A dialogue with Dr. P.V. Vaidyanathan on De-stress Yourself : The power is within you
Nov 8th
We live our life far away from the absolute and universal truths of nature. Life on this earth is actually very easy and simple, provided we are willing to see it, as it exists, in reality. Unfortunately, we tend to see life, not as it is really, but through the filter of our thoughts, perceptions, beliefs, conditionings, ignorance, ego and more- all of which constitutes what we call- the Mind.
Our unaware and not awakened Mind causes stress. Positive stress allows us to perform during stressful situations and negative stress makes us tense and impairs our ability to be our best self. Although stress is part of our life, it is also necessary but the big question is How Much? To answer this question and to explain how to let go of negative stress, Dr. P.V. Vaidyanathan was invited by Tavleen Foundation, under its Meet the Masters series, for a dialogue on De-stress Yourself: The Power is within you.
In the words of Dr. P.V. Vaidyanathan-
Knowing stress: When we are exposed to various circumstances, either a Fight or Flight response is generated. Fight makes us put up with the situation, and flight makes us run away from it. Hormones such as adrenaline, endorphin are released in the body that lead to the release of energy in the form of responses. Stress is hence generated as the body's reaction to a change that requires a physical, mental or emotional adjustment or response.
Stress Triggers: A variety of Internal factors (beliefs, expectations, low self esteem, perception, perfectionism) and External factors (major life events, daily hassles) may act as vital triggers of stress. It is also important to understand that stress is not always negative. Positive stress is considered reasonable good for it makes you work hard for what you want to accomplish. Good stress helps you to go about our daily tasks and achieve those hard-to-reach goals. It helps us to learn new things, adapt to change, and engage in creative thinking. Everyone experiences good stress on a daily basis. A sort of struggle occurs between realization and acceptance of stress, and once you accept it, you become determined to do something about it. The key is to ‘think less, think right’.
ABC of Stress:
A: Awareness: Sometimes people do not even realize that they have stress. You must perform a self introspection to identify it timely.
B: Balance: Once you identify stress, you must try to achieve an equilibrium situation by walking past all the disturbances such as inadequate sleep, bad diet, low energy levels etc.
C: Control: You must sustain this balanced state and control variations, if any, through measures like Yoga, meditation, music, dance and exercise.
A thought on Meditation: Meditation is mind without thought. Our mind is full of dreams, memories, photo clips and thoughts. And we must take a break from thought to relax. Do not suppress thoughts as they become stronger that way. Just observe, but do not try to catch them. It is then that thoughts give you space to relax.
Spirituality and Stress: We are a part of one big universal consciousness called the ‘Chaitanya’. Soul is an energy that cannot feel itself and mann, buddhi, shareer (mind, intellect, body) are needed to cover it. A sense of balance must be established between all these parts to help attain supreme connect with God and puja (worship) and meditation are a good means of developing the bond.
You must ‘Let Go’: We have to walk past mind’s control to our inner consciousness to solve those problems that cannot be solved by mundane solutions. It is crucial to realize that life encounters only incidents; it is we who tag them as problems based on nature of the event. Every problem completes a certain cycle; for example- you get sick and you go to a doctor. Your sickness extends a fee to the doctor and the chemist which in turn helps them with their requirements. So a cycle completes here. But we as layman are able to see only one part of this cycle, for it requires high order knowledge to construe intellectual permutations.
Most problems begin with ‘desires’ which Buddha termed as the root cause of all sufferings. If you are able to raise yourself above your desires, you can win the problem and the stress arising out of the problem. For example, most parents have the desire to see their children opt for common professions such as engineering and medicine. But if they can rise above this expectation, they can realize their child’s potential to also become a successful painter, writer etc. As human beings, we must learn to let go of not only the physical possessions, but rigid opinions too. It feels bizarre to see that people are ready to give up relationships but would stick with their rigid, sometimes irrational, beliefs. We inherit many notions from our ancestors and society. The need is to filter them on relevance principle and let go of the ones causing negativity and stress. The bottom-line is: “Everything matters, but finally nothing matters”. We are not going to carry anything with us when we die, not even our rigidity and beliefs. And when death is inevitable, let us all let go through dharmic solutions and Godliness.
