12 Steps to Naturally Conquer Depression
The Essential Roadmap to Becoming Free from Depression Forever
After my father committed suicide in 1993, I fell into a deep dark depression for the first time in my life. I decided to take the natural healing path to recovery, practicing these 12 habits below which helped me to rekindle the Light inside myself. It was through this beautiful natural healing process that I discovered the inner path to spiritual freedom. I hope my insights can be of use for any emotional challenges you may have.
"Always remember deep in your heart that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should. There are no mistakes anywhere, at any time. What appears to be wrong is simply your own false imagination." ~ Robert Adams
Depression can range from having the ordinary glimpse of feeling blue, to the perpetual toilet bowl drowning experience for years, which we feel like we’ll never escape from. Whatever your experience is of falling into your emotional dumpster, it's important to know that depression has a deeper reason and purpose for occurring.
There are many highly inventive stories that we might tell ourselves about who we are and what life is all about. Some stories make us feel heavy, gloomy, and hopeless about life, while others deepen and soften us making our life journey spiritually deeper and richer. Each story has its purpose for enriching our lives and bringing out the fullness of our journey.
I believe the Universe is extremely intelligent and does not make mistakes. It’s given us valleys to give us something to climb, and a space to relax into a darker cave where we can retire from the world to rest, reboot, and discover a deeper experience of life that we didn’t know existed before. Life cannot only have peaks without valleys at its foundation. When we have had enough silence and emptiness in our lives, we have a mountain to climb and reach for the peak where we’ll gain a higher more expansive perspective on our lives.
On my healing journey, I discovered that the colder, darker emotional valleys are the perfect soft inner receptive environment needed to create the most spiritually rich connection with Divinity. The valley forces us into a natural retreat from our typically super busy psyche, where the world can seem like distant noise in the background. I found the womb-like space of depression is the necessary milieu for the ego to surrender its fight and be open to listening to higher guidance from within.
"The more you trust your intuition, the more empowered you become, the stronger you become, and the happier you become." ~ Gisele Bundchen
When we repetitively fall back into the same dark cold valley week after week, we stop having the energy to climb up the mountain top and miss out on the vast enlightening perspective we would receive from the highest peak. By repeating depressing stories in our minds without expanding into a greater spiritual perspective, we become emotionally entangled in playing the role of the main actor on the stage of this depressing film.
Depression can happen to anyone. Death and loss are guaranteed in life, and if you don’t know how to accept it as a part of life, it can destroy you. We may emotionally replay a devastating experience from our past, identifying with this loss or failure, and this can slowly cause us to be trapped in feeling helpless, hopeless, powerless, and an angry victim of life.
When the mind then gets hooked by this angry victim wheel, the emotional body becomes incapable of releasing the heavy stress that comes with it. Anger is often not an emotion that is allowed to be expressed with others, so we suppress and implode that energy and become depressed. We can then lose ourselves in that gloomy spin cycle for months or years down the road, completely forgetting about manifesting our dreams, and desires and basking in the glorious nurturing healing sunshine that our bodies love.
"I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness. All seems beautiful to me. Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me; Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me." ~ Walt Whitman
The mind is a genius at developing a rational plot and storyline for hanging onto depressing beliefs about life. It invents stories on top of stories to latch onto a particular version that it believes is true to try and make sense of the chaos. The mind loves to figure things out, it always wants to be right about its story. It wants validation, acceptance, and proof that your thoughts and feelings are the whole truth of life and not merely just some temporary entertainment.
The soul however always has a bigger plan that the mind cannot see. The soul (heart) abides in the background, behind the depressing scenes playing out in the mind, guiding the subconscious towards its real-life destiny of spiritually waking up from the dream. When your mind chooses to take a ride into the emotional slums it serves you by deepening your experience of life. You’re forced in some way to fall deeper into yourself, where eventually you hit rock bottom and surrender the ego to Divinity where you discover a deeper state of awareness abiding within your being.
