Yoga For Depression And Anxiety
Amy Weintraub, MFA, E-RYT 500, director of the LifeForce Yoga Healing Institute and author of the bestselling Yoga for Depression and Yoga Skills for Therapists: Effective Practices for Mood Management , has been a pioneer in the field of yoga and mental health for over 20 years. She trains health and yoga professionals at notable international venues and offers workshops for every day practitioners. The LifeForce Yoga protocol is being used in residential treatment centers, hospitals and by health care providers around the world. She is involved in ongoing research on the effects of yoga on mood, and has produced an award-winning library of evidence-based yoga and meditation CDs and DVDs for mood management. She edits a newsletter that includes current research, news and media reviews on yoga and mental health, archived on amyweintraub.com
Amys recovery from depression began more than thirty years ago on her meditation cushion, but it wasnt until she began a daily Hatha Yoga practice in 1988 after her first visit to Kripalu Center that her mood stabilized. In addition to her Hatha Yoga studies in the US and India, Amy has been trained in Advaita Vedanta Nondualism, iRest Yoga Nidra, psychology and Internal Family Systems Therapy. Richard Miller is her mentor.
Yoga And Writing Fiction Saved My Lifecan Yoga & Self
What happens when a successful television producer, suffering from depression, finds Yoga? She finds herself.
There is now unrefuted scientific evidence that Yoga can help you manage anxiety and depression. Find my new Card Deck, Yoga for Your Mood: 52 Ways to Shift Depression and Anxiety here!
In my new deck and on this site, you will find simple practices, and you dont even need a yoga mat! You can also find new and inspiring fiction that may open your heart and mind in new and unexpected ways.
Heres a window into my own healing story
In my twenties, I endured numbing depression. When I began a committed yoga practice, I experienced a profound shift and my writing began to align with my lifes purpose I wrote articlesand booksabout yoga and mental health including Yoga for Depression , Yoga Skills for Therapists . I founded the LifeForce Yoga Healing Institute®, which today serves students, clients and trains yoga and mental health professionals around the globe. I am passionate about the healing power of yoga, and the power of artmusic, dance, visual art, poetry and most especially the writing of fiction. Read my award-winning short stories and poetry here, and keep reading I am happy to share my first novel, TEMPLE DANCER!
Temple Dancer is gorgeous and ambitious. ~Foreword Reviews
Comprehensive And Totally Inspiring
In the compassionate voice of someone who definitely knows the territory of depression, Amy Weintraub presents Yoga science and personal stories, research results and poetry, and practice instructions that are genuinely interesting in this very readable book that is both comprehensive and totally inspiring.
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Yoga For Your Mood Deck: 52 Ways To Shift Depression And Anxiety
Dear Ones,
Mood happens. We all know this, because though many of us have been vaccinated, none of us have been immunized against our shifting moods over these last 15 months. Even if were not clinically depressed or anxious, weve known depression, lethargy and panic. Although theres no replacement for therapy, be it psychotherapy or yoga therapy, there are some really quick, effective ways to shift your mood in the moment.
Thats what my new YOGA FOR YOUR MOOD DECK from Sounds True is all about. Its a quick entry to therapeutic practices and self-regulation skills for every body.
The Yoga for Your Mood Deck has already been recognized as an important contribution in this review, and Im grateful to illustrator, for her beautiful images. Have you pre-ordered your copy yet?
I offer 52 ways to Shift Depression & Anxiety for go-to relief when you experience a wave or a flash of
- fatigue
Integrating The Mind And The Body
This is a book about integrating the mind and the body, about using movement to mend oneself in a world obsessed with psychopharmacology, reading it was a refreshing reminder that, in some cases, the tools we have to cure depression reside not in a pill, but in our own bodies, if we are willing to try.
