Managing Depression With Mindfulness

Last session you began the process of accepting your experience of depression as a way of stepping back from it. We can use acceptance to put yourself in a stronger position to begin working with depression using mindfulness. From tomorrow we'll begin the next part of our journey where we'll go into more depth into your experience of depression. Before we do this, it's helpful to have a safe place you can go when you come across strong emotions, thoughts or body sensations in meditation so today we're going to prepare for the rest of the course.

Last session we established a safe place we can go to when the going gets tough during meditation. Now you’re prepared and ready to venture a little deeper so today we’re going to get to know depression a little more through body awareness. Having more finely tuned body awareness means you’re less likely to react when challenging situations arise and more likely to respond, and therefore less likely to go down the usual paths that can lead to depression. You’ll also learn how playfulness, self kindness and imagery can change how you relate to your personal experience of depression.

Last session we began to go deeper into your awareness of your body in order to build the mindful skills you need to recognise depression early, so you can step back and begin to work with it. Today we're going to build on this further by seeking out positive and neutral experiences within your body. This is a way to begin treading new neural pathways which can help to break the depression cycle.

Yesterday we continued exploring changing our relationship with our present moment experience by purposefully looking at the positive. Today we're going to continue building our mindful muscles of awareness by discovering how thoughts can shape our present moment experience. We'll also learn how we can begin to recognise negative thinking that can contribute to depressive mind states.

Yesterday we began to investigate how our thoughts can shape our present moment experience and how we can recognise negative thinking. Today we're going to build on this by learning how we can step back from negative thinking in order to see our thoughts more clearly, recognise the old stories in our heads and not follow them.

Last session we learned how to recognise and step back from negative thinking. Today we're going to build and expand on this by exploring how emotions show up in our bodies and how our mind can add an extra layer of judgement on our present moment experience. The more we tune into our bodies and become aware of thoughts the more likely we are to respond mindfully rather than react to how we're feeling and what we're thinking.

Yesterday we looked at the whole picture of our present moment experience and what we can add to challenging thoughts, emotions and body sensations. Today we're going to go a little further by exploring the possibility of befriending and surrendering to our experience of it. This is a very powerful way to change our relationship with and manage depression in a robust and meaningful way.

Yesterday we befriended and surrendered to depression as a way to take the charge out of it and change our relationship to it. Today we'll look back on the course and I will outline what we've covered. We'll also explore how to establish a daily mindfulness practice for depression and you'll learn how to cultivate a positive relationship towards yourself using mindfulness and kindness.