Helpful and unhelpful ways to meditate
Some kinds of meditation are not very helpful for depression, according to Buddhists I know who have suffered depression. There are techniques called “Vipassana” or “insight meditation” that involve a lot of introspection and “simply being with your experience” rather than actively working to shape your experience.
Joan thinks that these methods have a tendency to lead people into withdrawn states. However, I’ve studied books by vipassana writers and personally found them to be very useful in my own practice, and I also know that clinical studies have shown that vipassana-style meditation techniques can be helpful in preventing relapses into depression. In fact a whole discipline based on insight meditation and called “Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression” has arisen and been shown to be extraordinarily effective and preventing relapse into depression.
I suspect Joan may simply have had a teacher who was unable to help her use the Vipassana approach effectively. There are also different styles of vipassana meditation and it may be that some are less helpful than others.
What was helpful in Joan’s experience is the Metta Bhavana (development of lovingkindness) practice – which I teach elsewhere on Wildmind. This is a practice for developing more positive emotion – more patience, kindness, and love for oneself and for others. I cannot recommend this practice highly enough.
The first stage of the practice involves cultivating Metta (love) for oneself. When people experience a lot of self-hatred I often encourage them to spend most of their time on this stage of the practice. One thing that I also encourage – and Joan concurs with me on this – is that we have to start this practice by accepting where we are. I don’t mean accepting in the sense of “being happy to be depressed” or thinking that this is an okay place to be, but in the sense I talked about earlier when I talked about not making things worse by heaping on the self-disparagement, guilt, and feeling of inadequacy.
It is important just to accept that you are where you are, and also to accept that you can move from there. There’s nowhere else you can start from but where you are, so learn to be content to start from there.
It’s also important not to try to “manufacture” emotion. Beginning meditators (and some experienced ones) often feel that since the point of the Metta Bhavana practice is to develop positive emotion, then they need to somehow “make positive emotion happen.” And this can lead to denial or rejection of where we are. The practice doesn’t work that way. If you feel one of the mental states characterized by depression – anxiety, for example – then you need to start by looking for a sense of contentment to start from where you are, continue to experience the emotion of anxiety, and then work within that mental state. Hating the mental state will not help your problem. Hating your mental state is part of the problem.
One common technique is simply to repeat, “may I be well, may I be happy, may I be free from suffering” (this is only one technique, and is not necessarily the most effective for all people). One repeats these phrases while also honestly and openly experiencing the anxiety. Over time, the words have an effect on our emotional states, and the anxiety will weaken or even disappear altogether. But the important thing is to acknowledge the anxiety and not to try to manufacture an emotion to replace it.
Other ways of cultivating Metta involve a sense of receptivity to an external source of love. I think that this approach could be beneficial for some people suffering from depression. One can imagine that one is receiving love from an outside source, for example in the form of light, which can then flow through us and even radiate from our hearts as it flows on towards others. I have a hunch that his might be useful in depression.
Another useful way of dealing with anxiety and with a sense of being overwhelmed by the outside world is to visualize a protective sphere around you – a bit like a science-fiction force field. You can imagine that this protective sphere encloses you in a safe space. I’m not suggesting that there actually is a protective force field around you, but your subconscious does not distinguish between fact and myth, so if you imagine such a protective field, it will have an effect on you. I’ve personally found this technique to be very useful.
One last thing: meditation, and indeed all Buddhist practice – is based on the recognition that change is a universal truth. Everything changes. Meditation helps us to see this, and to recognize that we always have the power to influence and change our experience. With a chemical imbalance, there is more of a challenge involved in making such changes, but also a correspondingly greater incentive for doing so.
Comments
Comment from Kevin Griffith
Time: March 11, 2008, 7:02 pm
I have been meditating with the FWBO for 20 years and am currently suffering a major depression which appears to be ‘chemical’ in origin. I am grateful for you pages and wonder if you can recommend a book or tape to assist me deal with my depression. Thanks.
Comment from Bodhipaksa
Time: March 12, 2008, 8:10 am
Hi Kevin,
I’m sorry to hear about your experience with depression.
There’s a book by Cheri Huber called “Being Present In The Darkness” that you might find useful.
