There have been times in my life when the depression or anxiety was so alive and active, I felt suffocated in my own skin, time and space. Moving, good nutrition and distraction did not alleviate or cure me. What helped me was closing my eyes and NOT running away from being still, breathing in and out with purpose, refreshing my cells and tissues with new oxygen. It was the getting back to basics in silence that snapped me out of it, repeatedly – not the many fangled therapies.

It was slow, arduous and not always improving steps. It was coming back to self, finding the divine and higher self, the person I wanted to be, the person that had what I wanted, needed and craved yet I had rejected – that ended up helping me.

To reconnect with aching body places and feel emotional discomfort gave me hope I would get to the other side of pain. I knew the worry, the anger and the stress was just a symptom of a core belief about myself I had to change. Meditation brought me that solution.

As I grew stronger, I acquired a love for the quiet and rest. No longer were my thoughts random and relentless. I was calmed and subdued by the regimen. It brought me relief from catastrophic and negative thinking. It taught me it was all right to be in the moment no matter how frightening or unbearable it seemed.

Mostly, it brought me back from the living dead. It opened the door to a spiritual self I had no intention of inviting. It liberated my soul. No one was more surprised than myself. Once I was awake, little irritations about myself became known to me. I was amazed to find myself responsible for every consequence of my own actions. I started to manifest a mature look at myself. I no longer could hide. Instead of discarding the new ideas about myself, I delved deeper into the many layers.

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur
 when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled.
 For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are 
likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”
 – M. Scott Peck