Life is wild. Sometimes the chaos spins up around us and howls so loud we cannot help but shake and wail, or leap with excitement, or buckle in a heap of tears. Sometimes life seems to ask us to jump, sometimes to hide, sometimes to dream, sometimes to act. At other times it seems to ask nothing of us. We may wander aimlessly, wondering what the meaning of it all is, where we came from, where we are going, why we are here. During these quiet moments, the wildness of life occurs within the space of our own chest, in the tension and release of our limbs, in the leaps and crashes of emotion and the babbling of our mind. This can be as challenging as the worldly ups and downs that take place without. At least external chaos offers some distraction from the unruliness of the mind, the overpowering emotions of the heart. Stillness around us reveals the noise within, and we do not always like what we hear.

Leaving the strict, busy schedule of yoga teacher training has revealed the intense play of my inner peaks and valleys. My days lie open before me, waiting for me to make of them what I will, and faced with the pressure of an open canvas my mind spins too many plans and I cannot keep up. A mixture of emotions begins to whirr. I feel excitement at all the possibilities before me, but also doubt and fear in wondering how to take advantage of them. I feel the smart of past failures (both real and imagined), and worry if self change is truly possible. Sometimes a wave of depression takes hold, which feels like a warning shot; I could slide down a slope that would end in a grey soup of the mind, chemically deprived of joy, where dark stories take hold and motivation is a foreign word with no meaning. An invisible lead apron descends upon the chest, and under its weight comes the terrible sensation of not enough breath.

We all feel depressed at times. However, there is a line where feeling depressed becomes more than an emotion. Many people in our society have suffered—or still suffer—from depression to varying degrees, and it can be debilitating. The times I have been depressed were often not apparent to me until after I began to emerge from the fog, and I could see more clearly how low the baseline from which I was experiencing life had dropped. I am grateful for the people, the life changes, the activities that helped me move through and up and out again. I know some people suffer more severely and require other treatments to regain light inside the brain. Whatever the degree, I will always have deep compassion for all those dealing with depression, and for their friends and family too. The feelings of isolation that accompany the state make it hard to connect with others, and the ensuing hurt affects everyone.

It is no wonder that the fear of depression underlies my other feelings of trepidation. Things are changing, new possibilities really do exist in all directions, but not if my inner landscape darkens beyond my reach. Incidentally, my struggles of this past week have matched the sky, which has been sealed over with grey clouds, like a steel dome. On occasion the sun does burst through with blinding brightness. More often the droplets gather dark and close above and let loose all at once. Depending on the climate of my mind, the rain can feel either calm and comforting or like a cold heavy curtain blocking out the sun’s warmth.

When I find myself teetering on the edge of a downward slope, I know I must do whatever I can to catch a glimpse of hope. A song, a conversation, a walk can make all the difference—anything to shake up the settling shadows and allow even the tiniest ray of light through. Circumstances may remain as they were, the mountain to climb still stands, but something physically releases. The invisible weight on the body starts to evaporate, and the breath comes more easily. The return of the breathe carries us through the storm.

“The basic thing,” says the Dalai Lama, “is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering… we are all the same.” The Buddha said, “you can search the ten-fold universe and not find a single being more worthy of loving kindness than yourself.” Rumi said, “close your eyes, fall in love, stay there.” The wise words of these sages help me to remember: we are not alone, we deserve to be happy, and it is worth doing whatever it takes to remind ourselves of this any time we forget.