5.1. Treat Depression - Your False Mental State

After you’ve experience the previous exercises and techniques, it’s time to prepare a self-therapy to treat depression more effectively and also create more physical strength. You now have the valuable tool for detachment (post no. 4.4) from the last breathing exercise – the exhalation. Let’s intensify your mental energies through relaxation, right this very moment:

Exhale … let go of mental noise and any tension in your body. Patience – mother of calmness, stillness and peacefulness works within you now. Develop patience with each single exhalation. Build it up, make it inexhaustible. If you should be greedy for something, be greedy for having resolute patience. The more patience you have, the easier you can understand that it takes time, work and acceptance to treat your depressive mental state.

If you have tortured your nervous system, exposing yourself to a lot of stress and negative thinking over a long time, it’s natural that it will take time to restore your nervous system, so that your mind can produce constructive mental content again. Fortunately, successful recovery is down to these simple elements: creating calmness, stillness and patience.

All you need do is stay active, create positive self-talk, and breathe, and you’ll see these qualities grow within you with each passing day.

Why Self-Talk, Exercise and Meditation are a Crucial Part of the Therapy

There is a priceless value in establishing your own therapeutic treatment. Every single human being must treat themselves in the best possible way in order to stay healthy and effective. Life is too short to spend a day being ineffective. Here is a reference model I have used effectively for more than twenty years:

1. Self-talk: I respect myself and I want to take care of my health. I want to express the best of myself so I can contribute to this world and help others. That’s my vision – a self-talk that creates motivation and constructive energy. Do your motivational self-talk and decide how you would express the very best of you.
2. Exercise: Your conscious breathing combined with a walk in the evening just before you go to bed can be very soothing and revitalizing. Just walk and breathe – letting go of mental noise. Make your goal a few miles of walking and breathing and try to think only about the present action you perform. Observe yourself successfully performing a healthy act. You will return home full of vigor. Gradually do other physical exercises (yoga postures, push-ups, sit-ups, squats, etc.) to increase your strength and become more energized.
3. Meditate: After your walk, sit and wait for your thoughts to float by. Watch them come and go. Remain detached from them, regardless of whether they are pleasurable or painful. Be a stern taskmaster with your thoughts. You are your own authority. Once you detect a negative thought that has developed into negative emotion (depressive mental state) practice your exhalation, let go and detach from it immediately and watch it float away. This technique is crucial and can help you through any difficult phase. As you execute this, you’ll see and feel your development of higher intelligence (post 3.4.).

5.2. Why Your Own Approach Works Every Time

The previous section gives you a structure for your personal therapy. We’ll now have a look at a reference model for shaping a personal therapy in this fifth exercise. You can enhance your positive mental energies through:

Exhalation = Letting Go – Calmness, Stillness, Peacefulness = Patience

In the exhalation exercise, you can discover the power of your inward attention, and how you notice the shifting of your attention from thought to thought. This mental ability is the result of practicing this breathing exercise. This is a great accomplishment and you have good reason to be proud of that.

This ability has a wonderful momentum. You can detect energy-making thoughts or energy-consuming thoughts. Do it right now: exhale according to 3LS – Lovingly, Lightly, Long, Slow, and pinpoint your inner attention on the flow of your breath for only five seconds. Now shift your inner attention on the tension of your face muscles for few seconds and then to the flow of your breath again. You see … this was shifting attention from physical activities, breath and muscle work. Now do the same with thoughts of different energies; shift from energy making thoughts to energy-consuming thoughts and watch your inner attention work successively.

Being completely conscious of what is going on in your mind is mental clarity – a deeper insight we spoke about in post No. 2.3.

Remember, you are the intelligent masterpiece! Be conscious of it. You have learned how to approach the energies of attention, calmness, relaxation, stillness, and peacefulness, etc. All this work took you to the power of patience. Now you can see the light at the end of the tunnel – the structure within you. Just keep going with this pace.

Before, your ego has clouded your intelligence through ignorance, fear, anger, anxiety, insecurity, comparison, greed and so on, and created misconceptions and stories that are not the true YOU. Now, you have removed the curtain of ignorance and achieved clarity, where you don’t have to believe or trust something or someone except your own work − the process you’ve been through and what you’ve achieved.

