Healing depression is an incredibly complex process for most people. Fast answers rarely work with curing depression. Everyone wants fast solutions which lead to overmedication and more complicated problems over time.
Let’s look at curing depression from a Taoist perspective.
What is Depression?
- Depression: a lessening of self, a negative time as the possibilities of life seem to dissipate.
Truth: human beings are incredibly vibrant living beings! It takes quite a bit to knock a person down it turns out. So on average, depression is caused by multiple vectors at once that combine up to move a person into a negative path in their life. Human complexity makes working with depression tricky since it usually means numerous steps are required in counteracting the various negative flows in a person’s life.
So many different factors can come into play when talking about depression. As a result, multiple answers, over time need to be applied to help a person in healing depression.
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Curing Depression isn’t Only Mind Over Body
Let me make one thing clear: you don’t cure depression by out thinking it. All too many people who don’t suffer depression will try to convince people all they need is a positive attitude. Only focusing on a positive attitude is a trap that can make depression worse. The deeper your depression goes, the less likely you can power your way thru it with good intentions.
However, long before you hit depression, it’s possible to avoid a bout of depression by how you hold yourself.
The time you use attitude heal depression is actually before depression kicks into gear.
I hold myself carefully because of this truth. I know long before depression happens, it’s possible to feel its threads wrap around me. So instead, when possible and before the depression kicks into gear, healing depression is a process of being proactive in my life and pacing myself properly. Working against depression includes not using the terms that help dig the hole before I get near that hole. If you state out loud you suffer depression, people all around you will shift and change how they act. Ironically they will help foster your depression. So it’s important to not pre-define oneself either.
I don’t suffer from depression, nor will I think of myself in that way. I have my great days, my low days and the tides of my life ebb and flow. I walk the beach (stormy or sunny) every day, and that beach is my life.
30 Steps to Healing Depression
We are body, mind, and spirit. Depression doesn’t discriminate with only one negative process in how it undercuts a person. Depression cuts us down across our nature of body, mind, and spirit over time. Healing depression requires us to focus on several different aspects of our life to fully find an answer.
Here are 30 different possible steps on what you can focus upon in your healing process. There isn’t a proper order to the steps you take. Nor do you have to try all the steps. Everyone will follow a different combination of steps to find their strength. If one step doesn’t work for you, then quickly switch out to a different option to experiment with in life.
Generally speaking: I like recommending improving diet and exercise as first steps. Qi Gong seems to work especially well in helping people feel more energy in their life. Yet each person is unique and be willing to experiment a little as you step through these options.
Healing The Body
- Exercise
- Learning Yoga
- Learning Martial Arts
- Improving Nutrients
- Remove Food Allergies
- Remove Other Allergies
- Changing where you live
- Healthy Sex Life
- Improving Your Diet
- More / Improved Light
- Balancing Hormones
Healing the Mind
- Improve Sleeping Habits
- StoryTelling
- Releasing a Bad Job
- Changing How You Work
- Letting go of Negative People
- Learning Martial Arts
- Learning Taoism (Non Judgment)
- Creating Predictable Routines
- Talking More with Friends
- See a Therapist
- Meditation
- Learn New Practices
Healing Spirit
- Spiritual Healing
- Change Your Perspective
- Practicing Qi Gong
- Traveling More
- Exploring Spiritual Practices
- Live Kindly
- Releasing Abuse
- Creating Art
- Helping Others
- Practice gratitude
- Play More
- Be in Nature
Attitude and Depression
Let’s start with a simple statement.
I suffer from depression.
Suffer is the correct word to use, as those with depression know, when you are in the negative spiral of depression.
I don’t suffer from depression.
Taoism teaches how to flip everything around. So I work to not suffer from depression. Instead, I embrace it (only very very lightly I might add), understand it, accept it, work with it and modify my life accordingly, in potential to shift my life positively.
This lesson goes beyond depression:
Release negative judgments of anything that limits or diminish you.
Flip the negative into positive actions that help you be more.
It isn’t easy to tackle depression in this manner since depression is the process of becoming less. I do experience “depression”, and I do have to mitigate its effects. I won’t take medication since medication goes against my philosophy. Fortunately, my Taoist practice mitigates quite a bit of the effect of the depression when I do feel it with Qi Gong and other teachings. It’s a dynamic process full of practice, exercises, actions, nutritional balancing, living arrangements, philosophy and lifestyle modifications to balance out my nature in a fuller manner.
I’m not telling people they don’t need medication or miracle cures to exist. What I am saying is: Depression requires a definite understanding and acceptance of how you live life. That by shifting life, using positive actions, it’s possible to shift how any ailment impacts your life. A simple truth: life flows to lifestyle, this means we can shift the way we live to become the medication that can cure many ailments.
Now notice I say: positive actions. Most people make a mistake to think attitude comes before action. This is not the case! In depression, the first thing to go is your attitude. A person stops caring anymore, and attitude comes all out of caring… So the time to use attitude is before you get depressed. Once getting depressed you fall into a different world than everyone else. Bridging the gap between depression and non-depression is not a trivial matter. The path between these two worlds is often very different for each person.
Join the Awakening Dragon School to watch this additional class video about Depression and also get over 70 additional videos and live teachings over time! Being part of a vibrant community and working with others can often be the first step out of depression!
The Poetic Depths of Depression.
Let’s not be a Scientist, rather let’s be a poet for a second.
Depression: A riptide of the soul. Swim against it: is only to struggle, getting worn down, and then being left further out to sea to drown. Swim with it: and then it sweeps you into deeper problems: leading to the conditions that lead a person to drown in their depression.
