My medicine bag

When I started this blog over a year ago, I wrote quite a bit about depression. I haven't written on the subject for a while and it's not because i don't have patches of darkness, I do, but I feel more confident that the depression is temporary and that it will lift. So what has happened to me in the last 14 months to change my equilibrium? Well, I've put together a medicine bag to combat the horribles.

The current contents of my depression medicine bag:

A change in perspective. I focussed on making a shift from self identifying as a depressed person to identifying as a person who has tendencies towards negative thinking, which left unchecked will lead to depression. Seems like a minor shift but it's not. Identifying yourself as a depressed person makes you a passive victim. Identifying as a person who has a tendency towards depression gives you back control and forces you to take responsibility for your mental health. Be as vigilant about monitoring your moods as a diabetic is about their blood sugar levels.

Meditate. I've been meditating daily for 2 1/2 years and I think it's helped me to find balance in my mind and in my life. I've done a series of different guided meditations, experimenting, looking for the right fit. My latest combination is an hour long brain entraining meditation by Holosync, augmented by breathing and affirmation practice and mindfulness practice. The brain entraining is supposed to help create neural connections between the right and left brain. I don't know if this is actually the case, but I find that I am more clear minded and calm since I began this particular program a month ago. Mindful meditation has also been really good for me and I recommend Jack Kornfield's The Inner Art Of Meditation audiobook.

Do Yoga. I recently bought a mat and try to follow a 40 minute video at least 2 - 3 times a week. I can feel the effects in my body and it feels good. It's helping me get back in touch with my body and altering my negative body image.

Eat more fruits and vegetables. Cut down on sugar and bread. No explanation necessary.

Build a creative space. For me this space is here, my blog. It's my public notebook and it motivates me to keep producing work for an audience and for myself. As a creative person, having a forum where I can express myself and explore my passions is important to my sense of well-being.

Do NOT engage with angry freaks. They aren't interested in debate or intellectual sparring, they are trying to shadow box you in the head. They will often accuse you of doing the very things they themselves are doing to you and then try to force your emotional reaction by hitting below the belt. I repeat, DO NOT engage, don't feed them with your energy. Withdraw and focus instead on your friends, interests, movies, art, whatever brings you positive energy. Let the shadow boxers fight by themselves.

Get fascinated by things. Be curious. I've been watching TED a lot, following up on lectures that catch my fancy with more research. Science and the natural world is rich with amazing wonders. Lately I've been researching everything from string theory or the potential unified theory of everything to biomimicry to V.S. Ramachandran's investigations into phantom limb pain, synesthesia and other brain disorders, which have allowed him map the functions of the mind to the physical structures of the brain to how and where the brain thinks about other people's thoughts to Dan Dennett's ideas on consciousness to Richard Dawkin's call for militant atheism to positive psychology to neuroplasticity to understanding comics to the relationship between text and images to photography and photoshop techniques. The world is indeed stranger and more fascinating than we can possibly know. If you can't experience the splendor, the elegance and the jaw dropping wonder of the natural world then you are not awake.

In a TED lecture, Richard Dawkin's says this:

Steve Grand points out that you and I are, ourselves, more like a wave than a permanent thing. He invites us, the reader, to "think of an experience from your childhood -- something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: You weren't there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that doesn't make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important."

So these are some of the contents of my medicine bag. What do you have in yours?

meditation slideshow

This slideshow is courtesy of Ten Second Meditation.

I've been practicing those "incantations" I mentioned in work blues using this slideshow. The statements are timed for breathing in 5 seconds then breathing out for 5 seconds when the words slide offscreen.  Say half the sentence while breathing in and the other half while breathing out. For example, with this first incantation, I say, "I am completely.." breathing in.. "stopping.." breathing out. Hopefully this makes sense. I like this meditation a lot. It's a quick way to get centered. All 12 incantations take only 2 minutes. The slideshow is an aid to remembering the incantations and I personally like the beautiful painted vistas to look at. I've been quite down lately so every little thing I can do to keep calm and centered on the present moment really helps.. Try it out and let me know what you think. 