The journey through depression is a purging designed to enlighten the deeper heavier and darker aspects hidden inside ourselves. This way when you eventually rise back up to the surface to breathe again you bring with you a profound sense of joy, lightness, and a renewed appreciation just for being alive!
Imagine if someone were to hold your head underwater for 30 more seconds than you could normally hold your breath. How would you feel? Most likely when you reach your panic limit and force yourself up to be released, you feel an extreme state of relief. Your eyes open wide and suddenly you feel so happy to be alive and breathing again! You instantly regain your passion and clarity about your life.
This suppressing drowning experience is what depression is attempting to do to you. To push you sooooo uncomfortably deep inside yourself that you reach that place of feeling like you’re about to give up and drown, and fight for one breath of life. The moment when you inhale that initial first breath of air, gives you an entirely new perspective and feeling about reality!
"You cannot be truthful if you are not courageous. You cannot be loving if you are not courageous. You cannot be trusting if you are not courageous. You cannot enter into reality if you are not courageous. Hence courage comes first... and everything else follows." ~ Osho
I believe for most human beings that there truly are no real health benefits to relying on a pharmaceutical drug to try to put a mask over your emotions and numb yourself to the darkness that’s going on at the core. Pills can help temporarily yet over time will make you emotionally numb and dumb. You can choose a highly conscious super liberating lifestyle from taking on these 12 actions below which in 3 short weeks will alleviate any attached hook that depression has on your life.
Follow these actions religiously and I will promise you that you will awaken from any nightmare you’re caught in. Fully devote yourself to doing these actions daily and you’ll soon become soooo high off of the pure oxygen in the air you’re breathing every day that you'll have no reason to be depressed about anything ever again! Yes! You’re going to feel naturally happy and courageous to be alive again, giggling with friends and learning how to let it all go….
The 12 Natural Steps to Conquering Depression Forever!
NOTE: The awakening process below is guaranteed to break you free from any downward spiral you may be stuck in. The secret is learning how to implement and integrate these habits into your daily life for 3 weeks. Some of these steps might be challenging for you, yet just do your best to follow the ones you can for the next 21 days to form the new ‘chemical cocktail’ in your brain. This length of time is key for a lasting change to take place.
I will personally guarantee after 3 weeks of practicing these 12 steps below, your normal resting state of mind will feel dramatically better!! Know that there is no specific order as to these steps below and they should be done. Just take on the attitude of a child and explore what each one is like. The secret to seeing real results is following any one or all of these 12 steps as frequently as possible and with the most amount of light-hearted playfulness. If you don't have the motivation to accomplish these by yourself then ask a friend to join you for fun and support.
1. Stop resisting your experience and surrender fully to whatever experience you are having.
The all-intelligent Universe doesn’t make mistakes. Everything is part of the great perfection, even depression. The life experience that we are given at this moment is always the right experience we need for our soul’s evolution and enlightenment.
Whenever you feel the most depressed, take that precious moment to stop everything and lay your body down directly on the earth to feel it. Completely dive into your most depressing experience as you connect with the vibration and energy of the planet beneath you. Surrender your body and ground yourself with the planet. The earth will heal you if you allow her to fill your body.
You are tired, utterly tired, and in need of deep rest which is why you’re depressed. You’re not resting deep enough. So let’s let your entire being surrender to this big beautiful planet that is supporting your life and relax deep into the core. Feel into your innermost being. Let yourself dissolve into the experience of surrendering until you reach this space inside of you where your body cannot move a muscle.
This level of surrender is super deep, so I am inviting you to do this as the deepest letting-go exercise you’ve ever done. When you lay your body on the earth, imagine you are dead. Yes, you are already a corpse ready to be dropped in the grave or be burned to ashes in the fire. Go through your imaginary funeral in your mind to truly let go of your body and attachment to your mind.
