“The problem with depression is, you can’t see the end.”
Depression is like a ditch. Sometimes you head into and get stuck, but you manage to wiggle out. Other times you’re in a major rut and can’t get out at all. In those cases you need to call someone. It happened to me once. I was driving in the winter to a hiking spot and I thought that a flat-looking patch of snow was the side of the road and before you know it I’d driven into a ditch. I couldn’t get out. I tried gunning it, putting rocks under my tires, getting a friend to push. Eventually I just had to call someone. Within a few minutes, a tow truck came. The man driving it unceremoniously and unemotionally told me to put the car in neutral. He hooked a giant chain to my bumper. He yanked me out of the ditch. And then he drove off. Roadside assistance. In my last post I said something akin to “health is not emotional”. It’s sometimes just an equation. With patients I educate them on their prefrontal cortex, on brain inflammation, on Polyvagal Theory and the nervous system and how depression is a normal response of the nervous system to abnormal circumstances, and how to they can work with their body and environment to get the help they need to yank them out of the ditch. But I also talk about the people around us. We need them. We need them to be our prefrontal cortexes (because when you’re depressed or anxious yours isn’t working at full capacity–you CAN’T just yank yourself out a ditch, you need a tow truck, a chain and an unceremonious dude who knows what to do). You need a strategy. You need a hand. You need help.
Depression often feels like an insurmountable barrier, making it hard to see beyond the immediate struggles. It’s essential to recognize that this condition is not a personal failing but a natural response of the nervous system to overwhelming circumstances.
By understanding the interplay between brain inflammation, the prefrontal cortex, and the nervous system through frameworks like Polyvagal Theory, patients can gain insights into their experiences and find ways to support their mental health effectively. This knowledge can empower individuals to take proactive steps, but it’s also crucial to remember that overcoming depression frequently requires external support.
In this context, resources like Avesta Ketamine Wellness offer valuable assistance. Their approach integrates cutting-edge treatments with a supportive environment, providing a crucial lifeline for those in need. Just as a tow truck and a skilled driver are essential for getting out of a ditch, having access to professional help and a comprehensive treatment plan can make all the difference in navigating the complexities of depression.
With the right support and strategy, individuals can find their way through challenging times and work towards regaining their mental well-being. Who’s your support team? Who are the people around you?
I talk to my patients about bringing their loves ones on board to help them set up systems to regulate their nervous systems, nourish their brains and bodies (don’t even think for a second that I didn’t have a snack to munch on while waiting for the two truck–this fact is not even metaphorical. You NEED a literal snack to fuel your brain), and reduce inflammation.
There is a theory of depression that it is an ADAPTIVE state meant to get us through a difficult time.
Famine. Capture by a predator. Infection or illness. Isolation from the group.
These may have been the historical hunter-gatherer inputs that caused depression but now it seems that depression can be triggered anytime our bodies are in a perceived or real “stuck” state with no way out.
Many, if not most, or all, depressive episodes I’ve worked with follow a period of intense anxiety. Our body’s stress response burns out, we can no longer “get away from danger” and we shutdown and collapse.
We turn inwards. We immobilize. We ruminate (possibly as a way to THINK our way out of danger).
This is why the 2a serotonin receptors that encourage “active coping” or things like BDNF, which is involved in making new brain cells, have important roles in the treatment research for major depression.
I’ll bet you’ve been told you have a disease, though. Something incurable that you’ll deal with your whole life.
But what if, rather than a disease, depression is a STATE you visit, and sometimes get stuck in that follows anxiety, stress and certain triggers?
How might that change the way you see yourself and your mental health? How might that change the way you seek solutions to how you’re feeling?
“The Adaptive Rumination Hypothesis by Andrews and Thomson posits that depression is not a pathology but a set of useful complex thoughts and behaviours that enable troubled people to withdraw temporarily from the world, deliberate intensively about their social problems, and devise solutions.”
From the Psychiatric Times
The major problem with depression that keeps us stuck in the state is when we turn our rumination back on ourselves and engage in self criticism.
Yes. Have you heard of something called “self-objectification”? It is the effect of moving through the world imagining how your body looks to others: perhaps checking yourself out in the mirror, adjusting clothing, taking selfies–the awareness of your body moving through space and the impact your “image” has on others. As if part of your consciousness is outside of yourself, looking in. Self-objectification is so so common. We all do it. Does my hair look ok? Can you take another picture? I wish my thighs were more toned. Do this ____make my ____ look _____? Remember when you were a kid and you just went to the beach? Or, maybe take a page out of Teddy’s book, in the first photo. She doesn’t care about her beach body. She just wants to be on the beach, running, free. Self-objectification prevents us from being present, from enjoying life. It blocks creativity and flow state. The remedy? Embodiment. Presence. Body neutrality (the art of worrying about other things—how you look is truly probably the least interesting thing about you!) Mindfulness. How does my body feel? What can my body do? Am I hungry? What food do I love to eat? Am I thirsty? What would I like to drink? How does the sun or water FEEL on my skin? How does the sand feel between my toes? Can I taste the air on my tongue? Do my muscles feel tense or relaxed? Am I breathing from my belly or my chest? Do I want to move or rest? And so on. No matter what, though, the beach is ready for you. I created a course to introduce you to these topics and more. It’s called you Weigh Less on the Moon.
Imagine that you’re stuck in the middle of the Amazon forest. You have no idea where you are. You’re terrified and hungry.
All of a sudden a man (or a woman) emerges from the bushes. They tell you, “I can help you get out of here. I can help you find your way home”. With relief, you follow them.
They slash through the bush with a certain confidence. They feel comfortable to be around. But after some time, doubt fills your mind.
A little while later you, still following this guide, but mind racing with doubt, both come upon someone else, coming from the other direction.
“That’s not the way out,” this new person exclaims, once you’ve greeted one another, “Follow me, I know how to get you out of here.” And there’s something about their scent or voice, you’re not sure what, but you like them better than the other guide, or maybe the same, you don’t know, but for whatever reason you choose to follow them.
And so you leave the first guide, thank them for their help (they really were helpful after all, but this new guide, well they’re really something) and all, and say, “My heart says I should follow this new guide”. And now you’re off, travelling in an entirely different direction, on what you hope is your way out of the jungle.
The truth is, every way is the way out. Perhaps some ways are faster than others, but one thing is certain, if you continue to travel in any one direction for a long enough period of time, you will eventually leave the dark woods.
What will keep you in the jungle, however, is switching direction, switching guides. Imagine you’re almost out of there: a few hundred metres away, and you find a new guide, turn around and immediately follow them further into the bush.
So it is with healing.
Sometimes we need to pick someone–a therapist, doctor, teacher, mentor, sometimes for no better reason than we like their voice or their website or we resonate with something they’re sharing from the heart–and we need to choose them and let them guide us.
No, we don’t need to do everything they say. We don’t need to follow them blindly. We can follow them with a sense of integrity and skepticism, of course, but if we choose their guidance, and their path towards healing, perhaps we need to see it through.
I find that, as it’s often the case with anxious patients, we constantly feel the need to reach for the new solution, the new single ingredient that will make us healthy and whole. That extra thing. That missing thing. That shiny new theory, or condition, or treatment.
“Perhaps I have histamine intolerance”
“Maybe I’m eating too many lectins”
“I think I need to test my oxalates”
“Maybe I’m zinc deficient”
“Maybe it’s my estrogen dominance”
It could be any one of those things, but if you find your wheels spinning, flipping from one therapist to another, and preventing any one of them from really getting a sense of who you are or what you need then I suggest you… stay.
Who do you stay with?
Stay with the one who listens.
If anyone is offering you a simple solution, a one-trick fix (and if any one is a one-trick pony, you know them, the ones who apply their theory to everyone they work with), then please run.
Your health and wellness does not boil down to one thing, one practice, one supplement, one root cause.
Stay with the one who listens. The one who repeats back to you what you said and adds more to it. The one who synthesizes and summarizes your problem in a way that clicks something into place.
