events and painful experiences, to the severity of bi-polar disorder. The people Amy works with are claiming recovery through yoga , leaving pharmaceuticals, talk therapy, and doctor's visits behind.

It is an immensely inspiring book that teaches step by step how to create your very own therapeutic yoga and meditation practice to combat depression. Amy authentically shares her personal story and struggles with depression. Her truthfulness in expressing the challenges she has faced allows her compassion to come shining through. I highly recommend this read. I wanted to share the following excerpt in order to capture the essence of this heartfelt book that has been helping me in my own life transition...

Let's return to my therapist's couch in Providence, Rhode Island, twenty years ago. "Empty pockets," she said. I felt she was dooming me to an unsatisfying life in which no matter how much I loved and was loved, no matter what I achieved, I would always yearn for more. Today I understand that sometimes my pockets feel full to overflowing, that I have abundant energy, abundant love, and a solid sense of self that is rooted in the knowledge of my wholeness, my feeling that I am not separate from the universe. When I forget who I am, I have only to return to my Yoga mat to remember. But I also understand that though those pockets are chock full of blessings, from time to time they can still feel empty. It is my embrace of that emptiness that brings me closest to the truth of being human. I would never wish for a life without pain. Pain is my teacher; it is what allows me to feel the suffering of others. I rejoice that I have a heart big enough to break over and over again. And because I can accept the emptiness I sometimes feel, I have learned that it is in my yearning that I am most fulfilled. The thirteenth-century mystic and poet Rumi said, "When you look for God, God is in the look in your eyes." Empty pockets are our reality, the source of both our suffering and wholeness.
~Excerpt from "Yoga for Depression - A Compassionate Guide to Relieve Suffering Through Yoga" By, Amy Weintraub

Namaste

[CSummer]

I greatly appreciate hedgewitch_13's heart-level sharing that opens here a place for me and others to write from that level. My own traumatic ending of a relationship happened over 30 years ago, yet sometimes I still feel a twinge of the devastating confusion and total loss of self-confidence that I experienced then. Perhaps the best way to describe it is "treading air," as it seemed the ground I had been standing on - the set of unconscious beliefs I was operating from - turned out to be totally illusory. Relationships were easier to fall into then, though, and I was in some ways rescued by a therapist and a network of friends. I'm still grateful for the male friend who told me point blank, "I don't want to hear about it any more!" Until he said that, I didn't realize I'd been obsessing on this ending, and that it might be time to start letting it go. Now I value this relationship and ending as what was needed to set me on a path of self-exploration, appalled as I was by my apparent lack of self-awareness.

I took a look at some pages from Yoga for Depression that are viewable on Google Books. I was drawn to Chapter 9 - "Grief in the tissues - releasing trauma." A couple pages into the chapter I found:

"A "holding environment" can take the form of a relationship with a therapist, a Yoga class, or even a community of loving friends. "No one will go to the depths of terror [I would add: or grief] alone," says Lama Palden Drolma."

My experience is that relationships - especially close ones - offer valuable opportunities for learning, healing and growth. The problem is that one "primary" relationship is often not a large or strong enough "container" for the healing that needs to happen. It's been said that it takes a village to raise a child. My sense is that it takes a circle of caring, compassionate fellow humans to hold us as we embark on a journey of resolution and recovery from our deepest wounding experiences, most all of which have at least a relational aspect. Many such wounds go back to the first years of our lives, so it can be a process of finishing with childhood by resolving all those early experiences that limit us as adults.

I've found that I need deep presence with myself for me to revisit any of the significant unresolved experiences I carry within me. The times I've been able to have that expanded presence was in those special environments where I was able to experience some deep emotional need being met, if only briefly. This has happened in places as disparate as a therapist's office, in a movement group and even once in a group of 50 people at a "Community Building Workshop (CBW) - see the book, The Different Drum, by M. Scott Peck

These have been amazing experiences for me and have made me a believer in the power of a group to create an environment that supports healing. It is a potential that can only be realized though as we move beyond our usual judgments, criticisms and projections to knowing and responding to each other with empathy and compassion on a deeper or heart level. It's understandable that those of us with relationship wounds - especially those involving groups - would doubt what is possible in a group. I have found group experiences extremely challenging, but through experiences like CBWs, have come to believe that there is an enormous, largely untapped potential for healing when people come together to create a place of acceptance, caring and compassion.

A COMMUNITY OF THE SPIRIT

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, "She left." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

Jalal al-Din Rumi (Coleman Barks translation)

May we find our way - and our whole selves - together!

Great image, hw!

CSummer

I'm currently reading a book that is having a powerful impact on me. "Yoga for Depression - A Compassionate Guide to Relieve Suffering Through Yoga" By, Amy Weintraub is a wonderful resource for anyone going through tough times.

SNIP

Let's return to my therapist's couch in Providence, Rhode Island, twenty years ago. "Empty pockets," she said. I felt she was dooming me to an unsatisfying life in which no matter how much I loved and was loved, no matter what I achieved, I would always yearn for more. Today I understand that sometimes my pockets feel full to overflowing, that I have abundant energy, abundant love, and a solid sense of self that is rooted in the knowledge of my wholeness, my feeling that I am not separate from the universe. When I forget who I am, I have only to return to my Yoga mat to remember. But I also understand that though those pockets are chock full of blessings, from time to time they can still feel empty. It is my embrace of that emptiness that brings me closest to the truth of being human. I would never wish for a life without pain. Pain is my teacher; it is what allows me to feel the suffering of others. I rejoice that I have a heart big enough to break over and over again. And because I can accept the emptiness I sometimes feel, I have learned that it is in my yearning that I am most fulfilled. The thirteenth-century mystic and poet Rumi said, "When you look for God, God is in the look in your eyes." Empty pockets are our reality, the source of both our suffering and wholeness.
~Excerpt from "Yoga for Depression - A Compassionate Guide to Relieve Suffering Through Yoga" By, Amy Weintraub

Namaste