Three stages of knowing dharma and God:
Stage 1: We try to see God through other’s perspective, mainly when we are young.
Stage 2: We become nastik (disbeliever) when we initially doubt the existence of God, particularly when our selfish desires are not fulfilled.
Stage 3: We gradually understand the essence of things and transform into a refined individual (aastik-believer). We attain ‘choicelessness’ and come out of our routine illusions to higher level of consciousness.
Concluding words: Stress depends on time. If you have availability of time, you tend to get more stressed. We all must live in ‘present moment awareness’. The power of now tells us that past is already gone, tomorrow will soon become present, but what we have right now in this moment is real life, a life that is to be lived at the fullest. When body, mind, emotion and the soul are in harmony and vibrating at the same frequency we experience moments of greatness. It is these moments of greatness which become the building blocks and guidance to a more peaceful and balanced life. Relationships become more harmonious and de-stressed, success and abundance become part of us. Health matters can improve drastically and vitality and youthfulness restored. We take back our power and, as humans, we can give so much more!
A dialogue on ‘DISCIPLINE – A YOGIC APPROACH’
Jul 26th
You are the Architects of your own Harmony
‘Meet the Masters’ series of Life & Mind Institute involves insightful lectures by eminent speakers addressing the present day challenges in a fresh perspective. Under the same series, Tavleen Foundation recently conducted a dialogue with Guruji Sri Pattabhiram on the topic ‘Discipline- A Yogic Approach’.
Guruji, the direct disciple of Swami Rama of the Himalayas and Founder-Director of Sadhana Sangama Trust, Bangalore, gave valuable insights on- what is discipline and how to become more disciplined in our life- taking yogic science as the fundamental.
In the words of Guruji Sri Pattabhiram-
- What goes wrong with the ‘self’?
Today, we do know about the worldly matters, but we’ve become a stranger to our own self. This feeling of ‘I don’t know’ creates insecurity, loneliness and stress. Even sitting with ourselves appears distressing. We can live without our family members for a week, but not without our mobile phone! As per Yoga Shastra, we must attend to the cause and not the effect. Doing vice-versa complicates life.
You must know that there is nothing wrong with our life overall, it is the approach that goes wrong. Like how in times of aggression, you try to find fast solutions to everything- your mind goes out, instead of settling within.
- What is Discipline?
Anushasan is formed of anu that means ‘to follow’ and shasan that means ‘the light’. It means to follow the light to harmony. The world has confused it with fear. Discipline can’t be imposed as forced virtues don’t stay for long. You have to become a disciple of that to make the action committed and enjoyable. For example, when an astrologer asks to light a lamp at 3 am daily to get rupees 1 crore, you would do it. This means you make yourself a disciple of the 1 crore and feel the motivation to pursue it.
Now what is that you have to follow as a disciple? It is Yoga. The idea is not to stick to some aasnas, it is to acquire complete harmony. Everything starts with and culminates in Meditation.
How to achieve Harmony?
Level 1: Harmony with the self: Think of what can bring you harmony and the same thing then becomes your discipline.
Level 2: Harmony in Relationships: Many individuals are suppressed and family institution is getting disintegrated. People don’t listen. Discipline cannot occur with ‘only me’ philosophy. Try to pursue togetherness by sharing, including and creating space for each other.
Level 3: Harmony with the environment: Man is what the mind is. Mind is what you think. If all the energy centers within the brain are disharmonious, we cannot stay happy or peaceful. Sometimes, mind captures judgments about a person in the form of fixed images, and we don’t change those images with time. We must let go.
