By Adrienne Smith, Power of Your OM It is estimated that by the year 2020, anxiety and depression will be the leading cause of death - over heart disease and over cancer. Yikes! While anxiety and depression can come from legitimate chemical imbalances that require medication to curb them, medical researchers are finding that cultivating awareness of our thoughts and the physical state of our being, in combination with medication (if necessary), will prove a better defense to anxiety and … [Read more...]
Search Results for: depression
There is No Space for Me. A Short Journey into Depression
by Kara-Leah Grant On Sunday afternoon, lying on the grass outside under fluffy white clouds and a lazy blue sky, I felt the snaky tendrils of depression slither into my heart and settle in my being. One moment, everything was as it was. The next, I felt a heaviness of being, a reluctance to move or act or even be, a dragging at my insides, a rising of emotion. Usually the arrival of depression is not so noticeable. It sneaks up on me and I'm not aware until it's taken me down and I'm … [Read more...]
How Yoga Helped Me Emerge From the Darkness of Depression
By Astrid Vause I have been practicing yoga for a while now, in fact I am a yoga teacher, but it wasn't until I got sick that I fell deeply in love with this beautiful practice and it's healing powers. It was a warm sunny and vibrant day in my new home in Los Angeles and my children were building towers with wooden blocks and laughing as they toppled over. I sat on the floor with my knees tucked up to my chest and watched the crashing blocks, wincing as they hit the ground. I felt like … [Read more...]
Is Ancestral Trauma a Source of Modern Day Depression and Anxiety?
by Kara-Leah Grant Since 2004 I have progressively healed myself through a combination of yoga, meditation and a wide variety of healing techniques. As I went through this process, my old coping techniques slowly but surely fell away - in the past I've used everything from drugs, alcohol, exercise and relationships to distract myself. Dropping these various distraction techniques was never easy. I didn't give up marijuana until I was pregnant. When life got really tough and I found … [Read more...]
How Yoga Helped Me Overcome Depression
by Caren Baginski I remember the first time I took an antidepressant. It was my third year of high school and I couldn't swallow pills, so I had liquid Prozac in a tiny cup. It didn't taste like anything, but during that time nothing did. I looked intensely at that drug for an hour before I took it, tears streaming down my face, feeling like a big fat failure. I remember the last time I took an antidepressant. I had moved to a new state, was on Zoloft, and weaned myself, thinking I … [Read more...]
What Causes Depression?
by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat What causes depression? No one knows. No really - not even the medical profession. Do a quick google search and see what comes up. The best they can offer is a few theories of biological factors combined with environmental and behavioural issues. They can estimate how likely someone is to experience depression based on this, but they don't know the root cause. Makes it hard to heal something when you don't know what is causing it! So we DON'T treat … [Read more...]
Supporting Women through Prenatal Yoga & Beyond
An interview with KeiShana Coursey KeiShana is the course director of Contemporary Yoga's Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training starting in July 2021. This is a 100+ hour teacher training collaboration between Opti-mum and Contemporary Yoga and includes anatomy, physiology, asana, ayurveda and much, much more. KeiShana brings a wealth of experience and expertise to this very special training having worked with many women on their childbirth journeys. In this interview, KeiShana talks about … [Read more...]
Top 10 Best Yoga Articles of 2020
by Cara Butler Let's be honest..... many of us were quite happy to see 2020 come to an end. A year that exposed us to not only a global pandemic and its devastating knock-on effects, but a huge range of worldwide injustice and social chaos. Despite the understandable urge to move on and put 2020 well behind us, I believe in the need for reflection. Reflection on both the challenging times AND the amazing moments that were present in-between. Here at the Yoga Lunchbox, we have been revisiting … [Read more...]
Journey to Wellbeing : How Yoga & Meditation helped me find the way
by Matt Calman, The Longest Day I regard it as a minor miracle I became a yogi. For as long as I can remember, in the four-decade-long pre-yoga phase of my life I was horribly inflexible, and unable to get within a foot of touching my toes. My main pastimes in my 20s included playing rugby and drinking beer with my teammates. In my mind, activities such as yoga and ballet dwelt at the opposite end of the spectrum from my modus operandi. If anyone had suggested to the younger me that I … [Read more...]
Meeting Life As It Is: iRest Yoga Nidra & The Practice of Opposites
by Una Hubbard, Meditation and Yoga with Una I used to be a perfectionist living life in black and white, ‘either/or’. My understanding of the depression I experienced, for instance, was to find a way to be happy. If sad, be happy. I mean, simple really. I also had a real beef with anger. And that beef was simply this: I really didn’t like it. I didn't like it when someone raised their voice or showed displeasure. I wanted it all to go away. I wanted calm instead. If angry, be calm. … [Read more...]