June 15, 2010

Mental Health – Yoga Poses for Anxiety and Depression

Posted in Category : Depression

There are a number of ups and downs that a person goes through in life and the way it is accepted and dealt with it differs from person to person. Depression is a serious mental condition wherein the person is extremely unhappy, lonely, feels hopeless and worthless. They lose all interest to do their daily work and are not able to maintain their normal routine. They also feel the need to be left alone all the time and in some cases get suicidal too. Depression may result from a number of mishaps or unfortunate events that happen in the life of a person due to which a person eventually breaks down. Yoga is a great way to treat depression and there are a number of yoga benefits. Yoga is done with the help of certain postures that you take and keep your body in and it is used for a whole lot of reasons from meditation to treating serious illnesses and health conditions. It is one of the best ways to stay healthy and fit too and is known to relax and calm you down. Yoga postures for depression is particularly useful as it strengthens the nervous system, enhances concentration of a person, improves circulation and renews the body and mind.

There are a number of yoga poses for depression that one can try and benefit from. Kriya yoga is one such yoga that is simple yet very powerful and should be done only with a trained yoga instructor. It involves an exercise that works on the control of breath to create a balance in the flow of life energy. This would help greatly in creating intense energy, increasing awareness and reducing anxiety and stress due to which it is excellent to treat depression. Among the various yoga asanas for depression, savasana or the corpse pose is one such asana that is useful for treating depression. You need to lie down on your back on the floor and stretch your arms out at an angle of 45 degrees while your legs are on the floor and apart. Do not try to hold yourself and let your body loose making sure that your head is placed comfortably. Then close your eyes and take deep breaths and simply relax and while you do that, release all the tension from your mind and body and enjoy the time. This is best done when you are feeling low or are very stressed out and is known to provide some great results.