Supporting Anxiety & Depression - the 3 Gunas - Aspects of Nature

Supporting Anxiety & Depression Through Yoga Therapy

As we enter another lock-down due to COVID-19, the angst in the air is palpable. I have heard from many this week that this time around, they are just not sure how they will cope. With the holidays coming up, it is a new experience this pandemic can add to its long resume. I wanted to offer a case study on how Yoga Therapy can help support our mental health. This is my way of contributing to my community, and the world. I feel called to share.

Jessica* is navigating life in her 20s and all the changes that can come in this youthful, yet sometimes tumultuous decade. She is sweet and speaks softly and presents with a calming, grounding demeanor, although that is far from how she explains her inner experience. Jessica’s goals for seeking Yoga Therapy are to support her anxiety and depression, as it changes each day. She also hopes to feel more connected to her body and feel a sense of belonging to herself.

Jessica can clearly describe where in her body she feels anxiety; chest and belly, neck, face, and eyebrows. and the way depression presents; feels like general heaviness in her body. She also reports feeling a disconnection to her body over-all. Her biggest life challenges right now are recovering from traumatic experiences, unemployment, and navigating medical leave from school. Jessica attends silent retreats of the Vipassanā tradition. She finds the retreats very challenging, but also life changing. I notice Jessica often closes her eyes, even while talking.

 One of the tools of Yoga Therapy is educating the client in yogic philosophy. The intention is to empower one with ancient knowledge and to offer new language outside of the labels of anxiety or depression.

The emphasis is always to first meet ourselves where we are at and then invite in the other quality to balance. 

The Gunas

The Gunas are natures 3 fundamental forces. All the qualities of the world contain the Gunas: Rajas, Tamas, and Sattva. Rajas is the quality of energy, wakefulness, and movement. Tamas is the quality of inertia, stillness, and sleep. Sattva is harmony, balance, transcendence. Sattva arrives when the balance of rajas and tamas is met in each unique being. It is the goal of Yoga. Just like the ever-changing state of energy, Sattva too is always shifting. What brings us balance at one point, may not always. That is why present moment awareness is so important on our journey of wellbeing.

When one experiences both anxiety and depression, an understanding of the Gunas can help them to understand themselves. It gives them a way to check in with the aspects of nature present in their own being each day. From there, their Yoga practice and daily choices can reflect the state of energy they are currently in and what may help bring them to balance.

Excess rajas leads to overwhelm, stress, insomnia, anxiety. Excess tamas leads to lethargy, resistance to change, excessive sleeping, and depression. I explain to Jessica how one may experience excess rajas in the mind and tamas in the body and vice versa. When we feel excess rajas, we want to bring in tamas to balance. When we feel excess tamas, we want to bring in rajas to balance. The emphasis is always to first meet ourselves where we are at and then invite in the other quality to balance. 

Jessica’s Practice       

One session, Jessica let me know she was feeling very tamasic so she decided to have a cup of coffee. That led to her feeling stressed, overwhelmed, jittery, and rajastic by the time she came in to see me. At other times she has come in feeling lethargic (tamas) in the body, and anxious and fearful (rajas), in the mind. Yoga Therapy invites us to practice Swadhaya (self-study) to observe how anxiety and depression can shift and present in an individual on any given day. From there the practice can vary depending on what mood is most predominant.

Slow, yet dynamic flowing movements with even breathing are best when someone is feeling more anxious and the energy needs to integrate. When I notice Jessica’s movements and breath becoming more even and fluid, I invite in static holds for 3-5 breaths. At the end of the physical practice forward folds invite in the energy of tamas to ground. If Jessica was feeling more tamasic that day, I would offer her a restorative back-bend to bring in Rajas to balance. The utilization of props in either case helps to prevent strain on the body and shift the focus on calming the mind. During longer held forward folds the mantra “I am here” supports anxious or depressed minds. I guided Jessica to inhale to the crown of the head, saying silently “I am”, and to exhale to the seat: “here”.

 Silent meditation is usually not recommended for those coping with anxiety and depression. Guided meditations that may include mudras or mantras may be more useful in order to “throw the mind a bone”.  Otherwise, silent meditation can feel overwhelming for one whose thoughts are racing or who tend towards negative self-talk.  We began practices with guided visualization, mudras, or guided breath awareness. A practice such as Breath of JOY with the sound LAM is a staple in Jessica’s Yoga Therapy plan. Breath of Joy is an active breath-centered breathing exercise meant to uplift and energize.

Jessica explains that Yoga Therapy has helped her get to know herself more, connect with her body and mind, and to empower her to find practices and activities that help support her in creating more balance in her mood.

Bhramari (bee breath) with Shanmukti mudra is sattvic breathing practice Jessica really enjoyed. When she was feeling more tamasic (depressed), 1:1 even ratio breathing helped uplift. Even breathing supports balanced energy. When she was feeling more rajastic (anxious), 1:2 ratio breathing was supportive. The longer exhale is more calming. Tradak meditation on a candle flame was a practice I chose for Jessica to invite her to engage with her surroundings with eyes open. Jessica was surprised at how helpful Tradak mediation was for her, since she typically practices silent meditation with eyes closed. She reported it helped her feel focused and centered. Since Jessica’s primarily practice is silent meditation, I often ended with just a few moments of silence together.  This provided her with something familiar.