You can always listen to and take advice from a good therapist (if you have one) but when it comes to healing and progress, you can rely only on your own work – your own therapy.

Progressing the Treatment

Your progress is effective. You are developing your patience, managing your thoughts and your mental activities – you create calmness and stillness. Before you begin with the fifth exercise access the power of patience right now and:

1. Consciously take a gentle breath. Take Loving-Light-Long-Slow Breath (3LS)
2. Put a smile on your face that emerges from deep within you. Acknowledge that you’re relaxed and calm with a peaceful mental state.
3. Know that the power for this smile is always present within you. Acknowledge your healthy mental state and know that this state is the finest, deepest part of YOU.

The fifth exercise will show you that it is YOU who is at the center of power – the essence of any psychotherapy. You’ll see that you have the healing power literally in your hands – physically and mentally. It is through your own authentic self-love that you have attained all the life skills you needed. Inspire yourself further through your love – your healing power.

This exercise is very short and has an immediate effect on your physical and mental fitness. Be as attentive as possible, and you’ll immediately notice the connection with all the other four exercises.

5.3. The 5th Exercise - Inhale-Receive, Exhale-Give

1. Stand with bare feet and make a firm and steady connection to the floor.
2. Make an internal mental connection (an internal thread) between your heels and the top of your head.
3. Inhale – receive energy – the thread stretches and tightens.
4. Exhale – send yourself loving energy – the thread loosens and relaxes.
5. Create a conscious breathing rhythm out of this (without forcing the breath), observing the subtle movement of the thread.
6. Spread your arms, open your chest, relax your back muscles, relax your face muscles – coordinate with the breathing rhythm.
7. Make fists – feel physical energy building up. Observe the breathing rhythm being influenced by holding your arms spread.
8. Now there is a very important step! Be conscious of your existing physical energy and let your breathing fuel and trigger a circular (spherical) movement of your arms. Start with small circles that are not dominating your breathing. Here attention and concentration emerge while observing your inner strength and breathing. This is the start of your development of these mental energies.
9. As you do this feel the energy moving from your chest to your fists – your arms are like fiery rods transmitting pure power, slowly building heat, gradually spreading through your upper body. Focus on the movement of that energy and keep your breathing more prominent than the movement of your arms. Your arms serve only to generate physical energy – your mind coordinates all the mental fitness. It’s normal if your arms and shoulders are already tired. Lower them gradually and keep the exercise going – producing physical energy for another minute.

Acknowledgement of Your Progress & Success - Mental Health

1. Stop the movement. Stand still. Keep your breathing rhythm and feel the heat and the physical strength that has built up within. Close your eyes and follow your breathing, observing the stillness of your body. Witness how you feel now – there are no negative thoughts there. Your mind isn’t running wild anymore, but is stabilized and calm. It’s peaceful. Stay in this peaceful space now and acknowledge this physical strength and the mental stability you have acquired. Store this within your heart, and know that you can generate this energy at will, anytime, anywhere.

The exercise is finished, but the therapy – the taking care of your mental health goes on. This is a reference model of how you can create your own individual exercise combined with physical and mental activities, and generate healing energy within your body and mind.

1. One more thing … this last step is crucial and an effective part of your therapy. Negative feelings, thoughts and emotions will return. That’s their natural cycle. Just be observant of them and note how they disturb your mental stability and recall the mental clarity you have already achieved.
2. Practice challenging negative thoughts or emotions – don’t ignore them. In this case, we don’t want to work with the letting go concept because we have the power, the strength to face what is actually the root-cause of our conflict and deal with it. When we face emotions we cannot deal with, we let-them-go and stick to a breathing exercise, observing how the tension fades away and calmness, stillness and peacefulness emerge.

IN THE NEXT POST…

In the sixth exercise, we will practice facing and letting go of negative and disturbing thoughts.

The ten steps of the moving and breathing exercise take between four to six minutes. In this time, you can witness that you’re capable of recognizing and managing your behavior, and generating physical and mental strength. You are able to manage your thought patterns, and discern your mental state – from a depressed mental state to an energetic vital mental state.