Yoga When You’re Depressed. Yes, it Works

I have decided to return to yoga with a renewed commitment. And the reason I have returned is because I have been too … well subject to too much depression. I tried to address it by going back on Buproprion, an anti-depressant prescribed me 18 months ago and which I stopped taking a few months back. But that wasn’t really working too well. Now, as a next step. Try “yoga when you’re depressed.”

The question “why are you depressed?” Is a fraught one. Actually, I think I’m not always depressed. Just too many times recently. Finally one friend said, “You’ve described yourself as having a “low mood” for weeks now. You need to go back to the counselor.”

Damn. I shouldn’t have told her how I was actually feeling.

Did Woody Allen Ever Think to Try Yoga? Did Any of His Friends Suggest Yoga when You’re Depressed?

For some of us, there comes a time in your life when you wonder if you’ll ever get out of counseling. One old friend used to talk about Woody Allen as the exemplar of people who never ever stop going to the psychiatrist, and then, would say, “so if you want to end up like Woody Allen, just keep going to counseling.”

Woody Allen was pretty funny but I have to say that he’s not someone you’d want to emulate. I am sick of going to counseling. Generally. And I really, really, really don’t want to wind up like Woody Allen. So I haven’t actually followed up on the suggestion to go to counseling. Thus a new interest: yoga when you’re depressed.

Why do I have to be depressed now? Can’t I do this some other time?

Why did I get depressed, though? I think it’s about losing my mother. I didn’t want to talk about this, and yet I think I probably should have mentioned it. Leo was up in Northern Colorado over Easter and my mother had him at her house for days. She made a huge scene about how Tiara should put him up too. And even though Tiara refused, I’ve now had it with mom for now.

This fight with my mother about her siding with Leo started with throwing parties for him, always talking about him every time I see her and saying how well he’s doing … taking him to the orchestra concerts, and, perhaps the most surprising, cancelling hosting Tiara’s baby’s first birthday so Mom can hang out with that awful friend of Leo’s, Ben … this whole iteration of the Mom vs. Susan thing started with refusing to pick me up from the airport, which I never would have asked her to do, except she always picked Leo up from the airport …

But maybe this goes way back, back to when I was born …

Oh no. I remember a letter my father wrote to his father when I was two months old, that I found in his papers. He said “Susan never stops crying … ” My thought when I read that was, “uh-oh.” I’ve taken care of enough babies to know that you can generally get them to stop crying, but you have to pick them up, feed them etc.

Look, I’ve had it with mom. It disturbed me when I read in a book Karen gave me, “What Happened to You?” The book said if you have problems with inexplicable fears and unstable moods and you really really don’t like certain people and you can’t explain why … it may have something to do with early childhood trauma. Stuff that happened in your first year. The book explained that you could have Baby-PTSD. Baby PTST comes from your mom ignoring or laughing at your or leaving you in the crib to cry. Although you can’t remember, you also can’t forget, and you can’t explain yourself to yourself or others because you’ve forgotten the evidence. You don’t trust people close to you, and you cannot tell who loves you and who doesn’t.

Denial, It’s Not Just A River In Egypt

My denial of the fact that my mother isn’t really simpatica is decades old; it may have even started before I could speak. She was always prone to being mean, but she gave me nice things. So, she must care about me, right? But maybe not. Maybe she just thought it looked good for her to have a presentable daughter. At any rate, now, at the 11th hour of Mom’s and my relationship, I’ve decided to avoid her for a while. I just can’t take it any more. I blocked her phone number. No more antagonistic texts, especially at work! This split from Mom may have contributed to the depression, however. When you finally let go of denial and accept something you didn’t want to admit, even if you’re right to do so, it can bring sadness.

So. I was struggling.

But then I noticed that in the last two months, I had gone to yoga hardly at all. This is partly because I kept going skiing. And partly because of the Meet Up group, the Mountain’s Edge People. It made me nervous when I realized that in the last month I’d gone to yoga an average of less than once a week.

“Man, Remember about yoga when you’re depressed?” said my inner voice. “Forget counseling and Buproprion, go back to yoga. At least three days a week.”

So I did. I went four times in the last seven days. And how is my mood?

Well, I”m not cured, but I have to say, I’m better than I was. I don’t find myself feeling that “nothing matters anymore” or asking myself “why did you screw up everything?” and I also haven’t experienced that thought that really shows you’re going off the deep end, “they all hate me. ” None of those have cropped up at all for the past three days.

Do I dare to hope that I’m on the mend? I don’t know. I worry, because if I slip back one more time, I’ll surely have to start counseling again. And that will activate my feeling that I’m never really out of counseling, and I won’t be, and that … yes, I might even be as much of a dork as Woody Allen. Just without Soon-Yi, because neither of my exes has a stepson. And that’s probably a good thing.

Yoga when you’re depressed. It is a thing you can do. Like counting sheep to go to sleep. If only to get yourself by until something substantial happens and you feel differently.