I usually try to share and reflect on news or the experiences of others facing mental illness, such as my mother, in these blogs.  This time I turn the spotlight on myself.  I have had three major depressions—not the kind that you drag yourself through for days—but the kind that almost totally incapacitated me.  To just get out of bed was an extraordinarily difficult operation.  It was as if my will had been entirely sapped from me.

It is a situation of hopelessness, of there being no future, nothing to look forward to.  Then with my third episode a friend told me just to breathe.  This was before I ever got into yoga.  So at that time I just focused on my breath, what it felt like, sounded like.  It gave me something which I could do and look forward to, second by second.  It did not “cure” me but it certainly helped pull me through.  I share it as perhaps helpful to others facing the same blank future.  When breathing, there is always the future of another breath.