"When All Is Not Well: Depression, Sadness and Healing"-Om Swami (8/10) . [book]

[lmfao]

A book written by Om Swami purely on the topic of depression and curing it. I like how the book keeps it relatively simple but is still nuanced. The book spends a long time in the first half writing a bunch of anecdotes, and they serve well. He writes stories about how people got into depression in the first place, what things helped them get out of it. He brings a grounded yogic perspective to all of it. 

What he does well is showing a variety of stories, where all these people had different circumstances and causes, and they all had different things which helped them out of it. Some people's depression can be traced to upbringing or events which can obviously be concluded to be traumatic by an outsider, others seem to get it out of nowhere for little known obvious reason and end up confused. Whatever the case, one needs to be careful with the shame or guilt they feel of "I have so much, why am I still depressed, am I broken?". 

Regardless of how obvious or not obvious the cause of the depression looks, there's always some seed. Some experience, and the negative emotions you felt in your perception of it. Unhealed grief and suppressed emotions may hide for a while before unexpectedly giving you depression. The seed was always there, you just never noticed it until the depression.

With the nuances and different ways depression arises, there are some universalities and general principles. The yogic framework of there being three bodies to all of us acts as a good analogy for succinctly communicating the wholistic nature of the depression. In it there is the physical, subtle and causal body. It is useful to target and think of each individually, in addition to understanding that dysfunction in one can migrate into dysfunction in another.

So the point being made, latch and take hold of multiple approaches. Cover as many bases and address as many things as you can. Diet, meditation, exercise, yoga techniques (of which he gives a few in the book), shadow work and trauma healing, sleep. He gives a little bit of advice and a few techniques on all of these things which you can use, ofc you're better off with also looking into all of it elsewhere as well. 

He mentions antidepressants, also talks about conflation of temporary sadness with depression. Good book overall. I didn't find anything earth shattering, but the groundedness of it all can give one who's depressed perspective and hope about their issues. 

Edited February 7, 2020 by lmfao

[Average Investor]

Thanks for the review. Have your read any of their other books? I had one I recall adding to my eBay cart, but did not dive too deep into their work. 

[lmfao]

@Average Investor There's his "a million thoughts" books which is about how to meditate. I've read over half of it. Its cool, nothing amazingly new for me. He talks about the facets of what make a good meditation, and different techniques. He analyses the different things to it, and tells you how to do it efficiently and properly. He talks about posture, concentration, mindfulness, alertness and maybe other stuff as components to good meditation.