Moving forward:

Jessica explains that Yoga Therapy has helped her get to know herself more, connect with her body and mind, and to empower her to find practices and activities that help support her in creating more balance in her mood. She looks forward to continuing to attend silent meditation retreats with the new knowledge and tools of breath work, mantra, and movements to prepare to sit silently. She also reports that even if she does struggle with her silent meditations, she now feels that there is not something wrong with her, she just may be out of balance!  

Amy Gaster C-IAYT, RYT 500, practices Yoga Therapy with individuals and small groups through-out New Haven County, CT and from anywhere online via Zoom. Amy works with individuals to support them in their experience of chronic pain, mental and emotional well-being, and back pain, utilizing a client-led approach incorporating accessible tools of Yoga. Find her in Instagram, facebook, and her website: yogawithamylauren.com

*Name has been changed to protect the client’s privacy.

Global Grief & the benefit of Self-Study

What I know about the grieving experience is that you often don’t realize the extent of its effect on your life until it's pointed out to you or you take the time to observe. At the time I am writing this it is April 2020, and we are in the midst of a global pandemic. It is also a time whether we are aware of it or not, that we are facing Global Grief. Grief happens as a result of the loss of anything or anyone we are attached to. In my experience with grief and any other human emotion or experience, is that acknowledgement softens the blow. When I can acknowledge that I am in pain, and not resist it, then my suffering lessons, a bit. This is not my own self-discovery. The roots of my perspective begin with the yogic principle of “Swadhaya” or self-study/self-observance. It is the practice of observing the self: emotions/mind/feelings/physical body. The key is to observe the self without judgement.  An example: I am observing the pain in my upper back. I am observing I feel angry. I am observing I feel angry and recognizing beneath the anger is a lack of control. The latter being a bit more nuanced in our “observing”. Through this observation, the yogis say, we get to know the “Seer”, the one who observes, the higher Self. How does this support us now?

I believe many of us are tumbling around these past few weeks (or months) unaware of our grief. We might be expecting to react “business as usual”, maintaining routines or setting new ones, beginning new projects or endeavours, perhaps expecting to do something transformative! I know I did. If this is you and it is going well - great! I am not here to discourage you. If you found that at some point during this experience you were completely exhausted, burnt out, sad, unmotivated, agitated, distracted, numb sleeping a lot or too little, the list goes on - I am hoping this post softens the blow for you, and you acknowledge that you may be in some way affected by this Global grief, if not directly, indirectly. 

Are you not as productive as you hoped? Maybe you’re forgetting conversations that happened or misplacing things in your home. Perhaps you feel an intense need for withdrawal, or the contrary - to be surrounded by people. 

Just the other day I went to look for an important document in my file cabinet that in my “right” mind would have been correctly filed and placed where I could find it easily. The thing is, I put it away sometime this last summer, when I was deep in the throes of grief over my brother. So needless to say, it’s nowhere to be found. I look back at those times and I was giving myself time to grieve but another part of me had my foot in the world, trying to stay in the loop. I made many silly mistakes, I didn’t feel like myself. Sometimes I still don’t. My whole being was consumed in grief. Of course I was forgetful, confused, unproductive.

Some days I would numb out, preferring to be distracted from the pain, watch netflix, neglect my Yoga practice. I had to do that for a period of time, to cope, to get through. If this is you and you desire change but just cannot begin - my advice would be to try to stop shaming yourself first. Do your best to release the shame of what you are doing, or how you are acting in order to cope and instead treat yourself like you would a dear friend, a beloved, a child, a pet. In order to do this you first must acknowledge and observe your actions/reactions. Do your best to simply observe where you are at. You can ask yourself:

Are you sad/anger/confused/scared/lonely today or in this moment?

What makes you feel better?

What makes you feel worse?

What brings you some peace?

What were you doing when you felt totally present?

If we do not stop to observe and ask, we miss the opportunity to really know ourselves in these hard times. I invite you to get to know yourself in “sickness and health”, in happiness and sadness, in grief and in love. This is the practice of Swadhaya - self-study. It is a spiritual process, the biggest gift to not only ourselves, but the world at large. When we get to know ourselves we pave the way for others to do the same.

When we know ourselves, we know what our triggers are, we know when we need some space, we know when we need to reach out for support. There comes a time when we might feel that nudge to shift, to begin to invite healing. When that time comes and we have gotten to know ourselves, we may be guided to the paths of healing that suit us best; Yoga, Private Yoga Therapy, Holistic medicine, Medication, Therapy, reaching out to friends/family, exercise, nature, getting a pet, etc.

As we grieve together in this crisis, how much do you wish you could go walk into your Yoga studio and smell the scent of oils or incense and be in that moment like nothing else mattered. How badly do you want to sit with your loved one that you're not quarantined with and hug them and listen to them and watch them speak, in the flesh. How about these moments now: your time alone, or your time in nature, or with your work, or with your children. How present are you now? Are you truly seeing it for what it is. Have you given yourself space so that you are able to? 

So the invite is simple - not easy, to be aware, to observe. To practice seeing - really seeing; yourself and the world around you. Closing your eyes and observing your inner self. Try practice observing first with no decisions or conclusions, or solutions. Just open eyes and open heart. When years go by and you look back on these tough times, it could be a blur and that would be OK - or it could be a time where you gathered useful information about you, your inner workings, a time you really observed and were awake and alive. Yes - alive- after all, suffering is what binds us earthlings.

{{ Sending prayers to those who are sick, who lost a loved one, who are worried, who are in situations that don’t allow for the opportunity for self-observation, who are busy working keeping our planet going, and more - I see you <3}}

Best wishes,

Amy