This slideshow has inspired me to create my own using my photos and flute music but I'll need to learn some new software skills to pull it off. Once I've got it figured out, I'll post my own version.

peace out

work blues

It's September and I need to start making some money. The TEFL market in Madrid is waking up from its summer slumber and I need to be the early bird pecking the ground for worms. It's a cowboy business with little job security or loyalty at the best of times but with the Spanish belt tightening, I'm not sure if this is still a teacher's market. I've got half my schedule filled but the blocks of hours aren't my ideal. Oh well. Can't get too picky at this early stage. This is the third school year I've weathered here in Madrid and you'd think I'd be a seasoned pro with no worries and some sort of job security by now. Nope, it's still a stressful chaos of uncertainty. It's a freelance dice game with no guarantees. For example, the large block of 18 hours per week I had last year has been reduced to a paltry 6 hours. Companies can change their minds last minute so no one can bank on anything. Currently, I've accepted classes from two academies and I'm still in negotiation with one other. And I'm getting some response from the mass blast of my CV I sent out a month ago but they seem to want to pay below average wages so screw 'em. I'm not that desperate yet. Fingers crossed. Hopefully it'll all work out. Chin up and all that. I just wish I didn't get the onset of depression and despair when uncertainty looms large. It's not very helpful.

So no surprise, I awoke with a knotted heavy heart this morning. To dissolve this heaviness I've been looking for more meditation techniques to get tranquila. Today I went back to Eric Maisel's podcasts and tried out his Ten Zen Seconds method, which combines Eastern mindfulness practices and Western cognitive psychology. By combining deep breathing and positive phrases (he calls them incantations) you can get centered. For example, you breathe in for 5 seconds and breathe out for 5 while saying, "I expect nothing" or "I make my meaning." The trick is to say half the sentence breathing in and the other half breathing out and to do it every day. Break old habits with new habits. So this is the latest addition to my 1 hour meditation regiment. I'll let you know how it works out.

If any of you have leads on other types of meditation practices, things you do to stay calm, I'd love to hear from you.

Keeping the Horribles at Bay: Guided Meditations, Mindfulness and Depression

I spent my mad teens clinically depressed. I spent almost all of my vivacious 20s on various cocktails of anti-depressants prescribed to curb my self-destructive passions and mournful wailings. I've hit the dark bottom several times but I've bounced back. I even had 4 (more or less) stable years of fruitful and productive creativity during my Writing degree at UVic.

After graduation, for mostly financial reasons, I went off the meds. What followed was a crash harder than asphalt and my recovery took years. I began this excruciatingly slow crawl back to peace without doctors or their meds. I've been meds free for 7 years. Along the way I have used relocation, taoist philosophy, cultivation of joy, laughter, Love, the dogmas of Joseph Campbell and Jung as conscious and unconscious methods of assuaging the dark siren in me. Yet, the horribles continued to pursue me in the shadows, coming at me with relentless mocking self-recriminations and whispered despair. I posted affirmations on my walls but they provided flimsy muzzles. Then I came upon the practice of self-hypnosis and guided meditations.

Armed with my rudimentary understanding of the brain and neuroplasticity, I decided to reprogram my habitual thoughts. I wanted to counteract the extreme negatives by introducing extreme positives while in a receptive, relaxed state. I collected and tried out a number of different meditations. I chose the ones I felt the most positive in. The effects were fairly immediate. Absorbed snippets from the meditations would spontaneously surface to interrupt a negative eddy from deepening. For example, when I begin thinking of all the bad, irritating shit that's crapping on me, a recorded voice reminds me to rest my thoughts on the positive and everything will go smoothly. I've been practicing these meditations daily for 15 months and for me, it works.

A few months ago, I discovered mindfulness practice while researching depression. They've done clinical studies and found that Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy reduces the risk of relapse in those who had three or more previous episodes of depression (from 66 per cent to 37 per cent). I immediately added Mindfulness practice to my repertoire. I try to spend 30 minutes on Mindfulness and augment it with 20 minutes of positive-thinking based self-hypnosis. I find this combination works well for me. I am more aware of my moods as clouds and my negative thoughts as tiny whirlpools in a giant river.


Suggested meditations:

Video:
Thich Nhat Hanh - Mindful Movements

Audio:
Mindful Way Through Depression - Guided Meditation Practices
BrainSync - Guided Relaxation with Kelly Howell
Bob Griswold's Super Strength Self-Esteem

Suggested reading:

The Lotus and the Synapse - An article in Newsweek
Meditation and Depression - Transcript from ABC's Dimensions Health
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy and the prevention of relapse in depression - University of Oxford
The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness - A book

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