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Why Do I Feel Depressed After Yoga or Meditation?
If these are supposed to be enlightening, positive practices, why do they sometimes make us feel down?
Everyone always talks about how great yoga and meditation are. Their benefits are touted far and wide, and depending on where you live, you can’t throw a rock without hitting two or three studios. You can even sign up to take classes online. There are apps, books, and DVDs dedicated to the practices.
What isn’t always talked about is the potential downside to one or both practices. Like feeling angry when you finish your practice. Or like feeling depressed after your practice. So when it happens to you for the first time, it can come as a big surprise. If it happens more than once, it can start to really worry you.
When everyone else is telling you how great you’ll feel after adding yoga or meditation to your life, I want to reassure you that it’s not necessarily a bad thing if you don’t feel good. In fact, feeling depressed after your practice could be a good thing.
Yoga and meditation increase awareness
Both practices increase your awareness. This increased awareness can pull thoughts, memories, ideas, and emotions to the surface that we weren’t aware of before. Of course, even the most optimistic person can have negative and depressing thoughts, memories, and emotions, so it’s natural that those things might come up.
We also tend to avoid things that make us uncomfortable — such as depressing thoughts, memories, ideas, and emotions. Avoidance tends to be a conscious action, though, something we deliberately do. We know that this thing makes us uncomfortable, so we take deliberate steps to avoid it.
During yoga and meditation, however, we don’t try to control our thoughts and emotions. In fact, we often engage in these practices with the intention to specifically avoid trying to control them. When we let go of that control over our thoughts and emotions, it makes sense that the things we usually try to avoid might be some of…
