THE SPIRITUAL KEY TO THE PSYCHE

In 1976 I had a strong emotional conflict that I could neither avoid, resolve, nor understand. As a result I lapsed into a painful clinical depression. I went to a recommended psychiatrist once a week for eight months, using prescribed anti-depressants.

I kept waiting and wondering how in the world talking was supposed to diminish the pain of the depression and heal me? The prescribed drugs barely helped...and certainly not the chat. They were eight wasted, unnecessarily painful, months of my life.

Then I learned about mega-vitamin therapy...healing depression with nutrition and large doses of vitamins. I found a holistic practitioner in Brooklyn, Dr. Warren Levin, placed myself in his hands and in nine weeks was completely healed of the depression. That was my first lesson regarding the non-science and non-sense of medical psychiatry.

Although healed of the depression I found I was emotionally unstable...I was one big button that was easily pressed. Just the wrong look or word and I was major ticked off. I was not easy to be with.

I went for therapy for four years and nothing was accomplished. The psychotherapies (or psychotherapists) were ineffective for me. I gave up and for another four years did nothing.

Then, on the last weekend of June of 1984, I discovered yoga breathing. I had a session on Saturday and one on Sunday. By the end of the second session I was completely healed of emotional instability. In just two sessions I got my life back.

That was my second lesson regarding psychiatric and psychological therapies. Besides being ineffectual, they were actually unnecessary. I discovered there exists within each of us, innate to our humanity, a simple process by which to heal emotional and mental problems...breathing.

With yoga breathing I awoke to many facts about the psyche: