'WHOLE PERSON HEALING: LETTING GO FOR LIFE'

Light Healing for Depression: Light From Darkness by JSG58

"What has been most notable from the beginning of (this exploration), is the rapidity
with which healing can take place with something as seemingly simple and non-
invasive as light. It compels one to stop and reconsider what our true nature is - that
we are, in a very literal sense, light beings, as ancient mystical teachings profess."
- Journal of Energetic Medicine
"We know today that man is essentially a being of light...In terms of healing, the
implications are immense. We know, for example, that light can initiate, or arrest,
cascade-like reactions in the cells, and that genetic cellular damage can virtually be
repaired, within hours, by faint beams of light. We are still on the threshold of fully
understanding the complex relationship between light and life, but we can now say,
emphatically, that the function of our entire metabolism is dependent on light."
- Dr. Fritz Albert Popp

Light Healing for Depression: Light From Darkness

‘Dare we believe such a thing? Dare we see depression as not only a sign that something is
dreadfully wrong, but as a painful movement toward something that is wonderfully right?’ –
Andrew Canale

This article, abstracted from a proposal for a Light Healing Centre in the UK, will be
addressing, exploring, researching and developing, and applying treatments for the holistic
healing through Light and meditation of depression. This work will rest on the premise that
depression is, foremost, a spiritual affliction with its basis types of spiritual and energetic
imbalances. There is much material in available relevant literature to support the hypothesis
that depression has aspects of spiritual and energetic imbalance as its causal trigger, and
also that holistic and explicitly spiritual treatments can and do ameliorate its causes and
symptoms.
For example, it is now well known that physical exercise can alter hormone levels within the
body and have a positive effect on our moods, however new research has demonstrated that
meditation offers similar benefits. Researchers at the School of Behavioural Sciences, James
Cook University of North Queensland, Townsville, Australia (Harte JL; Eifert GH; Smith R. The
effects of running and mediation on beta-endorphin, corticotrophin-releasing hormone and
cortisol in plasma, and on mood. Biol Psychol (Netherlands) Jun 1995, 40 (3) p251-65)
studied the relationship between three hormones ( hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical
(HPA) axis, beta-endorphin (beta-EP), corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH) and cortisol)
and mood changes in 11 elite runners and 12 highly trained meditators matched in age, sex,
and personality.
Despite the obvious metabolic differences between running and meditation, the researchers
predicted that mood change after both of these activities would be similar if they could be
associated with similar hormonal changes. Compared to pre-test and control values, mood
was shown to be elevated after both activities but there was no significant difference between
the two groups. There were significant elevations of beta-EP and CRH after running and of
CRH after meditation, but no significant differences were seen in the increases in CRH levels
between the groups. CRH was found to be directly related to positive mood changes after
running and mediation. Cortisol levels were also noted to be generally high but erratic in both
groups.
The researchers concluded that both running and meditation have a positive effect on our
moods that is associated with the changes in relation to plasma corticotrophin-releasing
hormone.

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In addition, a new broad review of more than 80 studies appearing over the last 100 years
found a factor steadily linked with lower rates of depression: Persons who participate in a
religious group and highly value their religious faith "are at a substantially reduced risk of
depressive disorder" (USA Today, Nov. 30, 1999, A1-2 and 8D) while people with no religious
link may raise their risk of experiencing depression by as much as 60 percent (McCullough
M.E., Larson D.B. "Religion and depression: a review of the literature." Twin Research 1999;
2: 126-136).
"Lack of organizational religious involvement leads to a 20-60 percent increase in the odds of
experiencing a major depressive episode," noted Michael McCullough, Ph.D., and David
Larson, M.D., M.S.P.H., of the National Institute for Healthcare Research who undertook this
1999 review.
Why might a spiritual link help prevent depression?
"Valuing one's spirituality as centrally important and actively belonging to a religious group
may give spiritual roots that provide meaning as well as support from others. This creates
anchors of hope and caring which might help protect against depression," Dr. Larson
commented.
Also, spirituality offers comfort in times of suffering and provides a message of hope that
gives those who rely on it an extraordinary buffer against depression and other emotional
upheavals.

In a study of 4,000 older Americans (age 65 to 102), researchers at Duke University School of
Medicine found that those who attended church at least once a week were half as likely to be
depressed as those who attended religious services less frequently. Other studies have
shown that religiously inclined people over 60 are healthier and lived longer than those who
are less spiritual.
In particular, the Christian and Jewish faiths are therapeutic because these religions offer
stellar examples of overcoming adversity and emotional suffering. The Bible is an excellent
"mental health guide." It doesn't cover the issues of mental health and depression. Bible
shows that several persons, like King David, Elijah, and Jeremiah, were extremely depressed
and yet could proceed with their lives. You can take advantage of your faith and spirituality to
overcome or prevent depression. Reach up to God, reach out to others, and reach inside
yourself. Actively participate in your chosen faith, help others within your community, become
involved in your religious/voluntary activities and develop your own religious faith. It will result
in personal growth and mental well being, according to researchers in spiritual healing.
Light Healing and Bipolar Affective Disorder: Integration By Light

Holistic treatments including Light meditation and healing have special application to one of
the most prevalent forms of depressive illness, bipolar affective disorder (known in its more
severe forms as manic depression). Bipolar disorder is characterized by an alternating pattern
of emotional highs (mania) and lows ( depression). The intensity of the signs and symptoms
varies. Bipolar disorder can range from a mild to a severe condition. Doctors and researchers
don't know exactly what causes bipolar disorder. But a variety of biologic, genetic and
environmental factors seem to be involved in causing and triggering episodes of the illness.

