Mechanics of Stress
The mechanics of stress must be known if one is to be successful in yoga practice. Gone were the days when someone went to an isolated place to do yoga. Now is the time to do yoga anywhere anyhow. With the advent of highways and airports, with every bit of land being owned and controlled by people of means and power, there is nowhere to run.
A yogi/yogini must stand the ground in the apartment, condominium, cottage or wherever and do the practice amidst the hustle and bustle of modern lifestyle. For this some details about the mechanics of stress must be known. A plan to effectively manage stress must be instituted. There should be no fantasy ideas about removing stress altogether. Only the reduction and damage control of it, should be the practical objective.
If one finds that one’s lifestyle is hostile to yoga practice, one should find a way to scale back some desires, so as to reduce the encroachment on yoga. One may have to accept less income if one scales back on employment. It is a matter of striking a balance and playing the game of give and take.
Wishing stress away, abolishing it by using mantras or feelgood statements is not the yogic way unless such methods are scientifically tested by the individual yogi/yogini, where the result of their effectiveness or ineffectiveness are tested within the mind of the individual. One should not indulge in self-dishonest. One should know that Nature cannot be outsmarted. If one gains financially or socially due to excessive indulgence in a yoga-hostile lifestyle, then one should not expect to advanced in fact in the yoga practice. This practice means deep meditation. It does not mean asana postures which is not yoga but it only one of the eight yoga sectors.
Yoga cannot be about wishful thinking nor about wanting to prove that the universe is responsive to the will of the individual who uses a body which will not survive say about two hundred years.
One must test to know what one does which is hostile to yoga and which cannot be wished away by mental creativity. Then one must curtail the behavior if not eliminate it completely. Do not expect to be focused on physical wellbeing and to advanced with psychic wellbeing all the same. For the least strike a balance to scale down one and have an increase in the other. Be realistic.
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I learned this simple technique of stress management from Kariko.
She is not a yogi or knows rebirth but she and her technique is very effective in handling stress.
I learnt how to turn negative stress to positive stress from her. Every time stress hits me, I ask this mantra to myself "What can I do!?". I do it repeatedly till I find a solution.
If stress attacks me, I attack it head on by asking "what can I do to tame this fear". Then, a solution comes up and I act.
If I don't attack the stress, stress will trounce me and go into backward negative feedback loop of blaming everything except me. Instead of forward solution seeking mode to drive out the stress, I go into depressive and blaming zone for weeks. This simple switch or flip turns everything upside down.
I learnt it from Kariko. She is not a yogi but definitely she has nerves of steel and we can learn from her.
In Gita, Lord Krishna says to Arjuna that even inaction is a from of action i.e. if one is desisting from action which itself becomes an action. So, Krishna urges Arjuna to act instead of inaction.
I use the same energy to act on the fear than to inact and run away from it.
This is the article on her struggles on how she found vaccines for COVID to win a nobel prize
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/06/nobel-prize-winner-katalin-karik-on-being-demoted-perseverance-.html
