Yoga and Depression

Yoga & Depression Everyone feels down sometimes, but when depression continues for a long time, it can lower your energy for living and make it easier for you to get sick because, it weakens your immune system. Clinical depression is a persistently sad, hopeless, and sometimes agitated state that profoundly lowers the quality of life and if untreated it can result in suicide. Since the 1970s yoga was studied for being the treatment for depression. Yoga has become more popular in the medical field. Hatha Yoga is the most practiced yoga in the United States. Hatha Yoga is the combination of physical movements with deep breathing techniques and meditation. Yoga can help with depression because it produces a soothing and healing balance. The stretching and strengthening movements flush toxins from the body as well. Depression sneaks in slowly from too much sitting at a desk, stress, age, or illness. Like a fresh breeze, yoga helps blow through the system bringing new light and strength to the unused parts of the body. Yoga means to union of the mind, body, and soul. Yoga benefits to body, mind and spirit. It improves balance, breathing, energy, and your personality altogether. Yoga keeps the stress away. Regular practice of Yoga will protect you from depression and help you stay bright-minded and relaxed.
In a German study published in 2005, 24 women who described themselves as "emotionally distressed" took two 90-minute yoga classes a week for three months. They were considered the experimental group. Women in a control group maintained their normal activities and were asked not to begin an exercise or stress-reduction program during the study period. They were all one standard deviation above the population norm in scores for perceived stress measured by the Cohen Perceived Stress Scale, anxiety measured using the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and depression scored with the Profile of Mood States and the Center for Epidemiological Studies