Practicing Yoga for Depression An Overview

by Nina

Morning Glory by Hiroshige

Last week in my post Can You Guide Me Online?, I promised I would write something about how to use yoga for depression. And today’s the day! But because I’ve already written several posts about depression over the years, I decided that today I’d just provide overview of the topic, with links to relevant posts from the past. And because I feel that it’s beneficial to take your time to understand your particular situation and needs rather than just jumping into practice, I’m going to recommend approaching practicing yoga for depression in a series of steps. 

1. Start by determining whether you have tamasic (clinical) or rajasic (agitated) depression. Read Tamasic and Rajasic Depression. If you can’t decide based on this post (though I hope you can!), discuss it with your doctor, therapist, or health care provider. These two forms of depression are very different, so you’ll probably find that different poses and practices will help you. While everyone with depression needs some uplifting, people with tamasic depression may benefit from energizing poses and practices while people with rajasic depression may need calming poses and practices. My post discusses why and makes some suggestions.
2. Learn as much as you can about depression and also about your nervous system because having a deeper understanding about your body and your condition will help you learn more about what is going to help you. See Learning About Yoga for Depression for some ideas.
3. Practice stress management. Because stress can cause and/or exacerbate depression, I recommend incorporating stress management practices into your daily life. See Stress Management for When You're Stressed. Experiment with different techniques to see what works best for you, and practice whatever you find effective or just prefer. If you don’t already have a strong meditation practice that doesn’t cause you to brood or you aren’t working with a teacher who is experienced at teaching people with depression, it may be wise to skip meditation practice for now because being alone with your thoughts can cause a downward spiral in some people. 
4. Learn about the emotional effects that poses and breath practices have on you. See Balancing Your Emotional Body with Counter-Poses to get a general idea of how poses typically affect practitioners and Balancing Your Emotions with Your Breath for information on breath practices, but keep in mind that your own experience is key, even if your personal experience seems to contradict what I or any other teacher says.
5. Using your knowledge of what makes you feel better, either on your own or with help from your teacher, combine these poses and practices into sequences that uplift you, energize you, or calm you as needed and practice them. You can just use these on an as-needed basis, or you can practice them regularly during bad periods. 
6. Don’t do what makes you feel worse, even if someone tells you it should make you feel better. See When Relaxing Isn’t Relaxing for some alternatives to poses and practices that may not be not be working for you. 
7. If you are combining yoga with other forms of treatment for depression, please try to let go of any shame about that. Shame about needing more than just yoga can be generated internally (see Yoga is a great thing but...) or even externally (see No Shame Please! (Western Medicine and Yoga Are Complementary)). But these negative judgments are not helpful for your healing. Try instead to cultivate gratitude for whatever is helping (that’s what I’ve done) or use the technique of cultivating the opposite. See It's not finding gratitude that matters; it is remembering to look for it in the first place. and Transforming Unhelpful Core Beliefs.

Please let me know if any of these recommends help you. And if any of you have experiences or recommendations you’d like to share with others, please tell me! 

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