I finally know the roots of my depression + anxiety: An Update Video
Mentioned in the Video
🎦 Blog post on Coping with my Depression Symptoms
🧘🏽♀️ Take Kundalini Yoga classes with me
📲 Daylio Mood Tracker + Journal
💌 Subscribe to my email list to get first dibs on all offerings
Video Transcript:
Welcome to my channel. I’m Melanie Santos – mind, body, spirit wellness educator and creator, energy practitioner, spiritual medium and guide, and Kundalini Yoga Priestess. I’m super passionate about creating space for discovery, healing, learning how to live intentionally, embracing our nuances as energy beings in human bodies, and talking about all the things we can do to align with our Divine truth and best experience in this life. In my community we’re all about real self-care for collective liberation.
I have another video and a detailed blog post on what I do to cope with my depression symptoms, but in this video, I’m going to break down the essential things I do to keep my depression and anxiety AWAY.
This is not clickbait, there’s no wellness fads, tips, or “tricks” in here, I’m just sharing what I’ve learned over the last 11 years of intently learning about myself and how to treat my mental health disorders without medication.
Disclaimer: This is not mental health advice. I am not a medical or mental health professional. These recommendations come from my journey and, again, what continues to work for me as someone who made the very personal decision not to take medication.
Now here’s a little background…
I was diagnosed with clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder in my early 20s, only after having to come to the conclusion
[after decades of suppressing conversations about how we really felt, stigmatizing mental health care like therapy and medication and taking me to church and spiritual guides who read my cards and seashells instead, and denying me the right to express myself because HELLO I am first generation American kid from a Caribbean household]
after coming to the conclusion that…I’m not well, and that my anxious outbursts and depressive episodes weren’t just a phase. And so began my mental health journey as a twenty-something Caribbean-American girl, the first in her Latine family to ever seek therapy.
More than a decade later, I have tried it all. Different types of therapy, read different books and clinical research, tried different ways of eating, taken different supplements, different forms of movement and exercise, different spiritual beliefs and practices…and although at times it was hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I’m so grateful to be here. To be able to share with you what HAS worked and what continues to help me forge this path back to myself without having depression and anxiety looming over my existence.
Let’s jump right in. I’m going to break it up into Mind, Body, and Spirit.
MIND: Deeper awareness of my brain.
Without awareness of something, you can’t truly begin to deal with it, let alone heal it. It can be painful, but learning how to be aware of what’s really happening within you and what’s bringing your symptoms on is the first step in recovery, and in this case, identifying the origin so you can deal with it from the root.
In my “how I deal with my depression symptoms” video, I talk about using a Mental Health Pain Scale and how much it has helped me identify the severity of my mental health symptoms.
Another tool I’ve used is Daylio. What makes it special is that you can use it to track, not only your symptoms, but what activities you do each day to get a better idea of what you’re doing on your good and bad days, and analyze patterns in your mental health.
While tracking with Daylio, I started to realize that when I was around a lot of people or had a busy couple of weeks of work, or when I didn’t get much time to decompress, I would basically become manic and go even harder…and then completely crash.
At my worst, I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t care for myself, and was experiencing suicidal ideations.
This made me take a deeper look at the patterns in my life and wonder about what the roots of my disease actually were. Which led me to doing a lot of research on the mind, body, spirit connection.
Besides listening intently to other healers like Paula Hurlock and Maryam Hasnaa, two of the books that really broke ground for me were:
“Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System As a Path to the Self” by Anodea Judith, and “The Highly Sensitive Person” by Dr. Elaine Aron
In preparation to film this video I looked back at old journal entries and notes and I relived exactly what it felt like to be seen by these books. I went on to clinical journals after that to get the scientific evidence down and to prove to my ego that I wasn’t bugging and that this actually felt like the a major puzzle piece I’d been missing, and in short, what I learned was this:
Yes, depression and anxiety are a neurological chemical imbalance, but they do not just manifest on their own for me. Depression and anxiety result from over or understimulation because I am a Highly Sensitive Person.
I’m going to film a separate video about this and when I do, I’ll link it here, but High Sensitivity isn’t a disorder, it’s a trait said to be found in 15 to 20% of the population. The highly sensitive brain has significant biological differences that affect how someone takes in everyday stimuli, how they engage with the world around them, and how their brain processes literally everything…
from having more active mirror neurons that help us pick up on what others are feeling more easily,
to more activity in the pre-frontal cortex which affects processing sensory information, we can process things deeper than others and express feelings in a more cognitive way,
to having a special variation of the serotonin transporter gene and having 10 more genes associated with dopamine than neurotypical people!!!
To get this clarity (on my own too, which a story about Western Medicine for a different day) has been LIFE CHANGING.
I have been in therapy on and off for the last 11 years and am so grateful to have an amazing therapist that I’ve been seeing regularly for two years now, I brought this to my therapist immediately. I had a brand new understanding, not only of my mental health, but of me, so with this new perspective, I reformatted the ways that I cared for myself.
With that, let’s move onto the body.
BODY: Caring for all of my parts from the inside out.