Stay with the one who talks to you, not their team of followers.
The one who has your case information, not the yoga instructor you chat with after class while you’re putting your shoes back on, not the supplements salesperson who said “It’s probably your hormones” and hands you a bottle of 15 ingredients, not the documentary you watched on Netflix that applies one-size-fits-all diet advice to you and 6 billion others without even knowing your name.
Or, maybe stick with them… but stick with one of them. See their advice through to the end.
Maybe stick with the one who says, “Hm, this sounds like…” and proceeds to connect the dots for you, in front of your eyes. Who seeks to educate you. Who thinks about your case between visits. Who says things like “I consulted with my colleagues about your case to ask and…” and things like “I was thinking about/reviewing your case the other day and thought about…”
Stay with the one who refers you to other practitioners. Stay with the one who answers your pointed health questions with “It depends” or “Normally yes, but in your case…” or “A lot of the time no, but it’s possible that in your case…”
Psychoanalyst Francis Weller urges us to practice restraint. To pause. To reflect on our needs. He urges us to practice humility.
I love working with patients who show up humble, kneeling at the alter of their own healing, saying, “I found your website” or “My friend referred you” and then proceed to tell their stories, and receive my assessment.
They help me practice humility as well. To receive their cases with humility (not with my already always listening). To receive them with patience. To take my time. To do my research. To check in: “How does this sound…”.
I kneel at the alter of healing beside them.
We set an intention of working together–walking together—out of this wilderness.
I talk with Dr. Kara and Dr. Dave of That Naturopathic Podcast, rated in the top 6 Canadian Medicine podcasts, about taming the tiger of anxiety. Click to learn about your HPA Axis, the stress response and how we can “tame the tiger” by providing our body and mind with the assurance that we’re safe. Listen on Spotify.
Hannah Hepworth, of the Anxiety Revolution Podcast, and I team up to discuss a natural and functional approach to managing anxiety.
In our talk, featured in her 2019 Anxiety Revolution Summit, a series of talks with integrative mental health practitioners and experts, we discuss circadian rhythms, the body’s stress response and the HPA (hypothalamic pituitary adrenal) axis, and blood sugar, and their role in anxiety.
Click the link to listen to this 30-minute interview. Let me know what you think!
I appeared on the Rebel Talk Podcast with Dr. Michelle Peris, ND. Dr. Michelle writes,
“Not a week goes by that I do not discuss mental health with patients in my office. Rates of depression and anxiety are on the rise. So I really wanted to unpack this important topic for you, giving you relevant information and diving deep into interventions that can help optimize mental health. ⠀
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In this episode, Dr. Talia details how our brains work while suffering from depression, anxiety and stress. Her deep knowledge of neuroscience is combined with mindfulness practices and also with microdosing, an approach that consists in taking low doses of psychedelic drugs, such as LSD or psilocybin-containing “magic” mushrooms, in order to prevent and treat symptoms of depression. ⠀
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Dr. Talia talks about mental and physical barriers, that can holds us back from making the changes needed for a healthier and more balanced life. Listen to this podcast and be inspired by this out-of-the-box conversation about neuroscience, mental health and mindfulness.”
My friend Nelson (not his real name) was depressed.
Depression frequently came in and out of Nelson’s life, but this last bout was the worst.
Severe job stress compounded by issues with his relationship sent Nelson into a downward spiral, leaving him broken, sobbing and exhausted after engaging in the simplest of tasks.
Sadness and a feeling of doom rushed in to greet him at the end of each sleepless night. Nelson gained weight, despite never truly feeling hungry. His face appeared sunken and swollen. Despite sleeping 14 hours a day, dark circles hung under his eyes.
Since focusing and concentrating on work was impossible, he asked his psychiatrist to help him apply for mental health leave. Nelson was granted sick leave, as well as a prescription for Effexor, and a recommendation to get as much rest as possible.
After a year, Nelson felt worse. When rest and the medication weren’t working, he started exercising vigorously. He hired a nutritionist who cleaned up his diet, and he started taking fish oil and a B complex, among other supplements.
Even then, he still struggled. The hopelessness was still there. Returning to work at this point seemed impossible.
Nelson opened up to a friend about his struggles.
“I went through a similar thing a few years ago,” Nelson’s friend confessed. “And the thing that helped the most was micro-dosing.”
Micro-dosing, taking small doses of psychedelic substances, like LSD or psilocybin-containing “magic” mushrooms, entered the public consciousness in early 2015, after James Fadiman, PhD and author of The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, appeared on the Tim Ferris Podcast.
It involves taking a “sub-perceptual” dose of a hallucinogen, like LSD or Psilocybe cubensis “magic” mushrooms, that contain the hallucinogen psilocybin. A sub-perceptual dose means that, while these substances still exert effects, they don’t produce a noticeable hallucinogenic “high”.
According to Paul Austin at the The Third Wave, people micro-dose for two main reasons: to remove negative mood states, such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, and ADD; and to increase positive mood states such as flow, creativity, improved productivity and focus, and sociability.
Micro-dosing has been used experimentally in individuals trying to quit smoking and to heal depression.
After listening to the podcast and reading some of the articles his friend sent him, Nelson managed to obtain capsules containing 200 mg of dried psilocybin mushrooms. Procuring these substances is still illegal, but Nelson figured he had nothing to lose.
When I caught up with Nelson, he was already a few weeks into his micro-dosing regimen. I asked him how he was doing.
“I’m actually feeling better than I have in months,” he told me, smiling. “I’m not passing out on the couch anymore. I wake up at 7 every morning without an alarm. I feel optimistic for the first time in months. And it seems to be consistent!
“This week I’ve managed to attend three social events and I seem… more motivated. My workout game improved too. Also, I’m not sure I’m ready to go back to work just yet but I’ve noticed my motivation has picked up. So much so that I’ve started taking free programming courses online. I—I can’t really believe it.”
Research on Psychedelics for Depression
Unfortunately, we can’t draw any sound conclusions from Nelson’s experience; scientific data from randomized control studies is still lacking. However, the growing collection of anecdotes on the benefits of micro-dosing for mental health and well-being has caught the attention of researchers.
Thomas Anderson, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, polled almost one thousand participants on social media channels and message boards, like Reddit, to gather some initial data on the benefits and drawbacks of micro-dosing hallucinogens.
The micro-dosers that Anderson and his team polled reported higher levels of creativity, and improved mood and focus. They claimed to notice a reduction in depression and anxiety symptoms, increased motivation to eat right and exercise, cognitive enhancement, improved self-efficacy and heightened social functioning.
They reported that the main drawback they experienced was obtaining these substances, which are currently illegal in The US and Canada.
Although interesting, this self-reported data isn’t hard science. To increase objectivity, Anderson and his team presented the participants with tests of creativity (finding out how many uses they could find for common objects, for instance) and questionnaires that measured wisdom. The micro-dosers scored high on both these metrics. They also scored lower in tests that measured negative emotion.
Anderson and his colleagues plan to publish these preliminary findings in a series of papers. They are currently in the process of obtaining Health Canada approval for a controlled study.
Psychedelic research was terminated in the 1960’s, leaving a massive knowledge gap of their therapeutic potential. But now, with the publication of Fadiman’s Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide and Michael Pollen’s even more recent How to Change Your Mind, psychedelics are receiving a fresh surge of interest, particularly for their mental health benefits.
One of the prominent names in this new-wave research community is Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD, at Imperial College London, who is investigating psilocybin as a treatment for severe depression.
Published in a 2016 issue of Lancet Psychiatry, Carhart-Harris administered two doses (one small and one moderate) of psilocybin, spaced one week apart, to twelve patients with Major Depressive Disorder. The doses were administered in a controlled, therapeutic setting, and symptoms were rated immediately after therapy, and then again at one and three months.
The study results were remarkable. Five of the twelve patients dropped from “severe depression” to “no depression” immediately after receiving the second dose. All of the study participants experienced an overall reduction in symptoms with five of the study participants remaining depression-free after three months.