In Taoism, we always look for the other options. So instead: you can swim sideways to the depression to arrive at calmer waters.
So the question becomes: How do you swim sideways to Depression?
- Don’t dive into depression
- Don’t resist depression
- Relax
- Follow whimsy
- Somewhere along the way, begin to explore again.
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Since depression is a negative cycle, many answers seemingly slip out and away, as your energy drains out rapidly.
If a bowl breaks, it’s impossible to grasp the water pouring out. Depression is when the bowl of your mind/body is broken and cannot hold the waters of spirit.
It’s possible to
1) Catch it in a new bowl if you are fortunate enough to have a slow leak -OR-
2) Let it pour out to make a new bowl later to refill -OR-
3) Let the bowl break leaving it behind and with time discover a new way to hold onto water.
So really, it’s all about time, isn’t it? Having time to move on and fill in the empty-space you feel from depression.
So the answer to depression is simply: be wise enough to give yourself time to be yourself.
From time to time rediscovering, yourself.
In an age of instant answers, it’s not surprising that people get more depressed when no answers to how to get out of depression can be answered instantly. Instead, the soul requires time to rebuild into something new, to find new direction towards something greater again.
Patience and love to you and anyone you know working through such times.
Patience is the greatest gift of these times.
With patience you can assemble up the combination of answers, you will require to tackle your depression or help another find a path out from the depths lost from their spirit.
When feeling depression I do many things: rest, exercise, drink tumeric tea, take a hot bath or even write poetry to slash out my feelings to be more vocal.
It’s such a dance to be alive is it not? And knowing that, I use it this my advantage. I actually love spinning the energy of depression back into light and poetry. I have developed a form of emotional kung-fu using emotions rather than my body as the medium of flowing motion.
I will never bury myself but rather fling the shovel away to teach myself about flight.
Every day I try to fly
One day, long long ago now, the poetry I wrote in one dark corner really really sucked, lets face it channeling depression into a poem, by nature creates a deep hole of words. Yet it did its job, it was a good workout session and bought me time to make it to the next day, a good sunny type of day. The best part was, that I was able to salvage one line from the poem which in after thought was a pretty damn good thought:
Being alive is the very definition of having possibility.
I wrote that just before I started A Personal Tao web site. Yet from that one line I was able to develop and expand out many ideas and even create classes to help others learn more on how to get stronger.
And this one line is the secret to how my Taoist beliefs always helps me ride thru the darkest times of depression.
The point is this: Don’t underestimate the trying, even pushing out the smallest of creations when depressed. Even a single line of poetry can open up a whole future for you.
Meditation Class
This 90-minute video class will introduce you to meditation. We will go over the practical aspects of setting up your practice.
Casey will teach you how to use the Dragon Fire Meditation technique. He will also start you off by learning the morning meditation practice. Dragon Fire will serve you for a lifetime as you continue to expand and explore other meditation practices. Morning Meditation will give you a framework to incorporate additional meditation techniques into your life.
The class also includes six guided meditations and a further article about working with awareness.
I’m grateful to know some blogs support those people who have depression in the way they spreading out awareness and guides how we able to avoid it. Having those options and ideas such as medication with professional care is important to let us know how we treat it and share the good news to all people if we know someone who needs this welfare.
I never really believed in god no matter how hard I was pushed into it. But I always felt like there was something missing in my life. I recently discovered Taoism and I feel like I’m finally where I belong in life. I always believed in most of these beliefs and I’m wanting to learn everything there is to know about Taoism.
Enjoy exploring Taoism Sherrylee! Taoist teaching does have quite a bit of teachings for helping a person beat depression and be in a positive state of living.
I would like to know what -” Dive into Depression”, means.
@Ramesh: “Dive into Depression” means to give in to a negative flow undercutting your life.
@Zach: You are welcomed, be strong and patient in your path ahead.
Thank you for this.
Merry: Exactly. This isn’t easy but you can grow against and even use anything labeled as illness. To turn depression around, to extend your perceptions, work along side of it and most importantly gain insights to make life more graceful from the challenges presented by the condition.
It isn’t easy, but when done, garners much respect from everyone.
Depression is a result of lifestyle – often with lots of pain and stress for many years, often already in childhood….. This “stress” breaks down the “tap” in our brain which drips serotonin – the anti-depression chemical. Hence, medication is absolutely needed to replenish this stock…. otherwise you are like a motor with no oil…. it won’t work! Having serotonin again, will help but depressed people need constant support and help to get out of their own hell. Healing of pain costs time – give it 5 to 10 years…. yes there is hope but be patient, and yes you… Read more »
@Tessa: Be careful of sweeping statements. For instance depression isn’t only a lifestyle problem. Countless reasons exist for depression. To only focus only on one reason can make it impossible for a person to discover the true source of their own problem. Be careful of assuming your reasons for depression will map to other people’s experience or path of healing. While the end results of depression looks the same: the reasons behind depression and paths to curing depression are as varied as the number of people on our planet. For some people medication is the path of healing, for some… Read more »
but all in all learning how not to be defined by something which can limit or diminish you
Woah, you totally hit the nail on the head for me. I was born autistic and have since developed mental illnesses(bipolarism, ocd,ptsd, etc) and it is easy to define yourself by what bothers you! Thank-you for pointing this out in the other comment, even though it wasn’t directed to me. It’s funny how the Universe projects one to things one needs to hear. 😉
And I love your new resources on your site. Great stuff!
-Merry
Interesting. How I define depression depends on my mood. Some days I suffer from it. Some days I embrace it. Some days I celebrate it.