I’ve been talking about mental health and general wellness on the internet since 2013, so if you’ve been following me for that long, you’ve seen my trajectory. I’m a Gemini Sun and a Manifesting Generator so I jump around a lot and get obsessed about a topic and wanna share all about it.
When it comes to caring for my mental health in regards to my body, the world has seen me eat in different ways, from eliminating dairy to all animal products, to eating loosely plant-based, to changing up my supplement regimen a million times, to moving my body in so many different ways…and I still eat mindfully, drink sufficient water, and take supplements every day…
But in the last couple of years I’ve introduced my community to a new perspective on the mind and body and how to care for ourselves, especially if we experience mental health disorders: The fact that we are energy beings.
For a while I only spoke about this in regard to manifestation, and relationships, and aligning with our souls purpose, but after coming to the realization that I was not just a chronically depressed and anxious person, that I am a highly sensitive neurodivergent person, I dove deep into what that means for me and for everyone as an energy being. I wanted to know, if I am biologically different, am I energetically different too? And if so, how do I have to care for myself?
What changed my life was this: (And this goes for everyone one us, not just people who resonate with high sensitivity and neurodivergence)
Realizing that all of us as energy beings have energy bodies and electromagnetic auric fields (a field of energy that surrounds and extends beyond our physical body that is influenced by the state of our energy centers or chakras)
That if we don’t care for our energetic field appropriately through regularly cleansing and protection, our aura becomes weak, making us susceptible to mental, emotional, and physical imbalances among other disconnections.
This made my already established energetic hygiene routines THAT much more important. And not only that, but it made me be more intentional about how I was spending time in my body and what energy I was engaging. What I was listening to, who I was spending time with, not only what I was eating, but how I was eating it. So many things I can break into different videos (and let me know what you’re interested in me talking about)
but because of this deeper wisdom unlocked, I taught a 95 minute class on energy management, cleansing, and protection. It’s a comprehensive class that dives into everything from what it means to be an energy being, to how energy affects our entire human experience, to practical ways we can cleanse and protect our energetic field on every budget and anywhere we are. I’m grateful that it’s helped so many people already. The recording of the class is available on the Classes section of my website and is linked in the description box.
Having a fresh perspective on my being, meant diving deep on my spiritual self-care too. And when I was at my lowest point, the Universe sent me something that felt like the final piece to my puzzle…
SPIRIT: Building spiritual and energetic muscle.
That something was Kundalini Yoga. I filmed a whole video on what Kundalini Yoga is, how I aligned with it, and just four of the many ways that it’s changed my life so far, but in short (I keep saying in short and I hope it actually is)
My mental health, and overall wellness journey, has taught me so much more than just what to eat or what vitamins to take, how to move or how to navigate relationships…it’s taught me more than how to live an OUTWARDLY “well” life.
It’s instilled in me that our human experience is truly a projection of what’s going on within, and that to be truly and ultimately healthy, you have to care for and sustain your connection to your spirit.
I sustain my connection to my spirit in many ways, but Kundalini Yoga has become a Divine umbrella of sorts, because it groups together so many of the practices I’ve been doing on my own for years into one powerful modality. An avenue for mental, physical, and spiritual healing and connection. A way for me to release what no longer serves me, forge a stronger connection with my Highest Self, and most important to my mental health, cleanse and strengthen my auric field, so that my depression and anxiety don’t have a sustainable environment to exist within.
If spirituality and wellbeing are muscles (which they are), Kundalini Yoga is one of the most effective ways that I stay strong.
What is it? Kundalini Yoga is the fastest way to create transformation and align your mind, body, and spirit. It weaves together pranayama (breathwork), kriyas and asanas (strategic postures), meditation, and mantra to shift your glandular, electromagnetic, circulatory, and nervous systems and raise your Kundalini energy (the atomic energy of creative consciousness) and unlock the God and Universe within and beyond ourselves.
I recommend you check out my budding Kundalini Yoga playlist of videos, and taking a class with me if you’re interested.
“So you never experience depression and anxiety anymore?”
I’d be lying if I said I NEVER get visited by these old foes.
I’m not perfect. Sometimes I over-schedule myself, our get excited about serving and end up pouring from a cup that’s running low. Sometimes I get overstimulated, and eat poorly, and forget to prioritze moving my body. It happens…but…
I understand myself and the foundations of my disconnections, and the fact that I’m at the root of all of my disconnections…
I can have an honest conversation with myself, and even with anxiety and depression when they come to visit, and escort them out with these practices, rituals, and routines that continue to feed me and starve these diseases.
Will I ever see a day that I never experience mental health disorders ever again? I don’t know. The realist in me thinks probably not. But I’m proud of how far I’ve come, how much I’ve learned, how much I’ve healed, and how much I’m able to teach because of it.
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I hope that this video has offered you something you needed, or something you didn’t know you needed. It’s my honor and pleasure to share my journey with the world as a way to educate and serve the world.
If you appreciate this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel for more holistic wellness, healing, and identity content. And please share the love – send this to someone who you think can benefit from it.