Evidence indicates that differences in the chemical messengers between nerve cells in the
brain (neurotransmitters) occur in people who have bipolar disorder. In many cases people
with bipolar disorder may have a genetic disposition for the disorder. The abnormality may be
in genes that regulate neurotransmitters.

Another factor that may contribute to bipolar disorder is drug abuse. Stressful or
psychologically traumatic events may act as triggers for episodes of bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder tends to run in families. More than two-thirds of people with the illness have
at least one close relative who has experienced either bipolar disorder or major depression.
Researchers are attempting to identify genes that may make people susceptible to bipolar
disorder.

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People with bipolar disorder may be affected by other problems as well, such as anxiety
disorder or alcoholism. The length, severity and frequency of mood swings vary from person
to person. Sometimes there is rapid cycling in bipolar disorder, with more frequent and shorter
periods of mood disturbance.

It's also possible for mania and depression to be present at the same time. In this mixed
state, you may experience combinations of agitation, disturbances in sleep and appetite,
psychosis — a major mental disorder in which the personality is disorganized and contact
with reality is impaired — and suicidal tendencies.

A metaphysical interpretation of bipolar affective disorder has much to teach us. While it is
admitted that this perspective is theoretical and not yet endorsed by the medical
establishment, it is worth exploring the hypothetical metaphysical and even mystical nature of
bipolar disorder and depression in general. At a time when millions of people in the West are
dependent upon prescription drugs, notably the SRIs such as Prozac, to help them cope with
depressive illnesses - drugs that normalise the patient by essentially lopping off the further
poles of their psychic and spiritual capacities and energetic frequencies - we need to ask
ourselves: Is feeling less what we want?

Yes, SRIs and other conventional treatments for depressive illnesses are often crucial in
helping people; but what of the many who miss an opportunity to understand their illness and
themselves, their spirituality and greater being, simply because it is easier and more
conventional to treat depression as a curse as opposed to a possible blessing in self-
development, spiritual growth and evolving wholeness?
Taking bipolar disorder as an outstanding example, we have to understand that the human
being is crucially a spiritual being, and also an electro-chemical complex. The problem with
perceiving depression as solely or principally an illness - a curse - is that we lose sight of the
causal aspects that are based in spirit. Simply put, bipolar disorder is prevalent in our society
because our society it is in itself polarised. We are beings crying out for paths to integration
that we can them express collectively, and so heal our fractured culture, where polarisation
socially, economically and in many other ways is creating a perilous imbalance and void
within and without that will, if we are not vigilant, be filled with energies and manifestations
that are counterproductive and hostile to our individual, mutual and collective happiness.
The fact is that, metaphysically and spiritually, there is much darkness in the world today. As a
culture, and often as individuals, our Light has been lost. It is interesting to note the great
incidence of depression in such an explicitly and wilfully materialistic culture; it is as though
there is so much darkness, it takes millions to process it, usually unconsciously, and that
these sufferers - engaged in transmuting dark to light unconsciously - are then in material and
conventional terms identified as 'ill' and treated counter intuitively, when in fact they are
providing a necessary service that, were it endorsed and understood, made explicit and even
organised, would provide an outstanding healing force for good in a world struggling to Light
against a tide of gross material energy, awareness and conditioning.
Bipolar disorder, by definition a disease of polarisation, invites a metaphysical analysis, for in
all the religious, spiritual and mystical traditions of weight and worth, a recurring and
persistent theme and premise is that this reality we inhabit is inherently dual - Yin/Yang;
Good/Evil; Light/Dark - and that the path to wholeness must turn on an integration of these
opposites so that consciousness, spirit and its material manifestation can be made whole. In
bipolar people (so to speak) we see only a more extreme and explicit expression of an
affliction besetting us all: division within and without, beings divided against themselves and
each other, person-to-person, people to people. In bipolar people, the Light and Dark are far
apart, and in the gulf between there seems to be some process expressing that unbalances
the individual; mystically, it could be said that the gap created by this polarisation is filled by
the unconscious connection to the Uncreated, Void state written on so well in Buddhist, Hindu
and Christian mystical texts for hundred of years. It would appear that this space within invites
the Void - which in its pure state is an invisible and mysterious crucible of creation and
creativity at every level, seen and unseen, but which admixed with conditioned and
materialistic consciousness causes extreme imbalance and confusion, destructive drives and

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fear - and that this Void then sucks in the Light and the Dark and feeds back 'nothingness':
nihilism, self-abnegation, and a crisis of confidence in one's abilities and efficacy in the world.
As the Light is above the Dark and can mediate, transmute and transform it, the author
suggests that one, little-explored but effective route to healing bipolar disorder, is to treat it as
a state of energy imbalance due to lack of integration that can be substantially relieved and
even cleared by the use of supervised meditation and other holistic techniques and
treatments. The key is to train sufferers to use the Light and their own will to shrink and finally
close the gap referred to above, and thereby keep the Void in its place - seal it outside of this
reality construct - and not let it suck them in and saturate them with negative and depressive
thoughts and feelings. The paradoxical and terrible truth is that so many depressives suffer
from nothing more than...an uncontrolled and unconscious engagement with 'nothingness',
that they then own as real, and become entranced, entangled and even enslaved by. And
society and conventional thinking says, Yes, you are ill, you need mood-altering drugs, etc.,
when all they really need is a spiritual perspective, empathic ear and a toolbox of ideas and
techniques that support what is actually a highly creative process: the transmutation of
darkness to Light.