Roland Griffiths, Phd, at John Hopkins, is involved in a number of studies examining psilocybin’s ability to induce mystical experiences in terminally ill patients.
In a 2016 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, he and his team found that administering high-dose psilocybin to terminally ill cancer patients increased mood, quality of life and optimism, and decreased death anxiety. These benefits were sustained at the six month follow-up. Over 80% of the study participants claimed to experience greater life satisfaction and feelings of well-being.
How Psychedelics Work to Boost Mood
LSD, psilocybin, and other psychedelics, work like serotonin in the brain by acting on serotonin receptors, specifically the 5HT2A serotonin receptors.
Like psychedelics, anti-depressant medications, like SSRI and SNRI medications (Selective Serotonin and Selective Serotonin and Norepinephrine Re-uptake Inhibitors), Cipralex and Effexor, respectively, also work on serotonin pathways. However, these medications’ effects are limited: some people improve on them, while others feel no different, or even worse.
SSRI and SNRI medications activate 5HT1A receptors. According to Carhart-Harris, this makes a difference. In his paper on the “Bipartite Model of Serotonin Signalling” he proposes that these receptor pathways help people cope differently.
5HT1A receptors, acted on by anti-depressants, help with “Passive Coping”. They help individuals with depression tolerate the stress in their lives, be it a toxic work environment or destructive relationship—nothing has changed about the situation, you can just deal with it better.
Psychedelic stimulation of 5HT2A receptors activate pathways involved in “Active Coping”: identifying and directly addressing sources of stress. Active coping might mean asserting boundaries at work or applying to new jobs. It might look like ending an unhealthy relationship.
In other words, 5HT2A receptors stimulate neural pathways that reveal previously elusive solutions to problems. They do this by increasing a chemical called Brain-Derived Neurotropic Factor, or BDNF.
BDNF promotes the growth of new brain cells and neural pathways in the brain. These processes, called “neurogenesis” and “neuroplasticity” , are essential for learning, creativity and memory. Research shows that increased neuronal plasticity benefits mood.
Psychedelics also work by disconnecting the brain’s Default Mode Network. The Default Mode Network, or DMN, connects frontal areas of the brain, such as the Medial Prefrontal Cortex, with lower brain areas like the Posterior Cingulate Cortex.
When we’re daydreaming, stuck in traffic, sitting in a waiting room, or otherwise not actively engaged in a mental task, our DMN lights up. In these quiet moments, we lapse into a state of reflection and self-referential thinking. In other words, our minds wander.
If we’re in a good mood, this mind-wandering creates narratives, daydreams and fantasies about the future. If we’re depressed, it leads to rumination, negative over-thinking, and self-criticism, which worsens mood.
Disrupting the DMN allows old thought patterns to fall away, opening up novel possibilities.
Activating Flow States
Shutting off the DMN can help us enter a state of Flow. Flow states occur when we are completely immersed in an activity so worthwhile that our sense of time and self cease. When in flow, we toe the limits of our talents, making these states incredibly rewarding and enriching. They are the antithesis to depressive and anxious mood states.
Psychedelic substances, along with other practices like meditation, help put us in a state of flow. These states are characterized by elevated levels of serotonin and dopamine and calming and focussing alpha brain wave oscillations. When in them, we become capable of incredible things.
In The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, James Fadiman writes about “Clifford”, a premed student. Clifford shares,
“I was taking a biology course to prepare for medical school, and we were studying the development of the chick embryo…I realized that in order to stay alert, a tiny dose of LSD could be useful.
“With that in mind, I licked a small, but very potent, tablet emblazoned with the peace sign before every class. This produced a barely noticeable brightening of colours and created a generalized fascination with the course and my professor, who was otherwise uninteresting to me.”
Due to some health issues, Clifford ends up missing the final exam. His professor agrees to a make-up. Before the exam, Clifford pops the rest of the now-tiny LSD tablet into his mouth.
The make-up exam consists of drawing the complete development of the chick from fertilization to hatching—the entire course.
“As I sat there despondently, I closed my eyes and was flooded with grief. Then I noticed that my inner visual field was undulating like a blanket that was being shaken at one end. I began to see a movie of fertilization!
“To my utter amazement, I was able to carefully and completely replicate the content of the entire course, drawing after drawing, like the frames of animation that I was seeing as a completed film!
“It took me an hour and a quarter drawing as fast as I could to reproduce the twenty-one-day miracle of chick formation. Clearly impressed, my now suddenly lovely professor smiled and said, ‘Well, I suppose you deserve an A!’ …the gentle wonder of life was everywhere.”
While impressive, Clifford’s account, like Nelson’s, is merely an anecdote. Far more research is warranted.
Micro-Dosing for Mood
Micro-dosing allows individuals to tap into the 5HT2A receptor-stimulating, BDNF-increasing, DMN-uncoupling, and flow state activating benefits of psychedelics, without the mind-stabilizing effects.
At a sub-perceptual doses there are no weird colours and visuals, alternate realities, or ego deaths. Micro-dosers report that the world merely appears brighter, or that they feel “sparklier”—they experience greater well-being. Otherwise, they can proceed with their lives normally.
Fadiman’s micro-dosing protocol consists of taking a tenth of a full dose, about 10 to 20 mcg of LSD, or 200 to 500 mg of dried-weight psilocybin mushrooms, every three days. This means that if the first dose is taken on Monday (Day 1), then the second dose is taken on Thursday (Day 4). According to Fadiman, spacing doses avoids tolerance, keeping the doses effective.
Participants are encouraged to engage in their daily activities: working, eating, sleeping and exercising normally.
Fadiman recommends participants keep a record of mood, cognition, motivation and productivity. People often report that they feel the best on Day 2, the day after taking a micro-dose.
Drawbacks to Micro-Dosing
In my role as a naturopathic doctor, I can’t recommend or counsel on the use of psychedelic substances for the treatment of any health condition. While the scientific interest in their use as therapeutic agents is growing, these substances are illegal to obtain and possess, and there is a lack of solid research on their safety and efficacy.
As of right now, the only way to legally access psychedelic therapies is through research. MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, often lists recruitment opportunities for ongoing studies. Thomas Anderson, at the University of Toronto, is in the stages of obtaining Health Canada approval for a randomized control trial on the benefits of micro-dosing in healthy volunteers.
Like all therapies, there are risks to taking these substances, even at low doses. While LSD and psilocybin confer a low risk for addiction and are ten times less harmful than alcohol (the harm scores of LSD and psilocybin are 7 and 5, respectively, compared to 72 for alcohol), they are not completely benign.
Psychedelics can aggravate schizophrenia, psychosis, dissociation, severe anxiety, and panic. They can also interact with medications and supplements that act on serotonin pathways. Their effects at high doses can be disorienting and oftentimes unpleasant: in the studies that showed positive benefit, they were administered under careful supervision, in a therapeutic set and setting.
Our society’s mental health is in crisis. As a clinician who focuses on mental health, I am always excited to learn of new therapies that have the potential to heal mood. With Canada’s 2018 legalization of cannabis, gateways are opening for future uses of psychedelics as medicine. Perhaps with more research and advocacy, we’ll one day see micro-dosing of psychedelic substances as a safe and effective mainstay therapy for promoting mental and emotional well-being.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus wrote that weariness awakens consciousness, that “Everything begins with consciousness. Nothing is worth anything except through it.”
In the last few months, I’d been weary—sleeping, eating, exercising, commuting, working, preparing for more work, sleeping, and repeat—but I didn’t feel any consciousness awakening, and I still felt like I was waiting for that “everything”, or at least something, to begin.
I wanted to immerse my bare hands in the soil of life—to feel the softness of joy, the moisture of awe, and the cool warmth of peace, between my fingers. I wanted to feel alive: for my soul to urgently thrust itself into each morning, as if the spinning world depended on it.
Instead, I was stuck in traffic.