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$35 For Retreat Workbook Recording And Oils Register Here
Rose Kress, ERYT500, C-IAYT, Author, Owner/Director of LifeForce Yoga is a lifelong student, of yoga, philosophy, and life. She began her formal yoga practice at 16 and deepened her commitment to yoga with Amy Weintraub in 2002 and was present for the beginning of LifeForce Yoga. Rose has overcome significant mental health hurdles as a direct result of her LifeForce Yoga practice. Her devotion to her practice knows no limits. Rose has studied intensively at the feet of only a few teachers, choosing consistency over the next big thing. Her teachers include Amy Weintraub, Maria Mendola, Rama Jyoti Vernon, Russill Paul, and Swami Brahmananda. In 2020, she published her first book, Awakening Your Inner Radiance with LifeForce Yoga. Rose teaches classes & workshops online and in person, as well as leading the LifeForce Yoga Practitioner Training.
- Your Home
Lifeforce Yoga Healing Institute
Amy Weintraub, MFA, E-RYT 500, is the founding director of the LifeForce Yoga Healing Institute and has been a pioneer in the field of yoga and mental health for over 20 years. She is the author of Yoga for Depression and Yoga Skills for Therapists: Effective Practices for Mood Management . She offers professional trainings and workshops for mental health and yoga professionals and speaks at medical and psychological conferences internationally. She is involved in on-going research on the effects of Yoga on mood. Amys evidence-based LifeForce Yoga protocol is in use in health care settings worldwide and is featured on the award-winning CD and the DVD series LifeForce Yoga to Beat the Blues. She edits a newsletter that includes current research, news and media reviews on Yoga and mental health, archived on www.yogafordepression.com.
Amys recovery from depression began more than twenty years ago on her yoga mat. Joy continues to unfold through the compassionate self-awareness that is the foundation of her Yoga practice and her teaching style.
LifeForce Yoga is a practice of compassion that creates a big enough container to embrace and accept all the dualities of mood. The practice is adapted to the student, so each individual can move into a balanced emotional, mental, and physical state of equanimity and self-awareness.
LifeForce Yoga offers mood management support to: “LifeForce Yoga offers mood management support to:
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Amy Weintraub On Best Yoga Techniques For Depression
The ancient yogis believed that we hold lifes traumas and losses in both our psychic body and our physical body. If this is indeed the case, the body is an important gateway for relieving mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders.
Amy Weintraub, founder of LifeForce Yoga and author of Yoga for Depression has long been a leading advocate for using yoga to help combat depression, whether as an alternative to depression treatments in cases of mild depression or an adjunct to allopathic treatments. In this interview, she discusses some of the yoga techniques she has found to be particularly helpful when using yoga to combat depression. This is the second half of an interview with Amy Weintraub, which appeared on the Huffington Post. The first part of the interview can be found here.
Question: In LifeForce Yoga, you particularly emphasize yoga techniques like Pranayama breathing techniques, chanting, and Kriyas . Breath and Kriyas are often used to move energy blocks in the body. Do you think that stagnant or blocked energy is a factor in depression?
Amy Weintraub: Most likely. If youve noticed people who are depressed or if youve been depressed in the past, the posture is usually slumped and the belly is kind of dormant. Theres not much happening in the 2nd chakra and the 3rd chakra and the core of the body.
Study with Amy Weintraub Online: Recorded Webinar:
Change Your Body, Change Your Mind – Yoga for Depression
This Book Belongs In The Hands Of Every Person
Amy Weintraubs Yoga for Depression offers us a powerful and comprehensive guidebook that provides the reader with a precise path for healing from depression. This book belongs in the hands of every person who experiences depression and in the library of every therapist who works with people suffering from depression.
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Transitions: The Art Of Staying Centered
Transitions abound. Peace of mind is abiding in our center during these transitions. Stress is the state of disconnection from ourselves. The antidote to stress is reconnection with our true nature. But how? Yoga offers the pathway through our heartaches to our true selves. During our practices, we reconnect again and again, only to be disrupted as we transition to the next posture. This makes yoga the perfect time to practice peace of mind and oneness of focus during these transition points. Nothing we do in yoga exists in isolation it is all preparation for life.
