Unfortunately, many people don’t even acknowledge that they are depressed, and nearly 50% of major depression goes untreated (4). The subject of how to handle our emotions is not part of the school curriculum. We don’t learn this skill at home either. We teach dental hygiene but forget to teach mental hygiene. Talking or giving advice doesn’t make stress go away. We need to learn some techniques and have some tools handy to help us get rid of stress and calm the mind.
Why does an individual get depressed? Some depression may be because one is hanging onto the past or is over-ambitious and anxious about the future. Life is a continuous process of teaching one how to ‘let go’. Change is the only constant. When one does not acknowledge change and becomes stuck in a position, one can experience frustration, depression, anger and so on. Often, you are unaware that you have a connection with the entire universe. You think you are just some tiny person with some small wants. How do we get out of this small mind? We must look to enquire into the core of our existence. Questions like ‘What is life? Who am I? What do I want?’ can awaken something inside you. Negative emotions can make you sink into depression, and wisdom of the Self can take you out of depression. Meditation and breathing techniques can play an important role here. They are the tools that help you calm your mind and make you feel happy from within. Meditation and breathing techniques can heal illnesses. I would say meditation is food for the soul.
Meditation has many benefits. It helps calm our minds and create a more harmonious and positive atmosphere. It helps us make better decisions. There is a significant body of research on how meditation helps improve conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, heart problems, and sleep and nervous system disorders, among others.
Meditation benefits physical health. It improves concentration and helps one be in the present moment. If you observe, the mind vacillates between the past and the future. We are either angry about the past or anxious about the future. Meditation helps bring the mind to the present. When the mind is calm, we can perceive things better. When the mind is disturbed, our perception is also unclear. In daily life, one comes across situations that can be challenging and require us to take effective decisions. These situations often influence the state of our mind — so much so that we cannot take effective decisions. Neither events in life nor the fluctuations in our mind happen with our permission. The events and states of mind often occur in direct defiance of our wishes.
Meditation can bring a balance between the different states of the mind. Through meditation, one can learn to transition from the tougher to the gentler aspect within oneself. This ability is present within everyone, and meditation can make it easier to switch effortlessly between these states. With a few minutes of daily meditation and pranayama (breathing techniques), our thoughts can become more powerful, and our tasks accomplished more effectively. We can cleanse our minds of negative emotions and effectively address mental illness and depression.
Meditation can bring about a huge transformation in society.
Footnotes:
(1) See http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2010/mental_disabilities_20100916/en/index.html
(2)
See http://www.thekimfoundation.org/html/about_mental_ill/statistics.html
(4)
Ibid
(5)
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/meditation/HQ01070
By Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Spiritual Leader, Global Humanitarian, Peace Ambassador and Founder, Art of Living Foundation
This article was originally published on Huff Post
