Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way

Creating Happiness with Meditation, Yoga, and Ayurveda

Nancy Liebler, Sandra Moss

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780470522417
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

"If you have an interest in optimum mental health, this book belongs on your shelf!" —A MY W EINTRAUB, author of Yoga for Depression

"A must-read for anyone interested in overcoming depression and healing themselves naturally. A very important book that will elevate you in many ways. Everyone must seek it out." —D HARMA S INGH K HALSA, M.D., author of Meditation as Medicine and Dead Brain Cells Don't Lie

A CTIVATE THE INHERENT WISDOM OF YOUR MIND-BODY

Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way shines a new light on the darkness of depression by presenting specific antidepression strategies designed to help you unleash your innate healing potential. The time-tested advice presented in this book is based on the latest theories of modern science and the practical wisdom of Ayurveda, an ancient system of natural medicine. This unique book offers a comprehensive step-by-step program for eradicating the root of depression from the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of your being.

Through detailed questionnaires about your psycho-physiological profile and elemental imbalances, you will identify an archetype that most represents your experience with depression. Then, you will design a tailor-made health program to regain balance in your mind-body.

You will learn to undo depression by:

• Identifying your unique manifestation of depression based on elemental imbalances
• Using yoga, exercise, and breathing techniques that are in sync with your specific physical, mental, and emotional needs
• Using food and meditation as medicine

Whether you are battling a depressive episode or need support coping with the problems of daily living, this book will help you awaken the "physician within" and embark on a pathway to a life of balance and renewal.

PART I

Finding Another Way

1

Beyond the Broken Brain

In the middle of the path through life,
I suddenly found myself in dark woods.

—DANTE

If you believe that depression is not just in your head, this book is for you. If you have been in therapy and have popped pills and supplements but still feel like you’re not quite right, read on.

Do you ever wonder why your entire being hurts when you are depressed? Have you ever asked yourself, “How did depression take hold of my body, mind, and spirit?” Perhaps you can trace back and pinpoint exactly when darkness struck your life like a hurricane. On the other hand, maybe the blues seeped slowly into your physiology like water into the basement of a house. You see the evidence of the damage but can’t find the source of the problem.

Depression can become an unwanted companion casting a shadow on every aspect of your life. Do you feel robbed of liveliness and energy? The menacing presence of a heavy heart, waves of anxiety, or crabby irritability may describe your experience of depression. You long to feel happy, yet you experience a gulf of emptiness inside that nothing can fill. Then again, maybe you have recovered from a bout of depression and want to prevent a recurrence. Having been released from the grip of depression, you now want to safeguard your most precious assets: happiness and vitality.

We wrote this book because we believe that a different way of thinking about depression is needed. As long as our culture is stuck thinking that depression is only about a chemical imbalance in the brain, there will be no cure or plan of prevention in sight. We hold that depression is about more than a “broken brain” (a chemical imbalance) or an emotional problem that you should be able to let go of or talk your way through. It is not an unavoidable genetic problem. Although depression can be a reaction to a trying situation in your life, it does not have to be a permanent state of mind.

The Broken Brain Mentality: If It’s Not Your Brain, It’s Your “Mother”!

So what is this about a “broken brain,” you ask? When Western medical science seeks answers to a problem, it focuses its search on the physical body. That is its area of expertise, and it does this well. First it isolates a disorder to a particular system in the body, such as the circulatory, the digestive, the respiratory, or, in the case of depression, the nervous system. The next step is to centralize the problem to a specific organ, such as the heart, the stomach, the intestines, the lungs, or the brain.

Victory is theirs, Western medical scientists believe, if they can find a causative molecule. When low levels of the brain chemical serotonin were linked to low mood and other depressive symptoms, the medical community thought that it had identified what was wrong in the body and how to fix it; that is how Prozac, a drug that increases serotonin levels in the brain, became a household name.

This line of thinking and its success should not be undervalued. There is a wealth of clinical evidence that biological and chemical processes in the brain influence thinking and emotion. Logic therefore dictates that if those processes go awry, abnormalities of thinking and emotions will result. In other words, if the brain breaks, the emotions suffer; but does this line of thinking really tell the whole story?

If the brain is “broken,” what caused the breakage? Different opinions exist. Medical doctors are inclined to focus on the physical, whereas psychologists focus on the mind. You are the product of your experiences, the psychologist surmises. Since the neurons in your brain are hardwired in early childhood, the experiences and family patterns of interaction at that time are pivotal in making you who you are today. The biological and chemical processes in your brain, the theory goes, reflect your ongoing relationship with your environment.