Surrender everything inside your life, who you are, and what your life was about back to the earth and let it go. Become one with the state of emptiness again. Your life is finally over and now it’s time to go to heaven and relax. This deep let-go will allow you to release all of the heavy feelings buried inside you, and be free from the resistance to feeling it, or any attempt to suppress, avoid, or continue to control that energy.
If you're unable to feel your control or resistance to your depression, then merge and melt with that resistance. Open yourself to explore every little body sensation that you are having. When you do this, don't stop until you feel completely peaceful and serene with every aspect of your life. Find 100% peace with your past. Peace with everyone and everything that has happened to you in the past. Here is the first great secret to freedom. It’s about choosing peace over fighting, avoiding, or resisting the depressing experience you're dealing with.
2. Change your diet to 75-100% only raw fruits and vegetables.
If you want a super high vibe, stay far far away from any food or drink that is in a box, bag, or can. Processed foods made by a machine will not bring out your highest consciousness and a raw veggie fruit diet will. Raw foods contain the highest and most potent energy (from the sun) and lays the foundation where your brain can access expanded levels of energy making it hard to fall into any form of perpetual sadness.
3. Stay far far away from alcohol or drugs of any kind.
Most people who are depressed are drinking and smoking frequently to numb some deep emotional pain, abandonment, death or relationship breakup buried deeper inside. The temporary elated high experience received from drugs or alcohol only later bottoms out, leading to the need to detox the brain and body. The day after one always has to fight their hangover, and battle their way out from the long chemical crash it induces in the brain. This makes it very difficult to think and feel happy thoughts for several days which addicts who cannot handle the low often "bite the hair of the dog" and re-introduce the drug/alcohol back into their system. This cycle will then numb out their low, and jump back on the chemical rollercoaster again. The best advice is to not start at all, and when you go out at night simply order water, lemonade, or a virgin bloody mary instead.
4. Stop eating solid food each week for 36-72 hours. One of the most powerful and effective ways to truly conquer the depths of long-term depression is committing to do a 2-3 day fast or cleanse. Depending on your severity of toxicity, it may take anywhere from 2 days to 2 months to reboot your system. You can do a water, fruit juice, and/or vegetable juice cleanse as a way to retrain your brain to let go of attachment to the thing it thinks it needs to survive...food! When you stop eating food, the mind then becomes void of all thoughts including the ones that make you feel sad and hopeless. You have a clearer consciousness that can see through the story and liberate you from the powerless place you were once in. A stomach that is truly empty of food will purify the mind, cleanse out the internal organs, and as the liquid moves through you liberate the mind from all grasping. For many detailed instructions on how to do a green juice cleanse click here.
5. Jump up and down and dance every morning.
An amazing technique that will truly trick your joy valve to start pumping dopamine into your brain is to physically jump up and down every morning yelling with excitement!! Yes, physically jump up and down for at least 15 seconds and yell the words "I'm excited! I'm excited! I'm excited! I'm excited!" This will instantly flood a happy creative cocktail of positive chemicals into your brain, and force you to think about what you are excited about in your life. In this life-changing experience you may need to fake it until you make it, pretend it until you transcend it, until you truly start feeling excited about this opportunity to be alive again.
6. Exercise your body for at least 20 minutes every morning.
Bringing more oxygen to the body and brain is essential for feeling high, horney, happy, and free. If you want to feel good about life, then do some exercise as soon as you get up. Go for it until you break a sweat, and continue until you feel a sense of exhaustion. This will flood the brain with positive happy chemicals that make it much more difficult to feel blue the rest of your day. Do my Kundalini Shaking Exercise every morning looking into the sunrise and your depression should fall away in a few weeks...
7. Get out of your box and socialize.
At least 3 days a week get out of your box and go meet with one person and/or a group of people. A group is considered to be 2 or more people that are including you in the conversation. Learn how to be social and don't talk about intellectual things that bring everyone further up into their head! When in your group, speak from the heart and share something real, emotional, heartfelt, or you are thankful for in life. Speak only in a positive perspective especially if you feel the need to share about something traumatic, negative, or depressing.
