> the act of doing things where one is experiencing felt sensation in the body provides a ground for consciousness outside of the grey hazy thought world.
Outdoors activities that might not quite be exercise, but that offer sounds, smells, feelings such as the wind in your face.
Exercise is extra nice because it tends to occupy the mind, keeping dark thoughts out. But things like playing music or drawing can offer similar escapes from thoughts.
I live in a area where most people seem to live close on depression most of the time and I found them to look the most happy, when it is raining and everything washed away.
Literally anything, in my experience. When I was in this situation I did not feel like doing anything, I was lying at home in bed, so I’d just say yes to everything that people wanted to do with me.
It’s easier if you have people around to pull you along. I can’t imagine motivating myself to do something.
But for example, just carrying groceries counts like a win, since it got you out of the house.
Because if that stuff helps them they do not have depression, but they are experiencing sadness. They are not the same but everyone in this thread is treating it the same.
Your source does not support your claim ("if that stuff helps them they do not have depression"). In fact, it contradicts your claim since it says "Lifestyle changes can also help you feel better if you’re experiencing depression."
For me it was contact improv, which had the benefits of other humans and touch as well as continual challenges to proprioception and balance and gravity as well as some flow state (which then become a journey of using somatic experiencing and other modalities to do trauma work)
But literally any bodily sensation can be helpful - one of the most usual reasons people give for self harm and cutting for example is that they can feel something. When i was at my most depressed, I used to walk around in the middle of winter with light clothes on (not in a freezing to death dangerous way, just in a wanting intense sensation to focus the mind on something immediate way)
I would say anything that encourages you to pay attention to your body in the moment (requires coordination) and also gets some exercise in can be a good doorway. But so can the breeze on your skin.
I am not in the target demographic, but I started swimming this year. It feels ... ehhh ... intense. Can't find the right word.
What I like especially is that you can get yourself really tired, but you don't overheat or sweat. Also it feels more complete than cycling or running. Copious showering is part of the experience.
How do you withstand the cold contact of the water? Part of the depression is the intense lack of bravery to the most comical point, and yet very real.
So I went to Australia and started farming, and after a few rage moments (over 6 months), I was back to happy and 15% body fat (ie excellent). But it’s hard to isolate the root cause since travels imply many moving parts, sun, outdoor exercise, one of them being the absolute constant flow of good news, getting hired as a farmer for the same price as a French engineer, getting hired in a startup and receiving yearly bonuses after 3 months at the same time as everyone, having stock options that keep on rising. Of course I felt better, but I’m afraid it was just the ridiculous sudden wealth. Which is very different from having found happiness.
Back to France and I have been in the horrible mindset for 8 more years, intensely angry at friends family and life…
Yoga, massage, Wim Hof method, saunas, acupuncture, water fasting, hiking, etc.
And then there are a number of plant medicines (or other chemicals/entheogens like MDMA, ketamine, Ayahuasca/psilocybin/DMT, kambo, hape, etc) that temporarily alter your sensitivities, your connection or experience with sensory systems - which in part can be healing due to providing you a strong new perspective via the contrast and memory of that contrast opening up new possibilities - leading to the opening of your mind and heart; Ayahuasca and other are also known to have compound(s) in them that perpetuate or facilitate neuronal growth, meaning new pathways more rapidly being able to form, allowing possibility that if deeply entrenched, stuck in say a state of depression, new pathways and logic gates can or will open; this is where the current spiritual-ceremonial-psychedelic community fails currently, in adequately supporting the integration work - as with temporary separation from ego (arguably eventually possible to lead to ego death or ego dissolution) you can tap into unhealed/unprocessed emotional trauma that's been being suppressed at or fully since a childhood trauma (that you likely didn't beforehand understand as being traumatic) - which you may be able to process partly to fully on your own - but you may have extreme difficulty at some point, or not have the precise guidance to allow you to quickly get passed a block; for example there's a specific sound therapy developed nearly 70 years ago in France that is perhaps the only therapy to unblock a certain type of energetic flow/processing block. And in my own brutal experience with healing to reconnect to my body, in the process of opening my mind and heart, I also reconnected to my physical body and the immense level of physical pain from injuries I had accumulated throughout my life - now 38 - the pain level being overwhelming for my nervous system only soon after getting LASIK eye surgery 7 years ago, the damage caused to everyone's corneas that get it as the corneas can't heal properly contrary to the propaganda by the industry - where it was LASIK that finally "broke the camel's back" - initially causing a strong tension and pain down the right side of my neck, along with a strong-constant general agitation, but where that evolved to central sensitization and hyperalgesia - a hypersensitivity to pain, where all sensations in my body were amplified to 100% of my mind or consciousness' ability to perceive pain - severe enough that my executive function has been fucked for the majority of the last 5 years; it's been a rough 5 years, to say the least, however as I've had dozens of stem cell treatments to heal all the sources of pain, injuries, I've gradually been able to reduce the severity of dysfunction and limitations that pain has put on me - though I have more work to do - I'm able to more often to connected to hope.
Outdoors activities that might not quite be exercise, but that offer sounds, smells, feelings such as the wind in your face.
Exercise is extra nice because it tends to occupy the mind, keeping dark thoughts out. But things like playing music or drawing can offer similar escapes from thoughts.