Meditation and Depression
Depression is a serious life changing condition that millions of Americans suffer from each year. Depression is typically treated with aromatherapy, medication, and sometimes even meditation. Depression is caused by an enormous amount of stress in one’s life, the loss of a loved one, the breakup of a long time relationship and many other factors. Dealing with depression can be a difficult task to do but patients should try to remove depression from their life to better get through the day. Depression can take over one’s life by making normally easy activities difficult to accomplish and appearing in public an extremely difficult challenge as well.
Depression can be caused by one of two things; situational (external events) or organic (chemical imbalances in the brain). When patients suffer repeated bouts of depression studies have shown that learning how to meditate can help to control relapses into depression again. Meditation should not be used as an alternative to medication or cognitive therapy. Meditation can help with a lot of physical and emotional disorders but should not be used to cure for all medical ailments. Meditation is defined as ways in which people can work directly or indirectly with their mental states to affect the outcome of a desired change in a person.
According to a government report, close to seven percent of full time United States workers battle depression during the course of a year. The highest rates of depression are among workers that tend to the elderly, change diapers, and serve food and drinks to the poor and homeless. Working in these fields can cause people to realize how fragile life really is because they see the rawness of being a baby or the rawness of being an elderly person. It is rare to find someone experienced with meditation who is also suffering from a state of depression.
Meditation helps people with depression focus on the positive things they have going for them in their life at the time and block out the negative ones at the same time. It is not easy to meditate but with practice comes success. Meditation forces people to focus on their breathing, which does not allow thoughts to enter the brain while doing so. This can help to relax the body and the mind, removing stress and depression from the body.
Meditation helps people relax because the person meditating must focus on one specific object at a time. Experts recommend placing a raisin in your mouth, only one, when meditating for the first time. The person meditating should focus on how the raisin tastes and feels on the mouth, the cheek, the gums and the tongue. Before placing it in your mouth you should roll it around in your hand. Think about how it feels, what it smells like, and continue to focus on the raisin if your mind begins to wander. There is a 70-80 percent chance that depression will return to a patient within one year if it is not treated with a combination of medication, therapy, and meditation.