In the world of natural health junkies, spiritual community dwellers, and backpacking hippies, a Ten-Day Vipassana Retreat is a right of passage. My friends, colleagues and fellow travellers all assured me that the experience changed them. They all reflected on their ten days spent in the woods in silence, sitting for excruciatingly long hours, as catalysts for growth. They’d burned off dead and stagnant parts of their egos, let go of their cravings, and emerged shiny, with a renewed zest for all their lives had to offer.
Listening to their stories, I imagined myself in their places: sitting mute and contemplative in the dark. Through eliminating all input, I expected the Universe (with a capital U, naturally) to reveal rich meaning beneath its monotonous surface. Plus, I heard the food was good.
So, I signed up. A few months later, with a backpack filled with drab clothes and a meditation cushion, I was driving to the Dhamma Torana Vipassana centre, located outside of Barrie, Ontario.
A sleepy hippie greeted me as a I pulled into a virtually empty, gravel parking lot at the entrance to the centre.
I got out of my car and smiled at him, “I’m here for the Vipassana retreat.”
“Yeah, man,” He replied with eyebrows raised, as if searching his brain for what I was referring to. “Hey, though, do you mind parking your car closer to that truck? There’s going to be a lot of us trying to fit in here.”
I looked around for evidence of this meditation-hungry crowd. Instead, there were a handful of cars parked, including a large black pick-up truck and my own.
“Sure,” I said, “Do you mind just watching my bag?”
I squeezed my car up against the truck. Now we were two cars huddled side-by-side in the large, empty lot. It looked ridiculous but, you know, we were a community now.
“I couldn’t lift the bag,” Said the hippie-turned-parking-attendant, half-apologetically. He’d left it on its side in the dirt. The bag contained two pairs of pants, two t-shirts, some shampoo, and meditation cushion. It probably weighed three pounds.
I smiled tightly at him, hoisted the bag onto my shoulder, and made my way to the registration house to get my room key. Then I headed over to the women’s side of the property to find my cabin.
The cabin was a tiny room containing two beds separated by a shower curtain. I was supposed to share with a roommate, but she hadn’t arrived yet.
How do you room with someone you can’t talk to or look at? I prayed that my roommate wouldn’t show up and that I’d get the room to myself.
I put my things away and headed to the dining hall for dinner.
We were told to hand over our electronics, writing materials, and other valuables. I handed over my car keys so that I wouldn’t be tempted to escape. As my things were being placed into bins, I felt like Austin Powers preparing to be cryogenically frozen.
In fact, the retreat centre, while beautiful, had prison-like undertones. Signs declaring “Course Boundary” stopped you from exploring—or going back to the parking lot. Days later I would stare at that sign longingly, dreaming of the freedom represented by my car. Men and women were segregated into completely separate areas of the property. We weren’t allowed to talk and make eye contact once the silence was imposed. We were also told not to bring flashy, tight or flamboyant clothes and so many of use looked like prisoners: heads down, attention turned inwards, clothes dark, loose and drab.
Dinner was vegan food. It was good. However, having been a recovering vegan in the past, I wondered if I’d finish the retreat like the parking volunteer, too weak to lift my own three-pound bag.
After dinner we were given a speech on the rules: no talking, texting, touching, making eye contact, gesturing, wearing tight clothing, doing yoga, running, writing, reading, sunbathing, killing (even mosquitos), sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll (or any other music, for that matter), alcohol, eating dinner (just some fruit for newbies), and so on. No Phone, no pets, no cigarettes. It was going to be a long ten days.
I couldn’t wait.
I wondered what amazing insights would emerge from these ten days of spacious silence.
It was time for the first meditation, after which we would observe the Nobel Silence. We settled onto our assigned cushions. I had brought my own meditation cushion and saw that others had brought their own supplies too. Many brought intricate contraptions for sitting: meditation benches, special blankets, chairs, back rests, and knee pads. Rather than preparing to sit for an hour, it looked like they were readying themselves to enter the Earth’s orbit.
The meditation started. The teacher of Ten-Day Vipassana retreats, S.N. Goenka, is dead and so instruction is delivered by a series of tapes he’d recorded, presumably, while still alive.
One of the two assistant teachers pressed play and Goenka’s chanting began. Goenka’s would be the only voice I’d really hear for ten entire days, and it had an alarming amount of vocal fry.
I fidgeted throughout the hour of our first meditation. My meditation practice up until that point consisted of daily thirty-minute sits. I don’t think I’d ever sat for an hour. In fact, after twenty minutes, I’d usually experience numbness in both legs that sent me crawling around on all fours painfully trying to restore blood flow. During this first hour I kept crossing and uncrossing my legs. It wasn’t just me; silence in the hall was punctuated by the cacophony of restless shuffling.
Five more minutes of chanting followed by a gong finally signalled the end of my antsy misery. I slowly and silently got up, keeping my eyes inoffensively cast in front of me, and shuffled, among the tribe of other zombies, out of the hall and back to my quarters. It was barely 9 pm, but I flopped exhausted onto my little bed and immediately fell asleep.
The next day, loud gonging heaved me into the pitch-dark early morning. It was 4:15 am. I dressed in the dark, shuffled to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and headed to the meditation hall for the first two-hour meditation of the First Day.
The schedule was terrifying. We were to wake at 4:15 in the morning to sit for the first meditation, two hours, at 4:30. A gong would then signal breakfast for 6:30 am, after which we’d sit for another hour of meditation. Then we were to return to the meditation hall or go to our rooms and sit for two more hours. Lunch was at 11:00 am, followed by another break. Then, four hours of meditation followed by a snack break, where new students were allowed to eat fruit and drink tea. There was no dinner.
After the snack break, was another hour-long meditation, then a discourse where we were to watch Goenka lecturing—the only entertainment of the day. Then more meditation—45 minutes. Bedtime was 9:30 pm. Lights were to be out by 10 pm. With the first wake-up gong sounding at 4:15 in the morning, and nothing to do in the evenings, I doubted that the early bedtime would be a problem.
The first thing I did was count: eleven hours of meditation. Each day I was to spend eleven hours sitting on a cushion, keeping my back straight, and watching my breath. Besides eating, and walking in the forest during breaks, that was to be my life for the next ten days. How was I going to handle this?
“I think you’ll make it to day seven and then decide you’ve had enough,” a skeptical friend had told me before I’d left. I’d been insulted. Now I doubted my own convictions. Day Seven seemed very far away.
Most of my friends had told me that they’d wanted to leave by Day Three.
By Day Two, however, I was done. My legs and back ached and, halfway through the second day, I decided that I couldn’t do another second of meditation. “I can’t do this anymore!” I exclaimed in my head. Besides Goenka’s, the Voice in My Head was the only voice I’d had access to for the last two days. And it happened to be mistaken. I kept on.
During my 32 years on the planet, I don’t believe I’d spent a day without communicating in some way, shape or form with another human being. Since I could put words together, I hadn’t spent a day in silence. Since I could read and write, there wasn’t a day in which I hadn’t engaged with some form of written text.
I missed it. While taking bathroom breaks, I stared intently at the sign outlining the shower rules. I fascinatedly read about using the hair catcher while showering. I read how we were to clean it out after and dump any hairs in the garbage. I studied the rules about drying and squigeeing the shower walls after use. “With Metta,” The notice signed off. With Metta. Withmettawithmettawithmetta. I read the words over and over again. Bathroom reading. It might as well have been War and Peace.
I expected the days to soak me in serene silence. I was wrong. As it turned out, my head was louder than an elementary school cafeteria during lunch hour. But, unlike the lunch break, there was no end to the noise.
“I eat brown food in the morning with brown tea and green food for lunch with green tea,” My inner monologue babbled gaily. It was true: breakfast was always oatmeal and prunes, which I accompanied with black tea. Lunch was a green salad and some soup or curry. I ate it with green tea. “Maybe I can be vegan,” The Voice in My Head chattered, optimistically, “The food here is so good. I could eat like this all the time. I don’t even miss dinner! Maybe I should start doing more intermittent fasting. I wonder if they sell a recipe book, oh, I can’t wait for breakfast tomorrow morning!”
