FREE! Yoga For Depression
4 videos • 7 views • by Jake Panasevich TREATING DEPRESSION CAN be complicated, and may TREATING DEPRESSION CAN be complicated, and may involve a whole lot of trial and error with different TREATING DEPRESSION CAN be complicated, and may involve a whole lot of trial and error with different medications, types of therapy and lifestyle changes. But one relatively straightforward – and basically side effect-free – management option is yoga, which recent research has shown can improve mood and anxiety measures in people with depression such that they match those of non-depressed individuals. If you have depression and you practice yoga consistently, have faith the yoga will work and develop a home practice, it can work for you too, either alone or in conjunction with other therapies. But not just any yoga may do. The study used a particular sequence of poses developed by Patricia Walden, a world-renowned teacher of Iyengar yoga, a method that focuses on alignment, safety and specific modifications with clear steps to advance in a pose. According to Walden, some of the best yoga poses for depression are: Down Dog, Heart Bench. Headstand. Camel. Wheel. Savasana. Link to full aricle: https://health.usnews.com/health-news... Can Yoga Treat Depression? KACEY DEGUARDIA WAS only 15 years old when her mother died. The teenager sunk into a deep depression and became suicidal. "I was in a pretty dark place," says DeGuardia, now a 24-year-old in Philadelphia. "I was on several medications and had gone to multiple doctors to try to find the right 'cocktail' of pharmaceuticals that would fix me." None seemed to help. But then a friend invited her to a yoga class, which she decided to try in part because she remembered her mom practicing yoga. "I had no idea what I was getting into," she says. But within a year of consistent yoga practice, she felt happy and disciplined enough to go off of her medication entirely. "The physical strength yoga offered ran parallel with my mental strength," she says. [ SEE: The Many Ways Exercise Fights Depression. ] Like DeGuardia, many people successfully fight depression with yoga, and scientific evidence suggests it works. In one recent study, for example, researchers assigned 15 people with major depressive disorder to a Iyengar yoga curriculum, a method that has a strong focus on alignment, safety and precise modifications with clear steps to advance in a pose. The participants took two 90-minutes classes and completed three 30-minute home yoga and breathing assignments per week. After 12 weeks, brain imaging techniques and mood measures showed the participants' symptoms of depression improved to match those of people who didn't have depression. The study also found that anxiety symptoms, which are usually correlated with depression, went down. The study, which was published in Neuropsychiatry Journal (London), is the first to show that specific yoga postures and deep breathing can increase GABA – a neurotransmitter that blocks impulses between nerve cells in the brain and may play a role in depression. Earlier research has linked multi-week yoga programs with significantly lower scores on depression screening questionnaires. "Yoga … is not just hippie, granola-crunchy stuff. The science shows it works," says Dr. Chris Streeter, an associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at Boston University School of Medicine. "It's important to have a practice that you can do every day to become resilient and relaxed. Yoga students can activate this mechanism appropriately when under stress and go back to being relaxed." While more research needs to be done, the latest development "is exciting because yoga can be incorporated in every treatment plan," Streeter says. "You could universally apply yoga, though it doesn't mean that you shouldn't use medicine when needed." Link to full article: https://health.usnews.com/conditions/...