Healing from Depression
To one who has not experienced the torment of a clinical depression, it is hard to put this pain into words. It cannot be described as stabbing, shooting, or burning; neither can its sensations be localized to any one part of the body. It is an all-encompassing malignancy-a crucifying pain that slowly permeates every fiber of one's being. Falling prey to a depressive illness is not like being gored by a bull; it is more akin to being eaten alive by an army of starving termites.
In the midst of my depressive episode, coping with such unbearable pain became my central task, especially when the pain became so overwhelming that my thoughts turned to suicide. "But reduce the pain?" I thought incredulously. "How am I going to find relief from an agony this extreme?" I remembered what author William Styron had told his daughter on the eve of his hospitalization-"I would rather have a limb amputated without anesthesia than to suffer the kind of pain I am feeling right now."
It was at this point that an old college friend of mine serendipitously reentered my life. Teresa Keane was a registered nurse who worked at the Oregon Health Sciences University Medical School where she taught stress reduction to patients with chronic pain. Her classes were based on the groundbreaking work of Jon Kabat Zinn, a meditation teacher featured in Bill Moyer's 1996 PBS documentary, Healing and the Mind. Kabat Zinn teaches the Buddhist practice of "mindful meditation" to patients suffering from intractable physical pain. Through employing his techniques, patients alleviate not only their physical discomfort, but the accompanying emotional distress as well. I met up with Teresa in her office at OHSU where I described the nature of my torment.
"Facing pain is a learned skill," Teresa responded. "When you are in a lot of pain, whether it is a migraine headache or suicidal torment, the pain dominates all of your awareness and becomes-all encompassing. It's hard to remember a time when the pain was absent, and it's hard to believe that it will ever go away. It's as if both past and present are blotted out, and you are left stranded in your present misery."
"At least you understand," I remarked.
"However," Teresa continued, "If you can release your judgment about pain and just observe it, you will notice a very important fact about the nature of pain- pain comes in waves! "
Upon hearing these words, I remembered my experience of grief after my separation from my wife, Joan. There were days when I was so overwhelmed by sorrow and loss that I could barely function. After a time, however, the pain and the longing would let up, perhaps for a day or two. Yet, invariably the heartache would return and begin the cycle all over again-pain turning into relief, which turned into more pain and then more relief, etc.
"This is the body-mind's built-in protective mechanism." Teresa explained. "If the pain were truly nonstop, you wouldn't survive. And so you are granted a few gaps in between the intense sensations while you stop and catch your breath."
"But it feels like the pain is unrelenting," I protested. "If you were clinically depressed, you would understand."
"The key to reducing your perception of pain," Teresa continued dispassionately, "is to uncouple the sensations in your body from the thoughts about them."
"What does that mean?"
There are two levels of pain that you are feeling. The first level is physiological-the raw pain in your body. The second layer (and this is where you have some control) consists of how you interpret your experience. Perhaps you may be thinking, 'This torment is killing me,' or 'This will last forever,' or 'There is nothing I can do about it.' Each of these despairing thoughts creates a neurochemical reaction in the brain that creates even more distress. If you can learn to detach yourself from these judgments, much of the pain that arises from them will diminish."
"How do I do this?"
"Think of your anxiety or depression as a large wave that is approaching you. As the wave makes contact, see if you can ride the wave by focusing upon your breath. Breathe through the sensations, breathing in and out while attending to the sound of your breathing. Don't fight against the pain-that will only make it worse. Just breathe. It's not even about getting through the day; it's about getting through each breath." When I had worked as a salesperson in the corporate world, I learned the skill of breaking large goals into manageable parts. Now I discovered that one could also divide pain into manageable parts. If I couldn't handle getting through the day, I would try to make it through the next hour; if an hour seemed too long, I set my sights on the next minute or second.
Teresa showed me another powerful technique to use when my pain became intense. Calling her on the phone I would say, "My pain is unbearable."
"It is barely bearable," she replied. "Can you feel the subtle difference between those two sentences?"
"The pain is barely bearable," I repeated to myself. There was a shift and I felt it. In another session I screamed, "I can't take it anymore!"
"You can barely take it," she responded. "I can barely take it," I replied.
What Teresa was teaching me was the practice of mindfulness, the spiritual practice of staying focused on the present moment. In traditional meditation, when the mind wanders, one gently brings it back to a central focus (the breath, a candle, etc.). Teresa challenged me to do the same in response to intense emotional pain, especially when I projected my present condition into the future using catastrophic self-talk that led to suicidal thinking-e.g. "If I have to put with this pain for 30 years, I might as well end my life now." "Just refocus on the present moment," Teresa would say. "Over a period of time you can learn to relate differently to your pain. You can work with the pain and live around the corners of pain and develop your life around it. Eventually the turbulent emotional waters will become calm again. In the meantime, you can find inner stillness and peace right within the most difficult life situations."
As a way to keep me safe, Teresa and I devised a simple but powerful three-step technique for responding to my catastrophic and despairing self-talk. I have rewritten these steps in a prescriptive fashion so that they can be used by others.
1. Notice what is happening. Become aware that your mind is dwelling on thoughts of catastrophe and doom. Identify the catastrophic thought-e.g., "This pain will never stop. The only way out is suicide."
2. Realize that these fearful thoughts are describing not the present but the future. Since the future has yet to occur, it cannot harm you.
3. Refocus onto the present moment through positive self-talk and constructive action. For example, you might replace the statement "I'll never get better" with "Right now I am going to choose a self-care strategy to get me through this period (e.g., calling a friend, going for a swim, taking an anti anxiety medication, etc.). Then, put your strategy into action.
I cannot recall how many times this simple process allowed me to endure a day, an hour, or a minute of intense pain. In giving me a way to manage my catastrophic (and potentially dangerous) thinking, this technique kept me alive while I waited for the pattern of my illness to shift.
In his classic book, Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frank, while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, discovered that "everything can be taken from a man but one thing-the ability to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances." While we cannot always avoid the pain of a depressive illness, we can direct our thoughts about it, and thereby modify our experience of the pain at the level of perception. While the subsequent pain-reduction may be subtle, it can be enough to make the suffering "barely bearable."
From the book: Healing From Depression: 12 Weeks to a Better Mood - By Douglas Bloch

