In today’s fast paced life, with pressure from all sides, chances are that most of us are perpetually under stress.
Many of the diseases that are becoming common these days are attributed to stress. So much so that 60 percent of all the illnesses are either caused by stress or are exacerbated by stress!
But strangely, many of us don’t realize that, and we think we are not that much under stress!
Our minds and to some extent our body learns to get used to whatever situation we are in. Unless there is some drastic change, we don’t recognize it at all!
You probably have never felt breathing to be enjoyable. That is something you have been doing right from your birth and every moment. There is nothing enjoyable about it. But ask an asthmatic how he feels when he uses an inhaler to relieve his chest congestion. He will definitely tell you that he enjoys breathing!
The opposite is also true. If you ever experience a state of almost no stress, do you realize what kind of stress you have been going through before you reached that state of no stress. It is a sheer blissful state. You feel like screaming aloud with joy!
Once someone asked Buddha – who is happier, King Ajatasatru or Buddha? Buddha replied that Ajatasatru is happy as long as he has all the material comforts. He would be miserable without them. But Buddha can remain blissful even while he slept on bare ground under the shade of a tree.
That is what happens when you are completely free from stress. You don’t look for happiness outside. You will find a fountain of bliss from within. The happiness that external objects can give you is nothing compared to this inner happiness.
How does one free oneself from all stress?
There are many modern Gurus who offer various mystic ‘techniques’ to de-stress you. And thousands of their followers endorse the efficacy of these ‘techniques’.
The interesting fact is that neither these techniques are really some mystic inventions as often claimed by these Gurus, nor the claimed effect is unique to those techniques. Let me explain.
Many modern-day Gurus rehash some well known Hatayoga technique, sometimes with some mystic frills added to them, and offer them as something of their own. They create so much hype about them that part of the effect comes from this hype.
There is also some effect that I once called “Yogic law of exponentiation” in one of my earlier blog posts.The law is that more you are stressed, more relief you experience with minimal effort. The exact technique hardly matters. The gradient is steep in the initial high state of stress. But as you progress, you see lesser and lesser change.
That could be one of the reasons why people often do Guru hopping 😉 After the initial euphoria, they start looking for another Guru with a better technique!
But actually, there is no need to invent some new technique. The Yama and Niyama that we discussed in the previous episodes relieve most of the stress. It may not look that obvious till you give it a try.
Further steps of Yoga, take you into a more calm state when the inner fountain of bliss starts to spurt out. When you pass through those stages, do you realize how stressful you were all through. It is exactly like the asthmatic person’s example I have given earlier.
There could be several causes for our stress. But what exactly is the underlying mechanism of stress? How does our brain recognize something as stressful? If we understand that, we will be in a better position to minimize stress. We will be in a better position to know how Yoga achieves that. And Yoga will be more effective if you practice it with insight into its working.
So, let us get into the genesis of stress and its effect on our health in the next episode.
A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King 2019
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