Let yourself let go of your stuck story and laugh a deep belly laugh each time you socialize. You can bring out a lighter side to your story that contains some level of appreciation and gratitude so as not to bring everyone's vibration down. This is your special social time to be honest with everyone about what you're facing inside, and yet look deeper beneath your story to share what is positive inside you, and discover what you are truly thankful for in your life.
8. Give and receive at least 3 hugs a day.
We are energetic beings with a biomagnetic need to be affectionate and give/receive touch with other people. Science has shown that we have longer, healthier, and happier lives the more physically loving contact we create each day. Stop being afraid of touching others or imposing your heart upon theirs! Open your arms to hug every single person who enters your home, even if it’s a total stranger! Allow yourself the gift of being touched and touching others with sincerity. Who knows it may be the last time you see them. Be real with people and meet them where they are. Other things you can do to create contact are to get a massage, ask a friend to hold your hand, or sit with your intimate partner touching each other gently in a very slow, quiet, and conscious way. By increasing the level of conscious physical contact you have every day, you'll shift your body's bio-magnetic field and alter the brain’s happy chemistry in the process.
9. Become more sensually and sexually active.
Whether it’s through self-pleasure or connecting with a partner, moving sexual energy always leaves one feeling more expansive, liberated, and alive. Initiate a sensual connection with yourself and/or your partner several times a week. If you are too depressed to open up to someone, remember many people on the planet are also depressed and looking for the same thing you are.
After a wild night of tantric lovemaking, it's very hard for the brain to be sad about life the next day. The most powerful manifesting vibration happens right before you reach orgasm. You can create anything you want from this ecstatic state. If you are picky and just cannot find the right partner to be with, then pleasure yourself as frequently as you can. Don't be shy, this is your life and opportunity to experience being free alive, and joyous!
10. Get a substantial and consistent amount of sleep every night.
Feeling deeply rested in the morning as well as consistency of when you wake up is the key. The most amazing feel-good chemical cocktails are released in your brain each morning when you’re well-rested. Studies say that no matter what time you go to bed if you wake up around sunrise, well-rested and ready for the day, it will increase the chemical amount of release of your feel-good brain cocktail.
If you are an advanced yogi and learning how to dive deeper into your meditation practice, then train your body to wake up around 4:30 am to stretch, do yoga, and strengthen the body to sit in perfect stillness and silence. This practice is best done at this time as the collective psychic space around you is very empty and it’s easier to hear yourself think.
During these super early morning hours, you will awaken that life-purpose drive that is naturally inside you. The time you meditate can make a huge difference in your yoga/meditation practice. Taking a 10-15 minute nap during your day also is super healthy for resetting your nervous system and battling any type of tumultuous mood disorder.
11. Initiate a deeper connection with the God Source.
Nobody can be depressed when they discover their connection with the Divine. Meditate and pray to the Universe for healing and guidance every morning, noon, and evening. Relax for a few minutes every day and meditate on where the source of love coming from.
Think about it. Where does your source of love come from? Relax into this exploration, and rest deeply into your body, ever so gently and deeply, until you become aware of that which is aware. Where is your source of love coming from inside your body right now? Your heart? So relax deeper into this exploration of what's inside your heart, ever so gently and deeply, until you become aware of the infinite source from which love continues to flow like an eternal fountain out of you.
I invite you to practice being aware of this source of love throughout your day. Breathe deeply and remain conscious of this divine all-powerful intelligent divine unconditional love that is always available now. Whenever you discover that this divine Love is at the core of each experience, you'll find yourself giggling instead of crying and truly understand the cosmic joke of it all when you remove the veil that was once pulled over your eyes.
12. Watch the Sunrise or Sunset for at least 10 minutes every day.
It's scientifically proven that your body needs sun to feel good about life. Sun is food for your eyes! Throw away those sunglasses and look directly into the sunset and sunrise (unless you're driving of course). The more pure sunshine you can allow into your eyes, the more of your inner Light you'll see shining inside you. The benefits of sungazing are amazing!