Mental Depression & Sudarshan Kriya: Recent Research
by D.P. Agrawal
Even in the West, it is now generally accepted that traditional techniques of Yoga and Pranayama do improve mental health. The effects of stress and depression on physical and mental health are far-reaching. Anxiety and depression have been found to aggravate the progression of serious diseases like cancer, HIV, asthma and cardiovascular ailments. Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) is the name of the science which deals with these problems. The Sudarshan Kriya and related breathing practices have been found to have remarkable therapeutic benefits. These simple, yet powerful, breathing practices have the advantage over many other forms of treatment because they are free from negative side-effects, are much cheaper, and are easy to learn and practice in daily life .These yogic practices are now focus of attention of India's top medical research institutes.
In India both National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi have been carrying out research on these practices and their effects. Clinical trials at NIMHANS, Bangalore, showed that regular practice of Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) – a set of breathing techniques promoted by Sri Sri Ravishankar, founder of the Bangalore based Art of Living Foundation – reduces symptoms of mental depression. NIMHANS researchers claim that SKY is as effective as the established anti-depressant drug imipramine, a tricyclic antidepressant, (Depsonil, Antidep). All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, has reported that SKY and Pranayam sessions reduced serum cortisol levels – an indicator of stress – in the blood more effectively than listening to classical music. They are also employing SKY to cure alcohol and tobacco addiction.
It has been reported that the distorted dream stage EEG brainwave patterns of the depressed people, the dream-stage EEG patterns significantly improved. Depressed people have a particular EEG brainwave abnormality, which is measured by the P300 ERP amplitude. When P300 was post-tested at day 90 it had returned to normal, (it was indistinguishable from normal controls) and they remained depression free. There was a reduction in REM latency onset and an improvement in NREM stages. About 70% of patients completing the program experienced remission from depression, both at the one month and the three month retest times. Blood analysis revealed statistically significant elevation of plasma prolactin levels after the very first SKY session. This is important since elevated plasma prolactin may be crucial in producing an anti-depressant response. Cortisol ( a stress hormone) levels remained stable, indicating that the practice of Sudarshan Kriya is not stressful.
In 1998, a pilot study on the effectiveness of Sudarshan Kriya and its related breathing practices in the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis was conducted at the Institute of Rehabilitation of the Republic of Slovenia. There was recently a symposium at Delhi, which cautioned that larger groups have to be studied before firm conclusions can be drawn. Dr Vinod Kochupillai, professor and head of medical oncology at AIIMS who has coordinated these studies, says that the available data on SKY and Pranayam seems to validate the claims that such practices lead to a healthier body, calmer mind and balanced emotions.
Weblink: research@artofliving.org

Understanding and Engaging Unbearable Pain
Pain is a necessary and natural part of life. It alerts us that something is out of equilibrium and needs to be tended to. However, sometimes it can be ambiguous and difficult to read. Prolonged pain accompanied by negative thoughts, fears and faulty belief-systems can turn into unbearable suffering; acted out in all forms of violence; anxiety, stress and depression. Emotional and mental pain its especially challenging because of the illusive nature and the stigmas attached to it in our culture. Because mental/emotional pain is invisible, we can easily doubt its validity and react to it by denying it, feeling ashamed of it and judging ourselves. Internalized pain can isolate us and alienate us from ourselves and from others. It can take on a life of its own and become an identity that distorts who we really are.
Few people are able to tolerate mental and emotional pain in others or to be compassionate and accepting of it in themselves. And this is as true of those in the medical profession and our friends and family as everyone else. In our culture we are taught to "snap out it" and "get on with life." We resent it when we feel helpless and powerless and have no answer to our own pain or to the suffering of others.
In seeking relief from pain, we often want to get away from it, get rid of it or kill it, but there are times when the only possible relief can come from transforming our relationship to it  - non-judgmentally opening up to its moment-by-moment-sensations and seeing it for what it is; expanding our breath and directing it to the part of the body or psyche that feels the pain; and noticing the negative stories that the mind is telling us and letting them go.
Samuel Kirschner.

“Our culture turns away from people in pain because they remind us that what happened to them may some day happen to us and that all of us are going to die. Compassion is at the heart of controlling our prejudices, attitudes and actions about pain. Compassion is not just a warm-and-fuzzy term; it is a tremendous social, spiritual and economic force. Instead of turning away from the needy we must turn towards them with compassion. In doing so, we assume ourselves the power and positive results, both psychic and physical that compassion brings. ”
Arthur Rosenfeld author of "Chronic Pain"