And, “What colour pants am I going to wear tomorrow? The brown ones or the black ones? Brown or black? Black or brown? Should I wear the brown ones with the white shirt and the black ones with the blue shirt? Or the blue ones with the—” I’ll spare you the rest.
I had entire conversations with people in my head. I wrote, rewrote, and edited monologues, conversations and imaginary dramas. I crafted responses from the characters I was arguing with. I practiced my lines and honed them.
I humbly discovered that it was not a chaotic world, filled with sensory distractions, that stifled some creative genius locked somewhere within; the chaos was removed and no genius emerged. Instead, when left to its own devices, my mind became a shallow simpleton bouncing senselessly to topics like the clothes I was wearing, the things I was eating, and people I was dating. How disappointing.
During the eleven hours of meditation, my mind and body rebelled. Every itch, twitch and irritation, mental or physical, would send me crossing and uncrossing my legs, refolding my hands, opening my eyes, and stretching my neck—anything to avoid actually meditating.
My only reprieve was meal times. I would wait for them, like Pavlov’s dog, salivating in anticipation of the gong that would release me from the hell of sitting.
On Day Three, however, I noticed something different. I was sitting in meditation and I wanted to move: do something, like cross my legs a different way. I felt tension and frustration rise within as I resisted the urge. The resistance was like a boulder to push against. It had edges, viscosity. I couldn’t push anymore. I relaxed, softened. I opened.
And with that, the resistance popped. I felt immediate relief.
It was as if my mind and body were wrapped in a crumpled fabric. Each knot and wrinkle resembled an agitation, a restlessness, a mania that arose from within my physical and emotional self. Pushing up against these wrinkles would only tighten them, causing more agitation. But, when I began to breathe, to dissolve their solidity, they began to soften, and pop, like bubble wrap. The fabric began to iron out. I was calm.
I started to notice bigger knots: my relationship with uncertainty, for instance, that seemed too monstrous to pop, however the mini bubbles of impatience started to disappear as they arose, one by one.
Openness.
Openness provides relief from suffering.
Maybe I could survive this.
On Day Three Impatience and I got to know each other. Impatience has been a theme in my life, a low-level agitation that manifests in restlessness: my desire to connect on social media, to distract with technology and day-dreaming, to tweeze hairs and do dishes instead of doing work, and to lurch through life with my head pushed forward, oblivious to my surroundings.
I moved through life like I ate: inhaling a fresh spoonful before swallowing the first. I wasn’t tasting my food. I wasn’t tasting life.
During one particularly turbulent moment in meditation, when a wave of impatience hit, so did a series of images: family weddings, babies being born, pets passing away, family members passing: images of events that had not yet occurred, but almost certainly would. I was racing towards the future, which would bring me both wonderful experiences and inevitable pain. And, of course, at the end of it all would be the end of me. What was the rush?
I brought my attention back to my breath. Some more knots in my mind’s fabric opened.
On Day Four I recognized that, at the heart of this impatience was a craving for certainty. Underneath that craving: fear.
What I am afraid of? I asked the blackness.
Almost immediately, from some depths of my psyche, the answer surfaced.
I’m afraid to suffer.
Suffering, the Buddha’s first Nobel Truth. Life is suffering, or Dukkha. Like every other being who had ever lived, as long as I was alive I would suffer. If I craved certainty, then this was it.
We began to practice Vipassana on Day Four. For the past three days, my entire world had been reduced to the rim of my nostrils where my breath passed. The technique of focussing on the breath at the nostrils is called Anapana, and its goal is to sharpen and focus the mind.
Vipassana, or the development of equanimity regarding the impermanence of nature, and the truth of suffering, focusses on body sensations. We first began to scan the body from the tips of the toes to the top of the head (“Staaart from. the. topofthehead. Top of. Thehead,” Chirped Goenka’s voice on the recordings), a relatively simple technique in theory that proved to be excruciating in practice.
If the first few days had introduced me to the manifest agitations and disquiets in my body and mind, Day Four presented me with the full-on war raging within. For three hours a day we were to resist the urge to move. My body was on fire.
Demons in my head commanded me to move, get up, scream. Others shouted at me to stay still. Still others urged me to quit. Amidst their shouts was harrowing physical misery.
I felt like I was under the Cruciatus Curse. In fact, the whole retreat was starting to seem like a JK Rowling novel, or some other Hero’s Journey. I had set out to conquer evil only to find that all evil came from within, and was now being asked to face it bravely, conjuring up a Patronus of equanimity to protect me from being consumed by this hellish fire.
“The only difference between a Ten-Day Silent Vipassana Retreat and a Harry Potter novel is that ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’ is literally everything,” I thought, sardonically.
From Days Four to Five, I emerged from every sitting broken and exhausted. Being on Day Five was like reaching the middle of a claustrophobic tunnel. I was halfway through and still had just as far to go. I scanned the deadpan faces of the crowd during mealtimes to see if anyone else had spent the last hour being electrocuted.
Goenka said the sensations of fire and electricity were Sankaras, mental cravings that embed themselves in our physical bodies and cause suffering. An intense sensation was simply one of these Sankaras floating to the surface of the body. If we met it with “perfect equanimity”, it would be eradicated, and we would be cleared out for our next incarnation.
These body sensations—the sharp, twitching, numb, searing, blinding, and even pleasurable— were a representation of nature itself. Sensations arise in the body and pass away; they are impermanent, Anitya. Through first being aware of them, and then meeting them with openness, without clinging or aversion, we can be free from suffering.
“Maintain perrrrrrfect equanimity. Perrrrrrfect equanimity, with the understanding of Anitya.
“Anitya…. Anitya….” Goenka’s recordings crooned.
Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari, also a long-time Vipassana practitioner, states, “Meditation is about getting to know the most ordinary, daily, natural patterns of the mind, body and emotions, to observe reality as it is. If you can observe, to some degree, reality as it is, without running away to stories and fictions, you will be a more peaceful and happy person.”
Well, I certainly wasn’t happy.
On Day Five I was being burned at the stake. Someone had lodged a red hot poker into my right flank, just to mess with me. “I will never be able to walk again,” My mind blabbered, “This is torture. I’m becoming permanently injured. I can feel the meniscus in my knees slowly tearing—“
Goenka’s chanting began, indicating we had five more minutes of this hell. I relaxed, even though we still had five more minutes of this hell. The mind is a ridiculous thing.
—Donnnnng….
Freed by the beautiful, beautiful music of the gong, I sprang up. I expected to hobble, in pain, clutching at my back, working out stiffness in my knees. I anticipated the inevitable sharp pain that would appear in my ankles as I took my first step.
Yet, as I walked out of the meditation hall to stand in the July sun, I noticed that there was not a twinge of pain, a tightness, nor an ache to be found. My body felt perfectly fine. On the contrary, I actually felt great: light and supple. It felt like I was floating.
Hm.
By the time Day Six arrived, I was greeting the pain like an old friend. I noticed that discomfort came, not from the sensations themselves, but from the mind’s anticipation of and resistance to them. If I expected an arising sensation to be painful, I would brace myself against it, creating tension. And, after the sensation had faded, my mind would still grip it, creating a story of aversion.
So, I stopped calling it pain. Instead, it was a series of sensations: numbness, vibration, tingling, spark, heat, radiation, burning, but not pain. I noticed the sensations that disappeared as soon as they materialized, like shooting stars across my back. Others were solid, like clumps of cement hanging out in my body for the entire hour. I now easily sat for an hour without moving, watching this orchestra of sensations transpire across my flesh.
The war was ending. I was winning.
I was free.
Four days to go.
Anitya.
Sometimes impermanence isn’t fast enough.
On Day Seven, I settled into meditation, welcoming it now. I dropped into my breath, and began practicing Vipassana, sweeping my attention over my body, observing the sensations that were present, just as Goenka instructed.
Curiously, the sensations dissolved. There was no sensation, there were no Sankaras, there was no body. I could still feel the line where my lips met, and where my hands came together in my lap. Other than these two black outlines drawn in space, I had dissolved into ether, the atoms of my body emitting a subtle vibration that merged with those that surrounded it.
