I took a history and found out what had happened. He and his wife had had a very nasty breakup and she moved to California. He got more and more upset about his son being so far away from him. And he found himself getting more and more angry at his son, and I think that’s really what brought him to see me ultimately, because that was so distressing to him, that this anger and this sense of hurt was so uncontrolled. Meanwhile, all of his life had lost its savor for him; there was nothing he really enjoyed any more. He was still perfectly good at his job but it didn’t give him any real pleasure.

After we talked for some time, I taught him the very simple relaxation technique that I teach in the beginning of the book, which I teach many of my patients and also in our training programs at The Center for Mind-Body Medicine. It’s called Soft Belly. And what I said to him was to just sit in your chair and let your breathing deepen. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth (which is a particularly relaxing way to breathe) and allow your belly to be soft. If you breathe this way the breath tends to go deeper into the lungs, there’s better exchange of oxygen. The vagus nerve will start working to produce relaxation to balance out the tension, the fight-or-flight response that Milton was in. I told him that if you relax your belly, all the other muscles of your body will begin to relax.

And you did this along with him. You were a participant, a partner, as well as an observer.

Yes. We did this together for some minutes. When he opened his eyes, I could see that there was some relaxation in his muscles. He felt a little bit better, a little calmer. I felt a connection with him. I always give people things that they can do for themselves—this is so crucial to working with people who are depressed, or with anybody. Because part of being depressed is not only that you feel hopeless, but you feel helpless. So if you give people techniques and approaches and ways of looking at things that are practical strategies that they can use to help themselves, you’re beginning to overcome that sense of helplessness. And if you have an experience, like Milton did, of relaxing, then you start having a little hope that things can be different. So that was a very good experience for him. And I told him I wanted him to do this Soft Belly deep breathing several times a day, for several minutes at a time. I thought it would help to relax him so that he would feel better and wouldn’t be quite so angry or quite so tense in the muscles in his jaw and his shoulders.

Then, as he was getting ready to leave, I asked him to read the Tao Te Ching [a short Taoist text, written by Lao Tzu in China in the 6th century B.C., that has achieved great popularity in the West].

You said in Unstuck that this idea just came to you, that you had never recommended that book to anyone before.

It’s the first time I ever recommended it to anyone. I’d read it myself and it’s really wonderful. Lao Tzu is telling you in these verses so many different ways that you can let go of what you’ve been holding onto and move into the flow of life. To stop trying to control things that you can’t control. You know, to let go of all those places that you’re holding onto so hard. I thought this was true of Milton, that he was holding onto everything. You could see it in his body, in the way his mind was working, in his relationships. He was just so angry, so stuck in these resentful patterns. So I said to him, “Why don’t you go and get Lao Tzu.” I recommended a translation by Stephen Mitchell and said I’d see him again in a week. I said, “Read it, and as you’re reading it, do the breathing. And do the breathing when you’re not reading it, as well.”