Amy Weintraub on Best Yoga Techniques for Depression

The ancient yogis believed that we hold life’s traumas and losses in both our psychic (mental-emotional) body and our physical body. If this is indeed the case, the body is an important gateway for relieving mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders.

Amy Weintraub, founder of LifeForce Yoga and author of Yoga for Depression has long been a leading advocate for using yoga to help combat depression, whether as an alternative to depression treatments in cases of mild depression or an adjunct to allopathic treatments. In this interview, she discusses some of the yoga techniques she has found to be particularly helpful when using yoga to combat depression. This is the second half of an interview with Amy Weintraub, which appeared on the Huffington Post. The first part of the interview can be found here.

Question: In LifeForce Yoga, you particularly emphasize yoga techniques like Pranayama breathing techniques, chanting, and Kriyas (targeted movements with specific actions). Breath and Kriyas are often used to move energy blocks in the body. Do you think that stagnant or blocked energy is a factor in depression?

Amy Weintraub: Most likely. If you’ve noticed people who are depressed or if you’ve been depressed in the past, the posture is usually slumped and the belly is kind of dormant. There’s not much happening in the 2nd chakra and the 3rd chakra and the core of the body.

So yoga practices targeting depression can help release blocks in those areas. People who struggle with depression can use sound, for example, while doing a yoga pose to energize and release blocks in the core of the body, which tends to get dormant and sluggish in people with depression. For example, Kapalabhati breath, which involves a vigorous pumping of the belly is very useful for enlivening this area. Similarly, doing yoga poses like Cobra or Sphinx pose, while reciting the seed mantra for the 2nd chakra, “Vom,” is very useful. What happens is that we’re actually stimulating those areas and releasing blocks of stagnant energy.

Another wonderful practice, just to get your energy moving and get you motivated to practice is Breath of Joy. Breath of joy is a kriya, a targeted movement practive, which is particularly effective in managing mood, as it counters the shallow breathing that is so common in people who struggle with depression.

So basically any yoga, whether they’re Yoga Asanas, Pranayama, Kriya, or sounds like Mantras or chanting, we help to release the blocks and  release whatever is compressed or constricted from those areas of the body. And this can be any kind of blocks—lymphatic, muscular, energetic, or emotional.

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