Yes, it absolutely and most definitely can. One could experiment with it for just three minutes and see for themselves by being with the practice explained at the end of this article. Before that let us first explore what depression is and why does society view it as a problem that needs to be solved.
Awareness Journey · October 4, 2022
Grief, Sadness, Depression – Understanding what is happening underneath An Energy psychology perspective. Grief or Sadness or Depression is an electro-magnetic vibration of a certain range of frequency that is felt in our emotional mind. This includes feeling aloof, anguished, apathetic, beat, bewildered, bitter, broken hearted, confused, dejected, detached, disappointed, discouraged, disgruntled, disheartened, dismayed, embittered, forlorn, gloomy, hurt, indifferent, lonely, miserable, morose, mournful, perplexed, pessimistic, puzzled, reluctant, sensitive, skeptical, sorrowful, tepid, troubled, unconcerned, unhappy, wistful, withdrawn, woeful and worried. The physical body experiences this emotional vibration by responding with feeling cold, dull, exhausted, fatigued, heavy, lazy, lethargic, numb, passive, sleepy, spiritless, tired, uncomfortable, unsteady and weary. All of these are normal human experiences and we can learn to simply stay with them or even enjoy experiencing them. The only problem with this emotion is that it is not socially or politically right to be experiencing them. You are meant to be happy and smiling all the time and so you are expected to push this emotional feeling underneath and cover it up with a smile and outward show of happiness. Why did nature or evolution create this emotion of sadness? What is the need or purpose? Grief or sadness is a powerful bonding emotion; you get deeply bonded with others in your family or community when you experience this emotion together. Our difficult emotions are opportunities to pause, rest and recuperate. The simple experience of the emotion of Grief, sadness, depression then turns into a suffering because of our response of not wanting to experience it. It is not the emotion that causes our suffering but our continued reaction of running away or hiding or covering it up that leads to hardening and deepening of the suffering leading to clinical depression or at its extreme, suicidal tendencies. You can begin to feel the sadness emotion due to physical tiredness caused by exertion or lack of physical rest. You can also simply absorb it due to empathy by simply being near another person who is experiencing it. Or you can simply begin the emotional feeling of sadness by thinking about your past. Irrespective of which of these three originally triggers the sadness, it automatically loops in the other two and a loop is formed. For example, if you are physically tired, you end up thinking of the past and start feeling sad. If you started feeling sad due to absorbing the sadness energy with empathy, you end up thinking of your own past and also start feeling tired physically. Each one feeds the other and it goes in an endless loop leading to extreme suffering. What is the best way to deal with this emotion then? The first step would be to acknowledge that the emotional mind is experiencing sadness and it is ok to feel this way. We are holding an intention of noticing it instead of becoming it. It is useful to understand that sadness or any of its above associated emotions are merely electromagnetic vibrations and can be grounded and released into the earth. The restless vibrations created by our thinking mind cause our natural grounding connection with the earth to disconnect. The best way to deal with sadness therefore is, to regain our state of groundedness and just be present and grounded while allowing yourself to experience the emotion. Conversely the worst way to deal with it is to keep on thinking and allowing our mind to be in the past. It is important to remember that the practice of acknowledging our difficult experiences and holding an intention of noticing it is really a practice. We have to keep coming back to doing this again and again because the thinking mind has a strong grip on our presence due to habit based autopiloting when uncomfortable
Now let us see what is meditation to begin to understand how meditation practice helps with depression. Meditation is a state of being rather than an act of doing. We choose to sit with an intention to remain mentally disengaged with all our sense perceptions, body sensations, emotions and thoughts. It is not a sleepy state of passive acceptance of whatever we think is going to happen. It is an awake, alert, aware state of active acceptance of what is arising in the present moment. The Aware mind is alert and awake whereas the thinking-mind is quietly resting without engaging, reacting or responding to whatever arises in our awareness.
Using meditation practice when one is suffering from clinical depression is tricky. To the sad mind it seems that one is already in meditation – not doing anything, simply being – and this is what is causing their depression. But the not doing that they are in, is a physical state of inactivity while the mind still remains engaged and active all the time. Therefore a physical body movement practice along with awareness is a better meditative practice.
The following practices may help one feel immediate relief but it may be short lived. Meditation practices are not very effective only as a treatment, they need to be cultivated as a lifelong daily routine, a habit that we automatically sit with every day. We cannot settle down into a deep state of meditation when we hold a goal or expectation from each session of our practice, the goal is to cultivate a daily habit and when this is achieved we would have already healed all our emotional suffering.
Humanity “THE BEST RELIGION” · December 20, 2022
Can someone who has never been able to meditate learn to practice meditation and benefit out of it?
Yes anyone can practice meditation. It is quiet simple actually. You only need to learn when you have to ‘do’ something. Meditation is a practice of ‘non-doing being’. You need to choose not to do anything and this entails a process of unlearning rather than learning. When I say activity, I am referring to mental activity not physical activity. Just do the following for one to three minutes and see what happens. Your first tool for an effective meditation practice – Focused Breathing and Conscious Breathing – FGCB This is FGCB or Fixed Gazing and Conscious Breathing. Simply take a few minutes to be with this practice several times during the day for a few days. It would be even more helpful if you can practice three minutes of gentle body movements called Deep crossing after the FGCB and continue with the FGCB while doing this. It is demonstrated in YouTube video linked below. Selvans Deep crossing: https://youtu.be/qq6iKZquuVI After several days of the above practice, listen to the following guided meditation audio and sit with a short practice of 5 minutes open eyes meditation. Sit for the meditation after doing deep crossing. Selvans Guided Meditation – Witnessing the four simultaneous activities: Selvans Short Meditation – Witnessing The 4 Simultaneous Activities If you want to go further, you may use the other longer closed eyes meditation audios in my SoundCloud profile to progressively practice with meditation. My recently published book is a good guide to take the reader through a handholding process of mentoring. You can read more about the book and find the link to buy it in my website below. Another option is to enrol for my online mentoring program called Awareness Journey. Read about it and find the links to my SoundCloud and YouTube profiles on my website homepage.