depression beneficial long term?

Hi Tom

Welcome to the forum! Thank you so much for your post. Your question is easy to answer if not long.

First and foremost let’s deal with the concept of Yoga Credit! 😉 When you practise hot yoga regularly over time and especially if it is a number of times per week, then you develop what we like to call “yoga credit”. In other words you don’t go back to square one because you miss a few days. Quite the contrary, you seem to be able to navigate your life at the same frequency for some time (if I could put it that way) as that which you held at the time of your yoga break . This allows you (practically speaking) to take breaks from time to time. Depending on the length of break you can still return without having to reacclimatise to the heat and you could be quite close to where you were in flexibility and strength.

If you were to take a few days now you would probably just miss the yoga and be able to return and recommence where you left off.

If you had been practising at the same frequency for say, a year, it’s likely that your credit would allow you to ‘coast’ for longer without returning to as frequent a practice.

You would run out of yoga credit though after a time (cannot determine when). But suffice it to say that if your ‘barometer’ is your ability to cope with emotional tides then you would be vigilant for such changes and hot tail it back to the room! 😆

I am going out on a limb here so please understand that I don’t know any more than you write in your post. So here goes: If one were to look at one’s responses (including those that one categorises as depression) then what you seem to have noticed over 40 days at yoga is that your resilience, your ability to cope, your ability to withstand the vicissitudes of life could in fact be due to your development of new neural pathways. Hey, you could even be rewiring back to old ones!

As I was reading your post my mind flitted to a movie that, if you haven’t seen before, may be very interesting for you. Have you ever seen “What the bleep?”? If not please see it. If you have, then maybe see it again. I would love to know what resonates for you.

So for the big answer to your question: Yes I do believe that habits and behaviours you will develop or enhance doing hot yoga will help you cope with so much more than you may have before, that physiologically you will find more balance hormonally and that optimum function is within your grasp. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of folks who give up medication, avoid surgery, feel great for no reason.

That last one is THE BIGGIE. Feeling great for no reason is where it’s at.

You must be so happy that you have already felt something like that! That’s what it appears to be in any case.

I hope you don’t mind about not going into brain chemistry. There are actually no tests for mental illnesses. Otherwise psychiatry would be a much more black and white profession. Brain chemicals are not measured so a lot of that, as far as I know is conjecture. What counts is your perceptions… Does that make sense?

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

thanks for your quick reply. well im definatly going to continue bikram for the rest of my life. i just wish it didnt cost so much lol, but its a small price to pay for the benefeits in the long term, my depression may have been sparked by drug use in my teens? im not really sure, its hard to say but i probaly did sustain a bit of damage to my nervous system, having said that im nearlly in my mid twenties and havent used any drugs in over 5 years. the wierdest thing about the anti depressant affects of bikram is it really is almost like ive taken a anxiety pill or somthing, as soon as i start to feel a bit tired, fed up or negative, blood will start rushing to my head and certain areas of my brain turn on like a light switch to combat my negative feelings, its like my brain is fighting another area of my brain if that makes sense. its amazing but so so so wierd. i have a lateral pelvic tilt also thats been annoying the crap out of me for a few years so hopefully bikram will adress that at all. Its still early days for me and all ive seen is positive affects of bikram, the first few weeks of practice i actually felt like complete crap some days and nearlly decided to stop, so glad i didnt, i guess like most things i had to get a bit worse for certain parts of my nervous system to get better, im positive camel is one of the most affective poses for my nervous system but im not really sure why. ive been recommending bikram to lots of people and everyone just looks at me like im wierd and is not interested in trying it lol, i guess yoga has a stereotype that not alot of people like. Science definatly needs to do research into why bikram is so beneficial and it needs to be made more public.