Nature's Safety Valves 

It is not easy to cry on cue. To do so, one must mentally re-create a painful experience and recollect all the associated bad feelings. Once these feelings are firmly entrenched, the tears flow freely, naturally, instinctively. In fact some researchers now say that such instinctive outpouring of emotion as crying and groaning that may act as a natural safety mechanism to protect our bodies from overdosing on emotional 'downers'.

The emotional distress produces toxic substances in the body. Crying helps remove them from the system. 'This may be why someone who is sad, feels better after having a good cry'. 

The tears shed in sorrow had a different chemical composition from those cried over fresh-cut onions. This demonstrates that emotional tears contain more portions. 

What we are now looking for in emotional tears are certain chemicals released during emotional stress. Among these chemicals are endorphin, a pain reliever, various hormones, and the catecholamines, one of which is adrenaline. 

Many Psychiatrists and Psychologists - though without any biochemical proof - also believe that crying is beneficial. 'Crying discharges tension, the accumulation of feeling associated with whatever problem is causing the crying'. 

'Stress causes imbalance and crying restores balance. It relives the central nervous system of tension. If we don't cry, that tension doesn't go away'. And since crying is a healthy, natural form of communication, learning not to cry makes us unhealthy and, in terms of human evolution, less fit to survive. What makes an event stressful (excessive sympathetic or parasympathetic stimulation) in a harmful sense, or what leads to a state of balanced autonomic functioning has not been clearly understood. We all realise that someone can 'Worry himself to death,' or 'die of a broken heart' and even 'die of joy' but no one has ever been accused of dying from tranquillity or balance. While certain physiological weaknesses, such as a bad heart, can result in our being warned not to get too much excitement, we know that challenges, laughter and happy surprises are extremely beneficial to one's mental and physical well being. Yet all of these involve high states of arousal which, if sustained, become stress and are dangerous. It is also obvious that relaxation is not only very pleasant, but also extremely beneficial and very necessary. 

We can begin to look at stress from a more comprehensive and more functionally useful viewpoint. Stress is a state of internal imbalance, reflecting the unrelieved dominance of either arousal or inhibition. This leads to impaired (damaged or diminished) physiological and/or mental functioning. 

Here is a crying technique, which can help to release the depression 'set comfortably'. 

Now place your hand on your upper chest, over the collarbone. Begin to breathe only as deeply as your hand, no deeper. Breathe rapidly and make a sound. Listen to the feeling in your voice as you pant and begin to make the sound of a baby crying. Listen to it. Allow yourself to feel its sadness. Allow yourself to make the sound of jobbing. Think of the things that are causing you sadness and grief. Allow yourself to make the sounds that go with those feelings of grief. As you do this, give yourself permission to be human. You should have no trouble releasing, stay with the exercise. 

If it is difficult at first. Do this, if you feel the beginning of a headache in the temples. This is often a sign that you have been controlling crying and have accumulated such tension and eye pain that your head aches. If you feel a little tension at the temples, take time out, and do your crying exercise. When you can work up enough self-pity to gob for a few minutes, you will release that tension. You will feel relieved, as others have. And, what a relief! That relief is relaxation.

Apart from this there are some yogic breathing techniques that can relive depression Bhastrika, Kapalbhati, abdominal breathing.

Shyam