It wasn’t surprising. For the last seven days I’d been eating oatmeal and meditating in the woods without speaking to anyone. Now my entire body was evaporating. Nothing was surprising anymore.
I later learned that this phenomenon was called a “Free Flow”. It results from absolute openness: from a mind that is both equanimous and subtle. Solidity dissolves, and what is left is the vibration of atoms, all transient, anitya. All impersonal, Anatta.
The Three Buddhist Marks: Anitya, Anatta, Dukkha.
Impermanence, Non-Self, Suffering.
Now that I was One with, whatever it was I was one with, I figured I might as well seek some spiritual answers. Or at least make a wish or something.
I thought of what I most wanted in the world. “I want connection,” I told the Universe, “I want deep, connected relationship.”
Amidst the vibrations, something answered. A simple, Why?
Hm. Why, indeed? I’d never entertained the question.
I want to be loved, emerged my answer, from I-didn’t-know-exactly-where, since I was currently nothing. It was like my heart was speaking instead of my head. The utterance arose out of space, before dissipating, like smoke rings from a caterpillar’s hookah. Then, there was silence.
The energy, or entity, or my Higher Self, whoever I was talking to, seemed amused at my naivety. I could feel her compassionate chuckle vibrating into the atoms that buzzed where my body had once sat.
You already are,
the amused response manifested from the darkness into which I was dispersed.
You already are.
And, at that moment, nothing seemed more true. Nothing can give us what is already in our basic nature.
Gorf is a man of his age, which, in his case, happens to be the Stone Age.
Yes, Gorf is a caveman.
And, perplexingly, Gorf suffers from insomnia.
Gorf wakes up sluggish, long after the sun has risen, wishing he had a snooze button to smash.
He struggles through the day, exhausted. In the early afternoon, he sucks glycogen from the raw meat of a fresh kill to get an extra blood sugar boost.
Gorf prays for someone to discover coffee and refined sugars so that he can join the ranks of modern zombies getting through their 3 pm slumps with artificial pick-me-ups.
When the sun sets, Gorf feels depleted, but also restless and wired. He frustratedly tosses on his bed of mammoth skins beside the dying embers of his campfire while his family snoozes on.
Wide awake at 2 am, Gorf knows that the next morning he’ll begin the cycle again, his body completely out of sync with the Earth’s rhythms. Such is the cursed life of a Prehistoric Insomniac.
If this story seems preposterous, it’s because it probably is. Whatever we imagine prehistoric humans to be, insomniacs is not high on the list.
Those of us who have spent a night outside—whether it was a weekend camping trip or longer—might remember how deeply we slept under the darkness of the starry night sky and how refreshed we woke when the sun began to warm our faces in the early morning.
The closer we get to nature, the better our bodies seem to align with the Earth’s light and dark rhythms.
Now, if we took poor Gorf, dressed him in a suit, and dumped him in a desk chair in an office building in any major modern city, we might believe his claim to insomnia.
Now that Gorf is one of us, his eyes are exposed to bright lights at night as he slogs away at his computer, answering emails, or surfing social media pages into the late hours.
During the day, Gorf now spends his time indoors, where light exposure is 400 times less than that of a bright sunny day.
On bright days when he has a chance to get outside, Gorf protects his fragile eyes with dark glasses.
Welcome to the modern industrial lifestyle, Gorf. Don’t forget to help yourself to the coffee and cookies.
Our Body’s Circadian Rhythms
Our body runs on a 24 hour clock, which is orchestrated by an area in the hypothalamus of the brain called the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (which we will refer to as “the SCN” from now on).
Our organs, body tissues and cellular processes, from our digestive function, hormones, mood, body temperature, metabolism, sleepiness and wakefulness, cellular repair, to detoxification, among others, have different objectives for certain times of day. The SCN coordinates these functions with the Earth’s daily cycles.
The SCN runs without the aid of outside influence, however several zeitgebers, German for “time givers”, or environmental cues, tell our internal clock what time of day it is to sync our internal and external worlds. The most important zeitgeber is light, which directly activates the SCN through a pathway that connects the retina in our eyes to the hypothalamus (the retinohypothalamic tract).
In our bodies, timing is everything. The more we are able to sync our cycles with the environment, the better our body organs function. Working against circadian rhythms by engaging in activities like sleeping and eating at the wrong time of day can negatively affect our health, decrease our lifespan, and make us miserable (like poor, sad Gorf in his dimly lit office).
The digestive system, for example, is wired to break down, absorb and convert food energy into fuel during the day and repair and regenerate itself at night.
At night, the pineal gland, located in the brain, releases melatonin, a hormone produced in the absence of light, to help us sleep. However, exposure to bright lights before bed can impede the natural release of melatonin, preventing restful sleep.
Science shows that healthy circadian rhythms equal optimal metabolic health, cognitive function, weight, energy levels, cardiovascular health, immune function, digestive health, coordination and mental health. Regulating our circadian rhythms can increase our health-span.
Our Liver, Muscles and Adrenal Glands Also Have Clocks
While the SCN is the chief executive officer of the circadian cycle, other organs, such as the liver, muscle and adrenal glands, help regulate our body’s rhythms through peripheral clocks.
These clocks register cues from the environment and report back to the SCN.In turn, the SCN tells the organs what jobs they are supposed to be performing according to the time of day.
Dr. Satchin Panda, PhD, a researcher at the Salk Institute, is discovering how important our eating times are for setting our circadian clock.
The first bite of our breakfast tells our liver clock to start making the enzymes and hormones necessary to digest our food, regulate our metabolism, and use the food we eat throughout the day to fuel our cells.
A few hours later, our digestive system requires relief from food intake to invest its resources into repair rather than spending precious resources on digesting food.
Dr. Panda found that restricting a “feeding window” to 8 to 12 hours in mice and human participants (for example, eating breakfast at 7 am and finishing dinner no later than 7 pm), allowed the system to digest optimally, left time for the system to repair itself at night, and also acted as a powerful circadian regulator.
New research suggests that food is a potent zeitgeber, which has the power to regulate our circadian rhythms. This suggests that eating at the right time of day can heal our adrenal glands and sleep cycles.
Fasting for 10 to 16 hours at night, or “Time Restricted Eating”, helps optimize health and increase lifespan in mice. In human participants, it improves sleep and results in modest weight loss.
According to Dr. Panda, we become more insulin resistant at night, which means that late-night snacking makes us more likely to store the calories we consume as fat.
Consuming calories in a state of insulin resistance can also predispose use to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes.
In addition to light and food intake, rest and movement are important zeitgebers. Therefore, engaging in these activities at the right time of day has the potential to promote physical and mental health.
Circadian Rhythms and the Stress Response are Tightly Connected.
If the internet is any indicator, it seems that everyone is suffering from the modern illness of “adrenal fatigue”, or HPA (Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal) axis dysfunction
Because of the stress of our modern lifestyles, our adrenal glands and brains are no longer able to regulate the stress response.
This leads to a host of symptoms that wreck havoc on the entire body: fatigue, anxiety, sugar cravings, and insomnia. It also negatively impacts digestion, hormone production, and mood.
Our adrenal glands make cortisol, the “stress hormone”, a hormone involved in long-term stress adaptation but also in wakefulness, motivation, reward, and memory.
Deficiencies in cortisol signalling can result in issues with inflammation and depression. Too much cortisol floating around in the body can cause weight gain, cardiovascular issues, such as hypertension, and metabolic syndrome.
Cortisol has a circadian rhythm of its own. Our cortisol levels rise within an hour of waking; 50% of the total cortisol for the day is released in the first 30 minutes after we open our eyes. This rise in cortisol wakes us up. It allows us to perform our daily activities in a state of alert wakefulness.
Cortisol levels decline steadily throughout the day, dipping in the evening when melatonin rises.
A flattened or delayed rise in morning cortisol results in grogginess, brain fog and altered HPA axis function throughout the day. Elevated cortisol in the evening cause us to feel “tired and wired” and affect sleep. Waking at night, especially in the early morning between 2 and 4 am can be due to cortisol spikes.