And if the sky is cloudy, take time to just be outside, dance in the rain or snow, and let the indirect sunlight come in from behind the clouds. Those endorphin-producing photons still find their way into your brain.
A FEW SUBTERRANEOUS THOUGHTS ABOUT DEPRESSION…
Looking at depression from various perspectives can be insightful into its cause. Perhaps it arises as a mysterious force that propels our soul to become stronger, more receptive to life, and more fiercely focused on what we desire. These types of intense life experiences often cause us to dive deeper inside until we discover the spiritual source of our innermost being. It seems the spiritual dimension was the only thing that was powerful enough to pull me through my darkness.
Depression is such a powerful magnetic pull that works like a toilet bowl, spinning us around and around with our shit until we give up give in and drown in it. It is not trying to kill you but pulling you to the deepest source inside. It forces you to surrender so deeply within yourself that we eventually break through the grip of the ego, and have to attain mastery over the mind if we wish to survive. This spiritual liberation from the ego is ultimately in my world the divine purpose of depression. It will truly set the ego aside if we are to have the courage to face and feel our depression.
Depression forces you to discover the realm of what you are passionate about and find out what makes your hearts sing! Yes, perhaps the best part of it all is that feeling you’ll get when depression leaves your life. It’s like a heavy dark cloud is lifting from the longest rainstorm, and we can allow ourselves to let go, celebrate life fully, and be crazy, wild, and free! How wonderful is that! The ironic thing is that if you’d just start finding reasons to celebrate life, dancing, singing, making love, and enjoying this moment, depression wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Your Inner Voice Is the Only Guide. Meditation is a deep listening, listening to the inner voice. As you become silent, voices cease. Everybody goes, only you are left, alone in your emptiness. Then your nature asserts itself – and that is a flowering.” ~ Osho
This life is all about discovering what makes us feel more alive, excited, and passionate about being here. Why are we here on this planet? Why aren't you fully here and present in this moment on the planet? Think about it...
Depression is an effect of a lack of full self-expression. The damp cold energy of restriction, control, heaviness, or numbing out your feelings simply needs to meet with a warmer, fiery, hot-blooded passionate energy to balance it out. You might say you'd get a steamy result if you let what makes you super passionate in life flame up and express itself through you. This means that you stop resisting your desire to express what you love about life again.
If you cannot let yourself get heated up or angry about something (that you feel very strongly about), you are dampening your flame with a cold towel. Stop doing that! When at that moment you feel excitement, passion, or anger let it rise (throw it out...not at a human) and most definitely you will forget that you were ever depressed. The deeper the depression is the higher and more intense the expression is needed to balance things out and create an equilibrium in the mind again...and this is where things get exciting!
“Gamble everything for love, if you’re a true human being.” ~ Rumi
Another amazing thing about depression is that it causes us to unconsciously unveil our life's mission and purpose. We have to find it to transcend depression. This means we're pushed out the front door to take inspired loving actions in the world, which then helps the rest of humanity to overcome their inner gloom and doom stories.
Once we get clear about what makes us passionate in life and we are taking massive inspired actions daily, then all forms of depression have to fade away. They have no choice. When our life is all about taking inspired action on what makes us deeply happy, fulfilled, and jazzed then we truly become alive and not depressed.
Even if you're not the least bit depressed in your life, today is your day to boost your life to the next joyful level! I invite you to discover what real fun is all about and take your fun factor to an entirely new level. The day you become 100% devoted to serving humanity most enjoyably, then all depression will cease to exist in your life. The Universe has given you the perfect ingredients to wake up the natural way and use your God-given power to heal yourself. You can do it!!
“The more honest and authentic we are, the more deeply we go into the mystery of our own being.” ~ Adyashanti
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Sending lots of love and lightness,
Jafree Ozwald