Healing Depression the Mind-Body: Creating Happiness with Meditation, Yoga, and Ayurveda

At the outset of their book, Nancy Liebler and Sandra Moss acknowledge that no two depressions are alike in either cause or effect, and no single cure, medicine, or therapy works for everyone.

Healing Depression the Mind-Body: Creating Happiness with Meditation,Yoga, and Ayurveda, by Nancy Liebler and Sandra Moss. Wiley; wiley.com

By Hillari Dowdle

Liebler is a psychologist and adjunct professor at the Michigan School of Professional Psychology. Moss, an ayurveda">Ayurvedic practitioner, is the director of curriculum planning and accreditation at New Leaf Ayurveda, a school in Southfield, Michigan.

After a glowing foreword by Vasant Lad, founder and director of the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Liebler and Moss present a set of tools for self-discovery and self-care drawn from modern science and the ancient wisdom of yoga and Ayurveda, yoga's sister science. To that end, they provide a solid introduction to Ayurvedic theory as well as self- reflection exercises—a mirror in which you might glimpse the truth of your malaise. While they note that your depression is specific to you alone, they offer three useful prototypes of depression, based on imbalances of the doshas, or constitutional elements that determine health. The authors make dosha-balancing recommendations for meditation, yoga, nutrition, aromatherapy, and sleep. But the strength of this book lies in self-observation exercises designed to increase your awareness and help you piece together your daily and even seasonal habits as they relate to your depression. It's a paradigm for self-understanding, compassion, and the happiness that, according to their take on Ayurveda, is your birthright.