Managing Depression With Mindfulness

This 5-day course will be beneficial if you have in the past or are currently struggling with symptoms of depression or feelings of melancholy. Participants will learn to become more aware of bodily sensations, feelings, and thoughts from moment to moment, exploring different ways of relating to them. Bringing curiosity to the thinking patterns and styles and learning ways to become less attached to them. This helps increase the ability to mindfully accept and acknowledge unwanted thoughts and feelings rather than continuing the habitual autopilot like responses that tend to keep the depressive cycle going. Finally, participants will be able to choose from a variety of wise skillful responses to the unpleasant thoughts, feelings and sensations.

Lección 1: Identifying Automatic Pilot and the Mindfulness Remedy

In this first session, we’ll explore the concept of autopilot, it’s role in low mood and how mindfulness can help us learn to step out of autopilot and be more present in our lives. Today’s session will include a mindful eating exercise.

Lección 2: Bringing Awareness to the Breath and Body

In our last session, I encouraged you to get curious about how autopilot thinking impacts depressive symptoms and we began to shift our attention and focus. In today’s session, we’ll explore ways in which bringing awareness to the body helps us to deepen our awareness of “busy mind” as focusing on the body brings up many thoughts and emotions. What happens in the body strongly affects what happens in the mind. People who have been experiencing depression, or melancholy typically try to think their way out of depression, which just leads to more ruminating.

Lección 3: Noticing Your Scattered Mind

In Day 2, we explored the concept of using the body as a point of focus to become more aware of how often our minds and emotional selves slip into autopilot and wander away. In today’s session, we’ll unpack the habits of the mind that occur when we are faced with situations, people or things we label as unpleasant. We’ll be engaging in a journaling exercise.

Lección 4: Allowing the Unpleasantness

In yesterday’s session, we explored the habits of the mind that occur when we are faced with situations, people or things we label as unpleasant. We talked about thinking patterns and distortions. In today’s session, we’ll disempower the aversion to the unpleasantness and engage in a meditation to help begin the process of allowing and letting be.

Lección 5: Behavioral Activation

In our last session, we disempowered the aversion to the unpleasantness and experimented with allowing. In our final session today, we’ll explore how using behavioral activation can help us engage in pleasant activities more frequently which can help with low mood and depression. We’ll also recap what you’ve learned and bring some compassion in for the journey.