It might be worth checking out Vidyamala and Sona’s Breathworks CDs. They’re more to do with dealing with physical pain, but depression is a kind of emotional pain so there’s a lot of overlap.
And with all modesty I’d also suggest my first CD, “Guided Meditations for Calmness, Awareness, and Love.” Sometimes just having another voice speaking to us that comes from a different place can help lift us out of the darkness a little.
But it’s really hard to say what would be most useful. When we’re depressed we can end up making unhelpful comparisons so that even a guided meditation can be an excuse to beat ourselves up. So these are just suggested tools for you to try out and see whether they help.
Take care,
Bodhipaksa
Comment from daniel ogilvy
Time: August 6, 2008, 5:43 am
I have experienced depression for many years now. Sometimes I wonder if it comes from the society we live in and the pressures it puts on us. We are in so many ways encouraged to be selfish and always get the best deal for ourselves.
The famous line of ” think more about what you can do for your country than what your country can do for you” has a really healthy ring to it. I was very much a part of this country during the 2nd world war and those who grew up with it (now in their 80s) seem to have lead very positive and useful lives. Maybe we need to re-introduce this concept back into education and get our youth doing whatever they can for their community. In that way perhaps we can minimise depression. That, of course, is prevention, and this site is looking at cure, but maybe if we could set up residential volunteering and a way to have people feeling useful – really useful, then we may start to grow well again.
Comment from Bob Kucera
Time: October 26, 2008, 7:21 am
Hi, I am a Buddhist and a survivor of depression. I found “salvation” finally not through buddhism but through understanding depressiona as a disease, Peter Kramer’s book Against Depression was critical to this. Here are my thoughts on depression
Major depression is always chemical.
The distinction between situational and biological depression is artificial.
Our genes, neurochemicals, hormones, environment and behavior are integrated, an “ecosystem” if you will.
If you are experiencing major depression then you are experiencing a physical disease, one which actively damages your endocrine, neural, cardiovascular and hormonal systems.
Under these circumstances you should seek treatment from a Dr (psychiatrist), and yes Please take medicine if it helps.
Comment from Loes
Time: December 26, 2008, 3:47 pm
I have been suffering from major depression and anxiety for most of my life. As I do not respond well and even adverse to some medications, and various therapies and hospitalizations have had only impermanent and meager results, this disease has thoroughly debilitated my entire life and I have been on disability for over 10 years.
Sure it’s chemical. Everything is chemical. All our thoughts are just neurons firing (or not) firing away. I am not opposed to medication, but I have been around the block long enough to now that they do not work for many people. Buddhism/meditation has been my “salvation” and continues to be so. It has given me insights into the workings of my mind that no psychiater/psychologist/nurse ever could. And it works! As a depressed person, no one knows the truth better than that it is all a matter of perception in the end… and that the suffering of finding oneself thoroughly stuck in a claustophobic ego without even being able to feel any connection with others is horrible…
So what I really miss is the practice of lojong! Exchanging oneself for others can really help expanding that cramped, painful mind. Mindfulness is very helpful, especially with the help of a ‘body scan’ but very hard to do when the mind is very violent against itself. Oddly enough I frequently feel I don’t “deserve” any loving kindness or revolt against it when I am really in the dark zone. It is absurd, but my mind is so turned against myself the only peace it will allow me to think of is the thought of self-destruction. So metta practice is better for me when I am a little bit in a better place.
But even when I am extremely angry at myself because I am stuck feeling sorry for my worthless self I can still expand my heart by reaching out to all the other beings being stuck in depression, uncapable of escaping being narrow-minded though longing to “be good”, and pray that my depression may be enough, that this suffering may absorb all their suffering right now, so that they may find happiness, freedom, space.
And visualizing all these miserable creatures receiving all my happiness and being freed from their heavy load of depression, a little spark of joy can just crack open that prison… I am not alone. My heart is not dead. I feel for others. I am not a horrible person. My depression is a delusion, black clouds covering my buddha nature.
So that helps. And listening/watching/reading teachings. Even if I can’t focus. Eventually something will hook me. Remind me. Often I just gaze at an image of the Buddha and remember myself that I am loved, no matter what.
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