Depression, according to this line of thinking, is the result of a lifelong collection of experiences, from childhood to the present. Because memories are stored in your brain, the key to living depression-free is to understand the thought patterns in your head. Therefore, psychologists claim, talk therapy and the changes that result from such therapy are the solution. In other words, if it’s not your brain, it’s your “mother”!

Treating the Organ of Depression, Not the Cause: What’s Wrong with This Picture?

Antidepressant medications artificially and externally manipulate the level of chemicals in the brain. Ultimately, the brain reacts to this artificial manipulation by blunting its sensitivity to these chemicals. This is not unlike hearing loss that results from long-term exposure to excessively loud noise. The person who is taking the medication is then forced to incrementally supply the brain with more and more of the substance in order to achieve its purpose. This is generally followed by the need to take another medication to counteract the negative side effects of the antidepressant. It is not uncommon for people who increase their antidepressant during the day to then need a sedative or a sleeping pill at night. (How depressing!)

The three natural brain chemicals that are associated with feeling good—dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin—work in concert with one another. Nature did not intend for one of them to work independently of the others. Nature intended for them to work synergistically and in balance with one another. This is what brings long-lasting relief from symptoms. If one aspect of the body is interrupted, it triggers a cascade of reactions that runs through and disrupts the balance of the entire body. Unfortunately, medications generally target only one or two of the brain chemicals. This partial solution can potentially create other problems.

Given how medical doctors and psychologists perceive the problem of depression, it is no wonder that they focus on the biochemicals and the life experiences that influence brain function. The most common treatment modalities used by Western medicine today are drugs and talk therapy. Drugs, whether synthetic or natural, manipulate the chemicals in the brain. Generally speaking, talk therapy aims at figuring out the inner workings of the mind.

Drugs: A Window of Light?

When it comes to the question of depression, we want you to consider the following: What came first, the chemical imbalance or the episode of sadness? It is generally accepted that a chemical imbalance accompanies depression. Depression is associated with a biological derangement in the brain. This derangement may be triggered by a genetic tendency, lifestyle choices, a tragic event, or a combination of the three. In other words, a chemical imbalance coincides with the presence of depression. However, this coincidence (known in science as a correlation) does not necessarily indicate causality. It also does not indicate the direction of the causal relationship. That is, does the chemical imbalance cause the depressive episode, or does the depressive episode cause the chemical imbalance?

Antidepressant medications manipulate the level of at least one of the three brain chemicals. Serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine are called neurotransmitters. Considered mood brighteners, they are responsible for feelings of alertness and happiness. According to Western medical theory on depression, effectively increasing the levels of at least one of these biochemicals should resolve depression in a person.

The value of pharmaceutical interventions to treat depression is currently being questioned by the scientific community. In a study done in the United Kingdom in 2008, antidepressants were shown to be only slightly more effective than taking a placebo. This can be interpreted to mean that people who take antidepressants get better because they believe the pills are helpful and they expect to get better. This placebo effect calls into question whether the antidepressants actually have inherent curative properties. In addition, many researchers are concerned about the negative side effects of the pills. For a variety of reasons, approximately 40 percent of people discontinue their use in the first month. That being said, some people who have experienced severe depression report feeling helped by the medications initially.

Episodes of depression recur in 50 to 85 percent of people who have had one episode. This terribly high recurrence rate has led some physicians to advocate that people who have been treated for major depression remain on antidepressant medication for life, as a preventative measure. Yet even then many individuals do not recover their zest for life, their physical and emotional vitality. In fact, it is reported that 70 percent of people who take antidepressant medication continue to experience lingering symptoms of depression. In addition, a lifelong use of medication may mean living with negative side effects such as dry mouth, rapid heart rate, constipation, dizziness, sexual dysfunction, jitteriness, blurred vision, and memory impairment. In short, medications do not always cure what ails, and they can potentially trigger other problems.

Why keep looking to find a cure in a pill? At best, drug interventions simply soothe the depressive symptoms. This is because pills manipulate one’s brain chemicals but do not treat the totality of one’s being: body, mind, and spirit. Only a limited biochemical aspect of one’s physiology is addressed, and only in a segregated area. When underlying causes are neglected, symptoms tend to eventually recur. However, relief from the darkness of depression must be sought, and antidepressants may, in some cases, provide a window of light. There is anecdotal evidence that this pharmaceutical technology has been helpful to many people.

