MENTAL PROBLEMS

Swami Sambuddhananda: What is the cause of depression?

Swami Vivekananda: I think low activation of the swadhisthana circuit is the prime cause of depression.

Swami Shankardevananda: I thought it was due to low activation in mooladhara.

Swami Vivekananda: Well, the qualities in both these chakras are very close.

Swami Shankardevananda: So what is the difference between mooladhara and swadhisthana?

Swami Vivekananda: You can see the different qualities in the various types of anxiety you see in different people. In psychiatry, the various forms of anxiety all come under the name of anxiety, yet they are all different syndromes, and they are also related to different chakra circuits. People with a low energized mooladhara chakra are not just apprehensive about the future, they also feel insecure about the present. They simply don’t feel that this is a secure world, and the state of consciousness they have at any time is that things are sort of dangerous.

There is another type of depression which I perceived in a little woman who was a Piscean, forty-five years of age. Her husband had left her when she was about thirty five, and she led a very quiet life, as Pisceans tend to do. But she was still pretty energized in swadhisthana chakra, as Pisceans tend to be. She was describing this anxiety that she had. Through empathy I started to experience what she was describing. It was a sort of quivering vibration going on in the pelvis. It was a quivering all around the area of swadhisthana chakra, not specifically genital, but all around the upper part of the pelvis. It really was a type of anxiety.

I gave her the general swadhisthana practices like shalabhasana, etc. She improved a lot. I don’t really know what the yogic practices did, but they seemed to deactivate her pentup emotion. I think it was just sexual tension that she had in that area and she was perceiving it as anxiety. She also had a fear of it because she did not know what it was. There is another case of depression which is a well known one - butterflies in the stomach, accompanied by palpitations, which is just activation of the sympathetic nervous system. One case I saw was a taxi driver who had a minor accident in his cab. He got this phobia and he couldn’t get in his taxi without experiencing butterflies. In Aruba (South America), where he lived, taxi fares are minimal so that the taxi drivers are really hard up. This man had to employ someone else to drive his cab for him and he was losing money. He had been off work for six weeks. Every time he went up to his cab he would get this terrible churning in the stomach and he developed hypertension. He was a very dynamic Aries.

So I thought, ‘“What to do?” I taught him kunjal in order to get all that energy out of manipura chakra. He did it once in the ashram and then immediately went out and got in his cab. This type of anxiety and depression is obviously a manipura overactivity. There is another type of anxiety which arises through too much thinking; ‘Wouldn’t it be terrible if such and such happened, and if that happens maybe something else will happen, and if that happens maybe…’ People with this problem just think and think and think, until that preoccupation produces a fear within them which is not necessarily contained in the symptoms. That is dealt with by practising bhramari pranayama. So within this diagnosis of anxiety there seems to be these four types. There may be others related to the other chakras, but I have not yet noticed them. Swami Nischalananda: Maybe stuttering, loss of voice and things like that, related to vishuddhi, can be cured by simhasana.

Swami Vivekananda: Exactly, tightening up of the throat. It seems to be more related to a lack of self-confidence rather than the feeling of anxiety. Simhasana works wonders. When I was in general practice, I used to do a lot of spinal adjustments and manipulation, and after a while I specialized in spinal problems. I did a lot of backs at that stage. I found that patients came in clusters. I would get a lot of people with an upper cervical lesion, migraine headaches, tightness in the neck region, with all the symptoms of chronic sinusitis and all the other things related to upper cervical tension. I found that all the people with upper cervical problems were corning in when the moon was full, all the people with lumbar/sacral problems were coming in when the moon was new, and in between all the others were spread out. This is interesting, because it is related to chakra activation. Almost before the patient told me, I could pinpoint the exact spinal segment in which he would be having problems. I knew according to the moon phase. This relationship became obvious to me, especially towards the end of the time I was manipulating, because I used to take on the symptoms of my patients.

Swami Shankardevananda: This means that we need a whole set of asanas working on all the segments of the spine.

Swami Vivekananda: Yes, we have them, for example, surya namaskara. In Australia we used to use the leg lock posture for mooladhara chakra, shalabhasana and bhujangasana for swadhisthana chakra. Actually these asanas are supposed to be for manipura chakra, but so many people have such stiff backs that they activate swadhisthana chakra instead. Then paschimottanasana and dhanurasana for manipura; for anahata, supta vajrasana and matsyasana; for vishuddhi, sarvangasana; and for ajna, sirshasana and ashwa sanchalanasana. Halasana also activates because the inflection is brought right up to the upper cervical area. However, people who have a stiff upper cervical spine should not do any of those upper spine flexion practices, because the discs are very tiny at that part and these asanas can be too much.

