A couple of years ago I hauled a bunch of trash to the dump, then returned with a load of compost.
In the process, I dislocated my lumbar vertebrae.
As my body tried to compensate for the injury, I developed painful spasms in the hip muscles.
For most people, the solution would have been to pop painkillers, but I knew better.
Painkillers would have done nothing to correct the real problem, and by masking the pain would have allowed me to overexert myself and further injure the damaged area.
So, instead of taking painkillers, I got a massage, made a couple of visits to the chiropractor, put some antispasmodics over the affected areas, and doctored myself with some heavy doses of the muscle relaxants lobelia and kava kava.
In a short time I was fine--permanently! Pain may be annoying, but it serves a useful purpose.
It keeps us from further stressing damaged tissues by making us avoid using them until they have a chance to heal.
Depression can do a similar thing for us emotionally.
One of the pitfalls of the whole positive mental attitude dogma, that is so prevalent in modern society, is the tendency it has to make people feel like they should be "up" all the time.
There's an attitude that if you're depressed, something is "wrong" with you.
According to this kind of thinking, if you had a positive attitude, you'd never feel unhappy, sad, angry or depressed.
However, the truth is, we're all going to feel these emotions from time to time.
There is nothing wrong with feeling depressed once in a while.
It's normal and natural under certain circumstances.
For example, it's normal to feel depressed when you lose someone close to you through death, divorce or separation.
It's also normal to feel depressed when you're under a lot of financial pressures, such as a heavy debt load or bankruptcy.
In short, depression is often a natural response to life's difficulties, just like pain is a natural response to injury.
Both serve a useful purpose.
Pain gets us to "lay off" an injured body part to give it time to heal.
Depression causes us to "pull away" from the normal pressures of life and take time to introspect.
It can actually be a form of healing, because it can get us to stop the rat race of our lives long enough to look inside and see what is happening in our emotions, and ask ourselves, why? One possible cause of depression is an overburdened liver.
The liver takes the burden of filtering the blood from the intestines and removing any toxins that might damage the system.
When the liver is functioning poorly, it can't do this and the excessive wastes circulating in our body give us an overall sense of heaviness and pain.
This can create feelings of malaise, apathy, lethargy and even depression.
I've personally experienced the feelings of heaviness, lethargy and depression that accompany a congested and overburdened liver.
For example, several years ago I broke my leg.
After my leg started to heal, there were several occasions when I felt extremely depressed, even though I was on the mend.
I finally realized it had nothing to do with my attitude.
I was experiencing a detox reaction to the painkillers and drugs I'd been given in the hospital.
When I did some liver detoxing therapy, the depression and heaviness immediately lifted.
In a similar manner, I've experienced an instant clearing of the mind and lightening feeling when I've done a colon cleanse or have had a colonic.
One simply feels "lighter.
" I believe that a major reason many people are chronically depressed is because their system is burdened down with chemicals.
If you've seen the documentary, Super-Size Me, about the guy who ate three meals a day at McDonalds for a month as an experiment, you may recall that one of the problems he started to experience was lethargy and depression.
The appearance of these symptoms coincided with abnormal changes in liver function.
(If you haven't seen the movie, rent it and watch it.
) It's interesting that both Western and Eastern systems of traditional medicine associate the liver with the emotion of anger.
Depression and anger are closely connected.
Anger is the emotion we experience when we feel threatened and want to fight back to defend ourselves.
On the other hand, depression is what we feel when the situation is hopeless and we don't feel there is any way we can win.
In other words, these emotions are the flip sides of the same coin--an excess and a deficiency of the same energy.
It's interesting that the organ located under our right rib cage is called the liver.
In other words it is the live-er, the center of the drive to live life to its fullest.
In many traditional systems of medicine, the liver, not the heart, is seen as the emotional center of the body.
When our life is threatened, the first response of the liver inside us is to fight back, to defend us.
That desire generates feelings of irritability and anger.
Conversely, when the liver gets battle weary, it wants to give up the fight.
It feels overwhelmed and defeated.
That situation gives rise to feelings of discouragement and depression.
In fact, the ultimate loss of liver energy is to become so depressed that one is suicidal.
Feeling suicidal is feeling the loss of the desire to live, but it is also a form of anger--anger turned inward against the self, instead of outward against an external enemy.
This is why I believe that depression is suppressed or underactive liver energy.
It is anger turned inward.
Most of the people I've seen who suffer from chronic problems with depression were abused as children.
They were severely hurt when they were unable to fight back, and the very people who should have helped protect and defend them were the source of their pain.
Since getting angry with an abusive parent only generates more abuse, the anger energy may turn inward and become depression or it may explode in later years by the injured child becoming an adult abuser of others.
However, it doesn't matter whether the factor that is trying to defeat us is an external experience or problem, or internal toxins; the core element is that the body wants to defend itself.
If we help the body defend itself in a healthy way, the cause is removed and the problem will be resolved.
So, if you feel depressed ask yourself this question, "What is defeating me?" It may be toxins in your food or environment, or a current or past person or situation.
In either case, healing from depression means getting in touch with your right and ability to defend and protect your body and your life.