If you have chosen to take medication to relieve the symptoms of depression, you are not precluded from embarking on the holistic program this book prescribes. The two are compatible and additive in their effects. The whole purpose of this book is to show you how to kick-start your own self-healing mechanisms; to do more than simply address the symptoms of depression. We want to introduce you to a holistic way of treating depression that delves deep into the core of your physiology and sends symptoms scurrying away permanently. We want to offer you a fuller, more encompassing view of the problem, with natural solutions.

There are natural ways of balancing brain chemistry that do not require popping a pill (synthetic or natural). Mind-body techniques are available that bring overall balance to one’s physiology and, consequently, affect brain chemistry deeply, safely, and holistically. The body is the best pharmacy, and this is where nature intends for you to go when you need medication.

Treating depression with drugs alone is analogous to using aspirin to relieve a fever caused by an infection. Aspirin merely reduces the fever and makes the patient feel more comfortable. It does not address the cause of the infection.

Brain Chemistry Gone Awry?

Arecent study stating that antidepressant medications appear to help only severely depressed people and work no better than placebos in many patients has rocked the perception of the public. “Although patients get better when they take antidepressants, they also get better when they take a placebo, and the difference in improvement is not very great. This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments,” said Irving Kirsh of the University of Hull in England, the author of the study.

Dr. Helen Mayberg, a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the Emory University School of Medicine, responded to the study by saying, “This [depression] is about very sick people; there’s something wrong with their brains” (italics added). Herein lies the problem, we think. Even dedicated and well-meaning psychiatrists tend to see depressed patients as cases of brain chemistry gone awry, rather than seeing them as a complex system whose body, mind, and spirit have gone awry.

Approximately 118 million antidepressant prescriptions are issued in the United States each year. Do we really believe that millions of U.S. citizens are walking around with something wrong with their brains that a pill can cure?

Not even a decade ago, physicians treated heart disease by focusing on the organ of the heart, rather than focusing on the person experiencing the disease. Nowadays, no cardiologist would think to give a pill for heart disease without simultaneously discussing the impact of lifestyle on heart health. It is our hope that very soon the psychiatric and psychological communities will shift their current paradigm and begin to think of depression in a holistic manner rather than simply as brain chemistry gone awry.

Talk Therapy: Words and Nurturance

Going to therapy can be extremely helpful for a depressed person. The most common recommendation is to attend talk therapy and take pills. How effective is talk therapy? In some studies, therapy has been shown to improve the symptoms of depression as significantly as medication. These studies have focused primarily on cognitive-behavioral therapy, which strives to bring cognitive awareness to the relationship among thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. There is no doubt that awareness can be a powerful tool for positive change. The hope is that by actualizing personal awareness or insights, people will eventually set themselves free of the same old situations and the same old negative feelings.

There is enormous healing power behind the changes in cognition, behavior, and relationships that are brought on by talk therapy. Everything affects brain chemistry and our overall physiology. If we sit and look at a photograph album and remember the past through pictures, our body chemistry is altered. If we get caught in a traffic jam, our physiology is changed. If we are stressed because of a family conflict or concerns at work, our internal environment is thrown out of balance. Likewise, beneficial changes in the way we perceive ourselves, which can be brought on by talk therapy, are a powerful means to alter physiological chemistry. Effective psychotherapy can be an aid for overall health as well as a treatment for depression. Improved relationships that result from an increased awareness of our thoughts, actions, and emotions can induce positive changes in our being.

However, although therapy certainly offers insight into many of life’s problems, by itself it is not a cure for depression, especially major depression. Mild depression is more likely to be treated effectively by therapy. This type of depression is usually time-limited, and increasing self-awareness and experiencing a therapeutic relationship can be very helpful in ending the depression sooner rather than later.

The foundation of talk therapy is the belief that insight leads to change. Talking about life issues is indeed good and helpful. We believe, however, that this is putting the cart before the horse. Improvements in the overall health of the individual—body, mind, and spirit—must also take place if changes in perception (insight) and alterations in feelings are to become permanent. The internal...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I - Finding Another Way
• PART II - Creating Happiness
• Appendix - Authors’ Evaluation of the Mind- Body Questionnaire: Assessing Our Imbalances
• Resources
• Index