Our adrenal glands help regulate our circadian rhythms through the production of cortisol. Both the adrenals and the SCN communicate with each other as early as 2 in the morning to ready the system to generate the waking response a few hours later.
Psychiatrist Dr. Charles Raison, MD says, “The most stressful thing you do most days is get up in the morning. Your body prepares for it for a couple of hours [before waking by activating] the stress system. The reason more people die at dawn [than any other time] is because it’s really rough to get up.”
Waking up is a literal stress on the body.
However, we need the stress response to get through our day effectively and healthy HPA axis function and optimal mood and energy are a result of properly functioning circadian rhythms.
Without these rhythms functioning properly we feel tired, groggy, tense, and depressed. Like Gorf, we need sugar and caffeine to help us through the day.
Circadian Rhythms Affect Our Mental Health
In nearly everyone I work with who suffers from anxiety, depression, or other mental health disorders, I see disrupted circadian rhythms and HPA axises.
Many of my patients feel exhausted during the day and wired at night. They have trouble getting up in the morning (or stay in bed all day) and postpone their bedtime. Most of them skip breakfast due to lack of hunger, and crave sweets after dinner, which further throws off the circadian cycle.
Lack of sleep can disrupt circadian rhythms leading to obesity, depression, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Even two nights of shortened sleep can affect cortisol production and the HPA axis, worsening mood and energy levels.
Depression severity on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) falls by 6 full points when sleep is restored, which is enough to bring a patient from moderate/severe depression to mild. In comparison, the standard medication SSRIs, like cipralex, only drop the HDRS by 2.
Bipolar disorder is particularly affected by a misaligned circadian clock. In an interview, Dr. Raison claims that a single night of missed sleep has brought on episodes of mania in his bipolar patients. Their moods level once the sleep cycle is restored.
Our mood is tightly connected to our circadian rhythms and sleep.
Circadian Rhythms and Chinese Medicine
Thousands of years ago, the Chinese developed the Theory of Yin and Yang to describe the dynamics nature, including the cycles of night and day.
Yin and yang (symbolized by a black-and-white circle with dots) represent the process of change and transformation of everything in the universe.
Yang, represented by the white part of the circle, is present in things that are hot, light, awake, moving, exciting, changing, transforming and restless.
Yin is present in material that is cold, dark, soft, inhibited, slow, restful, conversative, and sustaining.
Yin and yang are dependent on each other. Yin feeds into yang, while yang feeds and transforms into yin. Everything in nature consists of a fluctuating combination of these two states.
The circadian cycle transforms the yin night into the yang of daytime.
Yang zeitgebers such as food, light, and physical and mental activity, help stimulate yang in the body, which helps us feel energized, light and motivated.
Before bed, yin zeitgebers like darkness, rest and relaxation help our bodies transition into the yin of night, so that we can sleep restfully.
Lack of sleep and relaxation can deplete our body’s yin energy, causing yin deficiency. Individuals with yin deficiency feel fatigued, anxious, and hot, experiencing night sweats, hot flashes, and flushed skin. Conventionally, yin deficiency can look like burnout compounded by anxiety, or peri-menopause.
Out-of-sync circadian rhythms can result in yang deficiency resulting in morning grogginess, an insufficient rise in morning cortisol, and a failure to activate yang energy throughout the day.
Yang deficiency is characterized by the build-up of phlegm in the body, leading to weight gain, feelings of sluggishness, slow digestion, bloating, weakness, and feeling foggy, pale and cold. Yang deficiency symptoms can look like depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, IBS, estrogen dominance, hypothyroidism, or obesity and metabolic syndrome.
In Chinese medicine, the organs have specific times of activity as well.
The stomach is most active from 7 to 9 am, when we eat our breakfast, the most important meal of the day according to Traditional Chinese doctors. The spleen (which in Traditional Chinese Medicine operates much like the Western pancreas) is active from 9 to 11 am, converting the food energy from breakfast into energy that can be utilized by the body.
According to the Chinese organ clock, the liver is active from 1 to 3 am. Individuals with chronic stress, insomnia and irritability, sometimes called “Liver Qi Stagnation”, frequently wake up restless during those early morning hours.
Entraining our circadian clock with environmental cues can help us remain vital by balancing the flow and transformation of yin and yang energies in the body.
Healing the Circadian Clock:
When I work with patients with depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions, or hormonal conditions such as HPA axis dysfunction, one of our goals is to heal circadian rhythms.
This involves coordinating our internal rhythms with the Earth’s night and dark cycle by setting up a series of routines that expose the body to specific zeitgebers at certain times of day.
How to Heal Your Circadian Rhythms
Morning Activities: Increasing Yang with movement, light and food:
1. Expose your eyes to bright light between the hours of 6 and 8 am. This stimulates the SCN and the adrenal glands to produce cortisol, which boosts mood, energy and wakefulness in the morning and can help reset the HPA axis.
2. Have a large breakfast high in protein and fat within an hour of waking. The intake of a meal that contains all of the macronutrients wakes up the liver clock. This activates our metabolism, digestive function, blood sugar regulation, and HPA axis.
Consider eating 3 eggs, spinach and an avocado in the morning. Or consume a smoothie with avocado, MCT oil, protein powder, berries and leafy greens.
Eating a breakfast that contains at least 20 grams of protein and a generous serving of fat will help stabilize blood sugar and mood throughout the day while obliterating night-time sugar cravings.
3. Move a little in the morning. Morning movement doesn’t necessarily have to come in the form of exercise, however, it’s important to get up and start your routine, perhaps making breakfast and tidying, or having an alternate hot and cold shower (1 minute hot bursts alternating with 30 seconds cold for 3 to 5 cycles).
Muscle movement triggers another important peripheral clock that helps entrain our circadian cycle with the day.
4. Turn on lights in the morning, especially in the winter time. Spend time outside during the day, and avoid using sunglasses unless absolutely necessary so that light can stimulate the SCN. Consider investing in a sunlamp for the winter, particularly if you suffer from seasonal affective disorder.
5. Consume most of your supplements in the morning, with breakfast. Taking adaptogens (herbs that help reset the HPA axis) and B vitamins can help promote daytime energy and rebalance our morning cortisol levels. This, of course, depends on why you’re naturopathic doctor has recommended specific supplements, so be sure to discuss supplement timing with her first.
Night Routine: Increasing Yin with dark and stillness:
1. Maintain a consistent sleep and wake time, even on the weekends. Retraining the cycles starts with creating a consistent routine to get your sleep cycle back on track.
2. Try to get to bed before 11pm. This allows the body to reach the deepest wave of sleep around 2 am. It also allows for 7 to 8 hours of continuous sleep when you expose your eyes to bright lights at 6 to 8 am, when cortisol naturally rises. Of course, this sleep routine will vary depending on personal preferences, lifestyles and genetics.
It’s important to first establish a routine that will allow you to get at least 6 hours of continuous sleep a night. If you suffer from chronic insomnia, working with a naturopathic doctor can help you reset your circadian cycle using techniques like Sleep Restriction Therapy to get your body back on track.
3. Avoid electronic use at least an hour before bed. Our smartphones, tablets, computers and TVs emit powerful blue light that activates our SCN, confusing all of our body’s clocks. Blue light also suppresses melatonin release, making us feel restless and unable to fall asleep.
For those of you who must absolutely be on electronics in the late hours of the evening, consider investing in blue light-blocking glasses, or installing an app that block blue light, such as F.lux, on your devices. These solutions are not as effective as simply turning off electronics and switching to more relaxing bedtime activities, but can be a significant form of harm reduction.
4. Fast for at least 2 to 3 hours before bed. Avoid late-night snacking to give the body a chance to rest and to signal to the peripheral digestive clocks, such as the liver clock, that it’s now time to rest and repair, rather than digestive and assimilate more food.
Avoiding food, especially carbohydrate-rich food, at night can also manage blood sugar. A drop in blood sugar is often a reason why people wake in the early hours of the morning, as blood sugar drops spike cortisol, which wake us up and off-set our entire circadian system.
5. Engage in relaxing activities in dim lighting. Turn off powerful overhead lights, perhaps lighting candles or dim reading lights, and engage in at least 30 minutes of an activity that feels restorative and relaxing to you. This might include taking an epsom salt bath, reading a book while enjoying an herbal tea, doing yoga or meditation, or cuddling with a partner.
Taking this time helps us step out of the busyness of the day and signals to the body and its clocks that it’s time to sleep.
6. Take nighttime supplements before bed. I often recommend sleep-promoting supplements like prolonged-release melatonin (which is a powerful circadian rhythm and HPA axis resetter), magnesium or phosphatidylserine, before bed to help my patients’ bodies entrain to the time of day. Talk to your ND about what supplements might be right for you.
If you suffer from chronic stress and mood disorders, do shift work, or are dealing with jet lag, you may need to engage in these routines diligently for a few months to get your circadian cycles back on track.
These practices can also be beneficial at certain times of year: daylight savings time, periods of stress and heightened mental work, and the transition of seasons, especially early Spring and Fall.
Finally, consider working with a naturopathic doctor to obtain and individual plan that can help you reset your body’s rhythms.
I will die in here today, I thought to myself, as I sat hunched and cramped in an oven-hot temazcal, or sweat lodge, somewhere on the Mexican pacific.
The straw flap covering the opening of our sweaty mud hut was thrown off momentarily by someone outside, flooding our hellish cave with light. I gazed hopefully at the entrance: were we getting water? Were they letting in fresh air? Was it finally over?
It was none of those things. Instead of relief, they were increasing the heat; a pile of hot rocks appeared at the door.
“Gracias, Abuelita“, said our leader, Marciano, receiving a giant steaming rock with metal tongs and pulling it inside the hut. The change in temperature was immediate. The heat coming off the rocks was like fire. I struggled to breathe.
Marciano is Spanish for martian, abuelita an affectionate term for “grandmother”. Did he know what he was doing, this martian? Was there even enough oxygen in here for all of us? I am not related to these rocks, I thought.
“Gracias, Abuelita,” We numbly replied, thanking the rocks and fanning ourselves with imaginary cool air.
The hut was crowded with ten people. I had to sit hunched over and there was no space to lie down. If I wanted to leave, everyone else would have to get out first. The combination of darkness, stifling humidity, claustrophobic quarters and angry heat was almost intolerable. Sweat was pouring so profusely off my body that I had become one with it.
Every cell of my body was on fire with craving: water, space to lie down, fresh oxygen, freedom.
Whenever I thought I couldn’t stand another moment, the heat intensified.
The tiny flap in the door opened again. Another grandmother rock from Mars? No, it was water! My heart flooded with gratitude until I realized that the tiny glass being passed around was for all of us to share.
I will die in here.
I will never again complain of ice and snow.
This is supposed to be therapeutic?
When it was over, I emerged gasping desperately for air and water. After chugging a bucketful of water, I dumped another on my scorching hot skin. I swear it emitted a hiss.
I had survived! However, as my body cooled, I realized that I had done more than survive. Despite my resistance throughout its entirety, the sweat lodge had left me feeling absolutely elevated.
The feelings of energized calm lasted well into the next few days. My brain seemed to work better, evidenced by an elevation in the fluency of my Spanish.
It was amazing.
Current research shows that heat therapy, like sweat lodges and saunas, can indeed be therapeutic. Subjecting the body to high temperatures can improve the symptoms of major depressive disorder as effectively as the leading conventional therapies, such as medication.
Intrigued by the cultural practices of using intense heat to induce transcendental spiritual experiences (the Native American sweat lodges and Central American temazcales, for instance), a psychiatrist name Dr. Charles Raison decided to investigate heat as a therapy for improving mental and emotional well-being.
Raison and his team, in their 2016 JAMA Psychiatry study, took 60 randomized individuals suffering from major depressive disorder, and subjected them to a standardized questionnaire, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS), which quantifies depressive symptoms. The treatment group received Whole Body Hyperthermia, an average of 107 minutes in an infrared heating chamber that heats core body temperatures to 38.5 degrees celsius.
The placebo group spent the same amount of time in an unheated box that was nearly identical (complete with red lights and whirring fans). 71.5% of the study participants who were put in the sham heating chamber believed that they were receiving the full heat therapy.
After one week of receiving the single session of heat therapy, the active group experienced a 6 point drop on the HDRS. This decrease outperformed even the standard anti-depressant treatment, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor medications (according to a 2017 meta-analysis SSRI medications drop patients only 2 points on the HDRS), and lasted for 6 weeks.
Previous fMRI research has shown that heat sensing pathways in the skin can activate brain areas associated with elevated mood, such as the anterior cingulate cortex (the ACC is also activated during mindfulness meditation). The raphe nucleus, which releases serotonin, our “happy hormone”, is also activated by this skin-to-brain thermoregulatory pathway.
Heat is also thought to calm immune system activation present in the brains of individuals suffering from depression. People with depression tend to have higher body temperatures than non-depressed people. This is possibly due to the present of inflammatory cytokines, such as TNF-a and IL-6, that increase inflammation and fever and have been shown to negatively impact mood. Perhaps heat therapy acts by “resetting” the immune system.
Furthermore, when the body is exposed to high temperatures, it results in the release of heat shock proteins. Heat shock proteins respond to short, intense stressors: hot, cold, and even fasting conditions. They have a variety of effects on our hormonal systems. Some can reset the body’s stress response, correcting the cortisol resistance that is present in the brains of depressed individuals. One particular heat shock protein, HSP105, has been shown to prevent depression and increase neurogenesis (the creation of new brain cells) in mice.
Reduced neurogenesis in the hippocampus is a risk factor and side effect of depression. It is thought that traditional anti-depressants, in addition to altering brain levels of serotonin, may exert some of their effects through inducing brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BNDF), a growth factor that encourages the development of new brain cells.
Conventional theories tell us that depression is a disorder resulting from a chemical imbalance in the brain requiring medication to “correct” that imbalance. However, an overwhelming amount of research tells us that this is simply incorrect: depression is a complicated condition stemming from multiple causes.
Naturopathic doctors focus on the whole person. We look at how an individual’s symptoms are expressed within the context of their biology, physiology, psychology, and social and physical environments. We know that, when it comes to a condition like depression, every body system is affected. We also know that the health of our digestive and hormonal systems are essential for optimal mood.
Naturopathic doctors have also traditionally used hydrotherapy, the therapeutic application of hot and cold water, to benefit digestion, boost detoxification pathways, and regulate the immune system.
Therefore, as a naturopathic doctor, the idea that heat exposure can have a profound effect on depressive symptoms makes sense. However, as a clinician, I’ve found it difficult to convince my patients suffering from depression to try heat therapy. Perhaps it’s because the remedy seems so simple it borders on insulting—sweat for an hour and experience profound changes to a condition that has debilitated me for months? Get out of here.
I get it.
However, research suggests that since depression is a multi-factorial condition, it deserves to be addressed with a variety of therapies: diet, sleep hygiene, exercise, nutrition, and psychotherapy, to name a few. Heat therapy can be another important one.
So, here are some suggestions for implementing heat therapy without having to do a sweat lodge:
If you have access to a sauna, us it! Alternate 15 to 20 minute stints that induce sweating with 60-second cold rinses in a shower. Cycle back and forth for up to an hour.
Go to a hot yoga class a few times a month.
Exercise. Exercise has been shown to induce temperature changes that are similar to heat therapy. This may be why exercise has been so well studied for its mental health benefits.
Take epsom salt baths regularly. Add 1 to 2 cups of epsom salts to a warm bath and soak for 20 minutes or more, or to the point of sweating.
Try Alternate Hot and Cold Showers: alternate between one-minute bursts of hot water and 30-seconds of cold for about 3 to 5 cycles.