Swami Nischalananda: Khandharasana is good for this area. It’s not so strong because a lot of the body weight is taken by the feet.

Swami Gaurishankar: Let us get back to the subject of depression.

Swami Vivekananda: I think there are different qualities in the thing that we call depression. The dread of the future is one of the symptoms of depression and I think it is a mooladhara chakra problem. But the dejection, lack of joy and loss of sense of humor that you find in many people is due to a low energized swadhisthana. With a low energized manipura comes loss of appetite and low emotional activity. In depression there is a vicious circle; the whole mechanism, the whole noradrenalin/dopamine mechanism seems to slow down. It involves hormones. Most of the anti-depressants act upon this noradrenalin/dopamine system.

Swami Shankardevananda: I would also imagine that depletion of testosterone, excessive sexual activity, depletion of adrenalin, excessive fear and anxiety, etc., all lead to a depressed state.

Swami Vivekananda: That is right. I have often suspected too, that when the moon is new for instance, then people tend to function to some extent on the energy of the lower chakras. The other ones are functioning too, but it is the lower chakras that are carrying a lot of the energy. And actually, the normal person experiences a depressed feeling lasting a couple of days during that phase. Then the moon starts activating the other chakras and the person comes out of it. Swami Nischalananda: This relationship is also indicated by the fact that some people go crazy at the time of full moon. It means that energy comes up to and accumulates at ajna chakra. The high energy affects the mind.

Swami Vivekananda: It is strange that the medical profession denies that the full moon has any effect on the mental state of people, and there are very comprehensive statistics from psychiatric hospitals to show that the admission rate is no higher at the time of the full moon than it is at the time of new moon. To this I say that there are different conditions for which people are being admitted at the time of the full moon and at the time of the new moon; this is most clearly seen.

Swami Shankardevananda: In hospitals, all the nursing staff know that when the full moon comes there are going to be problems. There will be more road accidents, more crazy people coming in and people going off their heads, etc.

Swami Muktibodhananda: What is the difference between fear, anxiety and phobia? Swami Vivekananda: Fear is a normal response to a threatening situation. If a tiger came into this room, nine people would be frightened and that would be a natural response. Anxiety, on the other hand, is really a collection of symptoms which go on for a long time, usually not provoked by an external situation. Phobias are immediate responses, just like fear, but the responses are to a non- threatening situation. A mouse a hundred yards down the corridor, for instance, would not affect any of us, but someone with a phobia about mice would panic. Swami Shankardevananda: Phobias are actually a displacement from an original object on to a different situation.

Swami Vivekananda: That is the ego-defence mechanism that Freud used to talk about. Freud used to talk about anxiety, psychic complexes and all that, but the man in the taxi who had butterflies in the stomach did have an accident which may have activated some old samskara somewhere, which turned into a full fear of getting into his taxi. But the whole thing was cleared so quickly; it was not deep-seated. Sometimes I believe these things just build up in a susceptible moment rather than in a susceptible person. They build up from a small bit of anxiety to a bigger anxiety on the basisof a vicious circle. You break that vicious circle anywhere and the whole thing just dissolves. Swami Shankardevananda: The longer it is sustained the more difficult it is to break. Swami Vivekananda: Each chakra has its own work to perform and if one center is blocked or diseased, then another center takes over its work. Because this work or function is being done by another center, it becomes perverted. This happens a lot if a person is inhibited in swadhisthana chakra. Manipura will take over the work and then the sexual activities will be just a power play, competition and that sort of stuff- completely perverted.

This perversion also occurs if manipura chakra takes over the job of anahata. It is seen in do-gooders, those people who come and force you, almost by threats of violence, to let them help you. Swami Shankardevananda: Another example is of those persons who get involved in a sexual encounter to fulfil the anahata center, and of course they don’t get that fulfillment. This can lead to problems in marriage and all the things you were saying about perversion of normal function.

Swami Vivekananda: So the purpose of yoga is to balance the functioning of the chakras and at the same time to awaken the associated energies. Then and only then can we function as joyful, spontaneous human beings, without depression, psychosis or physical problems. Only when we balance and awaken all the chakras can life become meaningful.