Workshop by Stewart Snyder, CranioSacral Therapist, Yoga Teacher

Workshop Takeaways:

Does the modern approach to depression work?

Depression has become so common and treatment-in-a-pill so prevalent that we have started to simply accept the feelings as “just how things are.”

We doubt ourselves. We give up hope. But, we don’t have to! New research is leading toward depression being tied to low fulfillment in four areas of our life… and away from the idea that depression is simply a spontaneous drop in brain chemicals.

The idea that depression is caused by a spontaneous chemical deficiency comes from a series of bad scientific assumptions.

Actual studies¹ results do not show that pills work.

• 25% of the people in the trial had a natural recovery from depression.
• 50% of the people in the trial recovered by changing the story of their pain / depression
• 25% had a recovery that could be associated with the pills
• Pills effectiveness is 1/3 that off getting more sleep
• 65% - 80% of medicated people continue to be depressed

Medically, you can be diagnosed with clinical depression the day after a life-altering event. From a doctor's treatment perspective, "by the book," there is no room for grieving.

Depression can be tied to 4 things we need fulfilled in our life to feel "good."

• Feel we belong
  • Loneliness causes most of depression.
  • Evolving as a tribal culture, if we were alone, we would very often die quickly. Our bodies respond to loneliness negatively in order to keep us alive.
     
• Feel we are valued
  • Often this is tied to productivity in work.
  • Can also be connected to relationships
     
• Know we are good at something
  • e tend to downplay what we're good at and emphasize what we want to be doing.
     
• Have a sense of security
  • We tend to tie our security to money

Beating Depression

Ask yourself 4 questions and take the time to write out the answers. This will force you to create an actual focused response.

1. How + where do you belong? - ignore the voice that says "I don't" and stop to figure out how or where you do.
2. What do you do to add value and to who? - Family / Friends / Volunteer
3. What are you good at? ... and how/when can you do it for someone soon?
4. What is the very worse case scenario for you? - The key to this question is to follow it up with writing down the actual chances this worse case would happen?
   BONUS: Eat well, get enough sleep, move your body everyday

Holistic Treatments for Depression

• Acupuncture: Releases feel-good chemicals into the body.
• Craniosacral Therapy: Resets your central nervous system to turn off the "I might die" response in the brain/body
• Yoga: Moves the majority of the body to rid you of old stale energy/patterns and add new healthy energy

¹Much of the figures and some ideas of this talk came from the book: Lost Connections

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