Local author uses yoga to beat the blues

By Sheila Wilensky, Special to the AJP

“Nothing stays stuck when you practice Yoga,” says Amy Weintraub, a nationally acclaimed yoga teacher living in Tucson, and author of the recently published Yoga for Depression: A Compassionate Guide to Relieve Suffering through Yoga (New York: Broadway Books).

In the 1980s, a psychiatrist who was treating her for depression told Weintraub, “You are one of those people who will always have empty pockets.” In her book, Weintraub recounts her transformation from someone with “empty pockets” to someone with a full heart “who is so grateful to be alive.”

Her depression, Weintraub recalls, made her wake up feeling like “there was a layer of cotton between my brain and my cranium.” An award-winning television producer then living on the East coast, she often missed meetings, mislaid her belongings and had trouble concentrating even on everyday tasks. In 1989, after looking through a friend’s catalogue, she attended her first yoga class at the Kripalu Center in Lenox, Mass. She experienced an immediate feel-good response. Within nine months of practicing yoga daily, she was able to gradually reduce her antidepressant medication -- and then take none.

Yoga for Depression is filled with stories of others whose depression was lifted through yoga, from a widower overwhelmed by grief, to a mother and daughter who both suffered from bipolar disorder and panic attacks.

The book offers medical research on the benefits of yoga: “Simple Yoga stretching along with deep Yogic breathing alleviates depression by increasing brain chemicals that contribute to a feel-good response -- endorphins, enkephalins, and serotonin -- but also through greater access to feelings,” Weintraub notes. “Could it be that the stressors inherent in our modern culture are the source of an international serotonin deficiency, causing depression in epidemic proportions? That the species mind of our postmodern world is depressed?”

Yoga for Depression explains how breathing techniques affect the frontal cortex, creating “a calmer, more relaxed state,” and each chapter includes a clear description, with photos, of a few yoga postures that readers can start practicing at home. But Yoga for Depression is more than a how-to book on the benefits of yoga: It is a readable discussion about the cultivation of love and self-acceptance -- key components of Kripalu Yoga.

Reflecting on the connection between yoga and spiritual fulfillment in a recent interview at her home, Weintraub explains: “Yoga is not a religion but removes the obstructions to a connection with God, the universe, or whatever we call it; it removes karmic knots that cause tension, that make us shut down.” What happens to bring about this tension? “The ancient Yogis believed that we are born whole. As we live our lives we start to separate from our own wholeness. We carry this separation as depression -- which inhibits us from becoming our authentic selves,” Weintraub says.

As a teen, Weintraub saw herself as a poet. “It was a watershed time: I suffered a lot with confusion about my identity, emerging sexuality, and I had really low self-esteem. If I had had yoga, and a teacher with compassion, I would have felt much different about myself.” Wanting to help teens, who “are bombarded with so many negative messages,” she has volunteered at the Juvenile Detention Center at the Cape School in Tucson and organized other yoga instructors to teach there as well.

“Yoga is compatible with Jewish beliefs,” says Weintraub, who was active in Reform Judaism as a teen and attended a Jewish Renewal Retreat eight years ago to explore “the connection to spirit in a Jewish context.”

“I know many religious Jews in Tucson who practice yoga,” she continues. “My Orthodox daughter, Marlana, practices yoga too and feels closer to Hashem. She radiates with spirit -- we’re both connected to Judaism and yoga on a spirit level. There are Jewish meditation practices that use Hebrew prayers, like the Shema, combining them with yoga techniques. In Judaism, there is a vision of the world as a shattered vessel that seeks unity. Yoga means union -- all the practices we do, be they physical or meditative, seek to bring union to body, mind, and spirit,” Weintraub says.

Weintraub has learned from Kripalu Yoga that when feelings emerge without judgment, the body, mind, and spirit can relax. Today she believes that her “empty pockets” were not a curse, but a blessing that ultimately saved her life.
Amy Weintraub, MFA, RYT, teaches yoga at the Tucson Racquet Club, and has taught at Canyon Ranch, Miraval, and the University of Arizona. In 1992, she became a Kripalu Yoga teacher, and is now a Kripalu Teacher Mentor. She leads workshops on yoga and depression and regularly writes on the subject for national magazines, including Yoga Journal, Poets and Writers, Psychology Today, and Yoga International. She will offer a Yoga for Depression workshop to benefit the Arizona Yoga Society, on Sunday, March 28, from 2-4 p.m., at St. Philips in the Hills (to register call Kristi at 318-1981). For more information on upcoming appearances, go to http://www.yogafordepression.com/.

Sheila Wilensky is a high school teacher, freelance writer, and Kripalu DansKinetics instructor living in Tucson.
Article Reproduced with permission from Arizona Jewish Post