An overview on depression and how transcendental meditation can heal the condition

Depression can be explained as a condition that makes one feel sad all the time. Such people become extremely negative and often lose interest in life. Nobody can be happy and chirpy all the time, everyone experiences sadness. However, these intermittent episodes of sadness cannot be termed as depression. 

When sadness manifests in feelings like worthlessness, hopelessness, or helplessness and lasts for days together, it is termed as depression.

Identifying depression

Although the symptoms of depression may vary from person to person, the below-mentioned ones are most commonly reported in people with severe clinical depression.

• Prolonged feeling of sadness, especially in the morning after waking up
• Feeling of fatigue and lethargy all along the day
• Feeling of worthlessness or guilt about everything
• Having a tough time focusing on anything, remembering things and even making decisions
• Losing or even in many cases, gaining a lot of weight
• Feeling of restlessness
• Recurring thoughts about committing suicide
• Overeating or complete lack of appetite
• Digestive problems, body pain and aches
• Excessive anxiety

Types of depression

Depression can be classified into the following types:

• Unipolar depression
• Persistent depressive disorder
• Depression due to pre-menstrual syndrome
• Substance-induced depression
• Depression triggered by certain debilitating medical conditions

Effects of depression on physical health

The workings of the mind have a huge impact on the overall health of the body. People with issues such as depression often engage in self-destructive activities like over-eating, oversleeping, drug abuse etc. These practices in turn lead to debilitating physical conditions like cardiac disorders, digestive disorders, joint pains, and the commonest of all, hypertension and fluctuating blood sugar levels.

Depression leaves an indelible mark on the patient's physiology, as a result of which even if he/she starts working to get out of it and learns and practices meditation techniques for depression, many of these health issues keep lingering around.

Meditation as a way to battle depression

Meditation has always been strongly advocated for people suffering from severe depression. And of the various forms of meditation known today, transcendental meditation is one that has the best success rate in treating depression and its effectiveness is backed by scientific studies.

TM is an effortless and natural way of meditating that helps restore harmony in the mind and body. This meditation technique for depression helps people awaken their deeper and subtler states of consciousness which leads to blissful happiness. Therefore, TM is being adopted worldwide to treat mental health issues like depression.