Concluding words
You must think about harmony and ways you can bring it in your life. As body does not produce disease, mind does; similarly when need becomes greed, man becomes monster. Do not look outside for solutions, rather explore within. You can develop supreme harmony with the help of a good guru or leader. Harmony is a state where there is no conflict. Difference of opinion may occur between people, as no two individuals are alike. The idea is to develop a sense of concern to respect the differences as well. Once such concern develops, real transformation begins and this is precisely what Yoga does.
‘Become a disciple and achieve harmony’….
Lessons from the Gita in everyday life
Jun 13th
Tavleen Foundation recently held a seminar, under its Life & Mind Institute Initiative, to establish peaceful life and mind solutions from Shrimad Bhagwad Gita.
Dedicated to Tavleen’s fond memory, Tavleen Foundation (TF) is an organization that incessantly works towards the betterment of oneself, society and world on the pillars of education, art, culture and environment. Life & Mind Institute- a TF Initiative- is a self help group that aims to build a peaceful community, by way of dialogues, discussions, workshops and seminars on spiritually-scientific ways of living.
The present times of living under high stress, work-life imbalance and competition have made us quite different than how God intended us to be. To achieve a stress-free mind, TF recently conducted a comprehensive seminar on ‘Life Management with solutions from the Gita’ at Pritamlal Dua Sabhagrah, Indore. Dr. Prof. Surendra Soni, academician and researcher from Ujjain, and Dr. Prof. Pawan Kumar Singh from I.I.M. Indore were invited the key speakers.
Dr. Gurmeet Singh Narang, Founder-TF, shared, “Many implementable solutions to reduce stress and destructive emotions are available in our ancient grantha. This seminar’s objective was to discuss the rich spiritual knowledge so as to establish depth of enlightenment and balance in life”.
In his session, Dr. Prof. Soni explained, “For the present state of value-crisis, it is imperative to use the knowledge of our great epics and evolve value-based living. Gita discusses ‘deviya sampada’ (fearless mind) in its 16th chapter. Sadly, not one of us is fearless today. It’s important to practice ‘Give, restrain and sympathize’- the message of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad- to establish real human compassion”. Taking science an example, he added, “Principal figures of science like Copernicus, Galileo and Newton made ‘measurement or quantification’ as the basis. This made qualitative factors such as ethical and aesthetic sensibility (that hold our understanding of morals) take a secondary role”.
He suggested, “Instead of forcing moral lessons on children, we must inculcate ‘saundarya bodh’ (aestheticism) in them to avoid wrong deeds. Matter and mind are to be understood. Matter can never encompass spirituality; it is the mind quotient that must be developed for it shapes life, purpose and spirituality. 13th chapter of the Gita- ‘Purush Chitran’- speaks about human, nature and origin of values. Our rishis emphasized on a vision that includes ‘vasudev kutumbkam’, ‘sarve bhavantu sukhinah’ etc. Maintain that.
Dr. Prof. Pawan Kumar Singh shared, “Every shloka of the Gita calls for excellence. Pandavas followed dharma-based and Kauravas followed karma-based philosophy. Pandava sena played the shankh designation-based, from junior to senior positions, reflecting their conscientiousness. Today, it is crucial to realize that our intention is more important than the act itself. We need to make our intent morally upright. Kathopnishad gives an excellent model of decision making by way of ‘Shreyas ya preyas’ (preferable or beloved). One must opt for the preferable decision for it leads to long lasting results. Success depends on disha (direction) and gati (speed). ‘Karmanye vadhikaraste, ma phaleshu kada chana’, the most quoted shloka of the Gita, explains that the moment you think about phal (ends), a part of your productive energy shifts to worrying about those results, which you could have used to a better advantage. Just perform your karma with dedication and accept the result, be it success or failure.”
Dr. Prof. Soni summed up, “According to the Gita, we must acquire holistic development of life while incorporating love, compassion, non-violence and tolerance as its principles. Culture is like a garment and values are its fabric”.