In this retreat, well practice:
- Centering to reconnect
- Mudra to anchor the spirit
- Posture to align with our intentions
- Breathing to arise to the occasion
- Restorative integration
- All while engaged in a practice that emphasizes steadiness during transitions
Youll receive:
- A recording of the retreat
- A digital handbook with journal prompts and artwork for use during the retreat
- Optional essential oils for use during and after the retreat the oils are Anchor, Align, and Arise
Research Yoga Reduces Irregular Heartbeat By Amy Weintraub
Amy Weintraub
Researchers from the University ofKansas Hospital have found that three yoga classes a week can help reduce episodes of irregular heartbeat by almost half and improve the symptoms of anxiety and depression often associated with atrial fibrillation.
The 49 patients with atrial fibrillation, ages 25 -70, were new to the practice of yoga. For three months,they were encouraged to continue any type of physical activity they were previously accustomed to doing. The next three months, the patients participated in a supervised yoga program consisting of pranayama breathing exercises, yoga postures, meditation and relaxation. Participants were also given an educational yoga DVD and encouraged to practiceat home every day.
This article is provided courtesy of Amy Weintraub, highly respected Yoga therapist, member of IAYT and author, Yoga for Depression.
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Yoga As A Simple And Healthy Solution To Depression
Yoga, Weintraub found, offered a simple and healthy solution to depression. Once she began practicing yoga as therapy for depression, Weintraub was able to slowly go off medication. For more than 15 years now, she has stayed free of depression and off antidepressants.
Weintraub chronicles her struggles in her book, Yoga for Depression: A Compassionate Guide to Relieve Suffering Through Yoga. She highlights how yoga combats depression by treating the whole problem, and not simply the symptoms of depression. daily practice of yoga will bring your physical body and your emotional body into balance, restoring a sense of well-being and energy. In making her case, Weintraub shares her own story, those of her students, and even presents scientific evidence.
Yoga for Depression doesnt condemn psychiatric medication. Instead, Weintraub advocates for a more holistic approach. As one reader says, As an integrative, spiritually oriented psychiatrist who is committed to building bridges between traditional psychiatric medicine and spiritual practices which can augment healing, I applaud Amy Weintraub’s contribution to the field.
While not a substitute for medical advice, Yoga for Depression has the potential to help many people fighting depression. Amy Weintraub writes with clarity, compassion, and wisdom. Her book is not for the few but for the many the author speaks to each and every person fighting with depression.
A Beautifully Written Encyclopedia
This is truly a beautifully written encyclopedia of yoga for depression. It is rare to find such a generous soul, willing to embrace all approaches to yoga, unbiased and yet having intelligent discernment and advice for those searching for help. In Yoga for Depression, Amy offers many guidelines and solutions through yoga, to both those who suffer from depression and to yoga teachers working with them.
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Yoga Interventions To Shift Depression
Yoga Interventions to Shift Depression
Along with the pandemic, mood disorders have reached epidemic proportions. Depression is four times more prevalent than it was before the pandemic when 40 million Americans reported suffering from anxiety and depression. This is affecting young adults at even higher levels and deaths from drug overdose and suicide in that population are skyrocketing.
There are simple practices from the yoga tradition that can be effective in bringing us into balance and many dont require a yoga mat or previous yoga experience. When I founded LifeForce Yoga in 2004, it was to make these practices accessible for those without a yoga background who might not find their way to a yoga studio or who might not have access to sufficient mental health services. You dont have to adhere to any belief system or look a certain way to try them. The practices can complement psychotherapy and other forms of natural healing. They can be brief interventions to self-regulate and self-soothe or they can be integrated into an established or emerging practice.
Sounds True asked me to gather some of these practices in the new card deck, Yoga for Your Mood: 52 Ways to Shift Depression and Anxiety, which has just been released. The cards are grouped and color coded into energizing practices, calming practices and balancing practices, and they can be used in three ways.
Three: Choose a series of cards to create your own daily practice.
Heres an example: