How to Ward Off Seasonal Depression

Toronto Mindful Solutions Clinic

Today is the third Monday of January – aka Blue Monday – claimed to be the most depressing day of the year. While this internet-made day has long since been debunked by science, there’s no denying that seasonal depression is very real.

Seasonal depression is a more common term for a condition named SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). SAD is a recurring depression that often occurs in the late fall and winter months. Contrary to common belief, you can successfully combat seasonal depression long before you feel its effects.

Try these tips to ward off seasonal depression:

1. Mimic the sun. Make sure to get some sun on your face for at least 20 minutes a day; failing that, consider purchasing a sunlamp that mimics the rays of the sun. Light therapy is one of the highest recommended treatments for seasonal depression.

2. Nurture your social life. Being socially active is an important part of keeping up your spirits during the wintertime. Have a weekly dinner with your friends. If the weather is nasty, host a dinner in your home or head over to your friends’ house for a nice evening. If the weather allows, head out for a weekly catch-up with the girls or poker night with the boys.

3. Boost your vitamins intake. Consider speaking with your family doctor and/or naturopathic doctor to see whether taking a course of vitamin supplements can help you. For instance, ample research shows that Seasonal Affective Disorder is prevalent when vitamin D stores are typically low. Get your levels properly tested.

4. Take a winter vacation. There’s a reason millions of Canadians are known as snowbirds! Head to a warm, sandy beach for a fresh perspective. Pack your bags and take a two-week vacation to Florida, Hawaii, or even a cruise in the Bahamas. Just two weeks, or even less if your schedule is rigid, will make a world of a difference on your mood. If you’re low on funds, consider nixing your summer vacation in favour of a yearly winter vacation. Generally, SAD recurs every winter. Instead of fleeing your home during the warm summer months, think of a winter vacation as your secret weapon against combating seasonal depression.

5. Practice daily mindfulness. By now, you likely have heard all about the benefits of daily meditation, right? These include lowered blood pressure, increased immunity, better sleep, and a reduction of symptoms associated with depression, anxiety, and pain related to stress.

In essence, you can effectively combat seasonal depression by being aware of both your behaviour and environment. Make a conscious effort to boost your own spirits and refrain from slipping into a rut. Of course, if you know that you’re suffering from a debilitating episode of SAD, contact a family doctor to ensure that your condition is safely treated and whether you need medication or not. And also consider working with a licensed psychotherapist to help you find the right coping strategies for you.

With a few small changes, you can survive – and even thrive – through the dreary winter season. Spring is right around the corner and the sunny weather and new perspective you crave can be yours, even before spring gets here.

Breathing Anchor Meditation

Here’s another guided meditation for you!

This meditation is a “breathing anchor” mindfulness practice to help root your awareness into the present moment, dissolve anxiety, decrease stress, and allow the body to heal in a relaxed, peaceful state.

Let me know what you think!

 

Safe Place Meditation (For Pain)

Here is a brand new guided audio meditation that can help those of you who are dealing with physical or emotional pain. Hope you enjoy it!

What Is Self-Care? Here Are Some Tips!

I often get asked by clients what this idea of “self-care” really looks like, practically speaking. It seems like we’re bombarded with this expression everywhere we look, especially on our social media feeds. Here are my thoughts on self-care, as well as some quick tips you can use today to begin practising good self-care.

FYI – This video was recorded last summer, but it somehow got lost in my iCloud and I forgot to upload it as a result… I only found it today as I was trying to clean out my hard drive as part of my laptop’s regular maintenance. Guess all my self-caring over the past 7 months made me forget to share this with you all! 😁

Hope you enjoy it! Feel free to share your comments with me below.

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Mandala Drawing As A Meditative Practice?

 I often teach my clients about the concept of the Monkey Mind – the inner narrative that we ALL have inside that is often critical and hopelessly jumps from one thought to another, just as a monkey tirelessly swings from branch to branch in the jungle.

