Suicidal Thoughts, Depression and Yoga

Sadhguru: Every year, 800,000 people are committing suicide in this world. This is more than all the crime murders and war deaths put together. This means that every forty seconds, one person is taking their own life. It is just that only when someone that you know dies or when someone who is popular or significant in our society dies, everyone sits up. 

What Causes Suicidal Thoughts?

Why would a human being want to take their own life? Some may be committing suicide because of their life situations, but a whole lot of people are committing suicide because of their psychological situations.

We have not inculcated anything in our education system which tells us how to handle our physiology and psychological structure. Most human beings have not been taught how to handle their own intelligence. If you had half the brain that you have, you would have no mental ailments. Now, you have a certain level of intelligence but neither have you been through a training nor do you live in a social situation where you are taught how to use your intelligence towards your wellbeing. So your own intelligence is turning against you. It looks so hopeless as if there is simply no way out of it. This leads to people committing suicide.

That can easily be stopped if there is a proper system where right from childhood everyone is taught certain processes where they become blissful by their own nature, their experience of life is naturally pleasant. When they are blissful by their own nature, why would anyone take their own life? Why would anyone be depressed?

Getting Out of Depression

The word “depression” is not only clinical depression. If two things go wrong with your life today, you could be mildly depressed. I think a majority of people start getting depressed, at one time or the other, because of some life situation. But within a few hours they will talk themselves out of it. They will use some kind of inspiration – their love for someone, the nation, or something else that matters to them in their life – and work themselves out of it. Either you will talk yourself out of it or you will talk to your friend or family and they will talk you out of it; otherwise you will seek professional help.

If there was no way out of depression, why would a psychologist sit with you and talk to you for hours? Obviously, they know that they can talk you out of it. Otherwise there is chemical help. When it comes to chemistry, this human mechanism is the most sophisticated chemical factory on the planet. The question is only whether you a great manager or a lousy manager of this chemistry. Yoga means that you become a very efficient manager of your own chemical factory.

Suicide Prevention through Yoga

There is no doubt that millions of people have benefited from Yoga. We have enough experiential data that we know it works. But now blood markers are being studied and we are clearly seeing that even genetic dispositions are changing by Yogic practices.

These clearly show that you not only can prevent these psychological ailments by doing the right practices but you can come also out of it if you do it the right way. The only problem is that when someone is in a state of mental depression, getting them to do the practices is a huge challenge. Unless there are dedicated people around them, supporting them in every way to make them do it every day, it will not happen. I can show you thousands of people who have come out of various mental problems by doing that because we create a supportive atmosphere. It may not be possible to make it happen in every home. The question is of application. However, there are some pathological cases which are very hard. We have also seen such cases and brought down their level of medication significantly.