Today, my Monkey Mind is especially loud. Yup, even though I teach this stuff for a living, I still have a Monkey Mind. Some days, she’s well behaved, on the quiet side and unassuming. I so appreciate those days when we seem to get along! On other days, however, she leaves my head spinning from exhaustion, as she flits about from one thought to the next, at a rapid-fire pace.

Today, she is LOUD.

That’s where my daily mindfulness practice comes in. Mindfulness is about giving yourself the purposeful gift of present moment awareness without judgment.

Mindfulness is about setting your focused INtention to pay ATtention to what you choose to focus on.

It’s about training your Monkey Mind, by teaching her that you are not her. And that she isn’t the boss of you. Mindfulness is about learning to be the one observing Monkey Mind. Mindfulness meditation is a great tool to practice this important concept of the Observer Self.

Thankfully, we ‘ve come a long way in our Western society in accepting that a mindfulness practice doesn’t mean that you are required to sit cross-legged on the floor, dressed in saffron robes, burning incense and candles, and chanting Sanskrit mantras. Sure, meditating on the cognitive (mind), body, psychological and spiritual connection can be accomplished by quietly sitting with your eyes closed and directing one’s focused attention on an anchor of some sort (e.g. your breathing). And that’s certainly my practice of choice on most days.

However, today, I recognized that my mind was simply too scattered and unfocused to be able to sit quietly with my eyes closed for an extended period of time. On stressful days like today, I make it a point to practice a more active form of meditation to help ground myself to the present moment and quiet the Inner Monkey – by either walking, dancing, singing, painting, or drawing.

So I spent about 30 minutes at lunchtime today drawing this mandala on my iPad. This wasn’t about creating art for art’s sake. This was about directing my attention to an activity with full moment-by-moment awareness. It was about making mindful brush strokes and coordinating my breathing with each line drawn. It was about choosing to focus on what *I* wanted to focus on, no matter how many times my Monkey Mind pipped up with one of her patented random thoughts that don’t always make sense.

The result? My Monkey Mind quieted down about 5 minutes into the activity. And now, even hours later, it’s as though she’s still napping somewhere in the jungle inside my head. And I used the reprieve she’s given me to get some much-needed work done… including writing this blog post which had seemed like an insurmountable task earlier today.

How about THAT for a mindful solution to an everyday problem?

What Is Intuitive Eating?

Have you heard of the term “intuitive eating” or “eating mindfully”, and wondered what it really means? It’s a non-dieting eating approach to living healthfully, which promotes:

• listening to your body
• eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full
• eating mindfully without distractions such as television and smartphones
• moving daily for enjoyment rather than punishment
• accepting the body’s natural size and shape
• removing food guilt
• ending food preoccupation by removing any form of food restriction.

Abundant research now shows that dieting doesn’t work in the long run, and can, in fact, lead to disordered eating behaviours. So get off the hurtful “no fat,” “low cal,” “no sugar,” and “clean eating” yo-yo cycle of self-abuse and go back to basics instead – which is to simply listen to your body’s natural cues, eat mindfully, and find an exercise activity that you actually enjoy!

Now Offering Walk & Talk Therapy!

It’s flip-flop season, the weather is GORGEOUS, the sun is out, and the birds are singing. Why have your counselling session indoors when we can head out for some mindful movement?

Numerous scientific studies have shown the positive effects of exercise on the brain, especially for people with depression. Walk & Talk therapy can help you turn a corner if you’re experiencing feelings of stress, depression, anxiety or grief. Being outdoors while getting your step counts in and working through your feelings can help you improve your sense wellbeing.

Ask me whether a Walk & Talk Therapy session might be right for you.

Book your Walk & Talk session today! Two locations are now being offered. Click on the links below to check out my availability:

• Meet at 320 Danforth, Suite 206, Carrot Common
• Meet at 1020 Yonge Street, Ramsden Park – across from Rosedale Subway Station