What is
stress?
In daily
life we frequently face difficult situations that bring mental and emotional
pressures. The body then responds in a prompt, speedy and inefficient way.
Stress is anything that brings mental and emotional pressure that leads to fear,
anxiety, worry, apprehensions, anger and even excitement. According to medical
professionals, 90-95% of illnesses in modern era can be blamed on psychological
forces; 98% headaches originate due to stress and stress also manifests itself
into many other physical ailments like indigestion, acidity and life-killers
like heart attacks.
How stress develops?
Stress comes in all shapes and sizes, and has become
so pervasive, that it seems to permeate everything and everybody. Stress and
Tension occur because of the uncontrolled flow of thoughts relating to our
future or past that keep our mind in constant turbulence. These thoughts deviate
us from working in the present - which only is the reality. It is usually these
thoughts related to our excessive thinking of future and past which makes us
tired and not the hard work.
Effects of stress
Stress causes real "wear and tear" on our bodies as
we adjust to our continually changing environment and so it has numerous
physical and emotional effects on us.
Physical Symptoms:
- Change of facial expression and bodily postures
- Withdrawal from social relationships
- Low task performance (sometimes its opposite also manifests, i.e, high
productivity but which is highly detrimental for our physical and mental
health)
- Impediment of speech
- Sighs & continuous fidgeting
- Nervous laughter
All the above symptoms originate because of stress but their
causes are also described by their sufferers & medical experts as:
- Anxiety
- Worry
- Sleeplessness
- Emotional Disturbances
- Aggression
- Tension
- Phobic Disorders, etc.
The eventual result of all the symptoms or their causes (as
defined by our modern-day terms) leads to many physical problems like:
- Stomach ulcers
- Bad heart conditions
- Loss of appetite or overeating
- Sweating
- Headache
- Obsessive behavior such as heavy smoking and drinking and many other
problems
How to
overcome stress?
Medical science has nothing to offer to combat the dreadful
effects of stress except tranquilizers, habit forming toxic drugs, etc. Every
and any event we face can bring us into a challenging and a threatening
situation. Thus stress is an inner reaction rather than an outer phenomenon. To
be really stress free we have to develop SELF-AWARENESS. The knowledge of our
self: Its likes and dislikes, its harmony and conflicts. The key for gaining
self-awareness lies in a process of shifting one's focus from the external
environment to internal makeup, including physical, emotional and spiritual
system.
How to
achieve Self-Awareness to overcome stress?
Meditation is the best relaxation technique and the
accepted solution all over the world to combat stress effectively. Sahaja Yoga,
a highly developed and unique system of meditation, enables the person to reach
a level of complete self-awareness.
Help through Sahaja Yoga to overcome
stress
Sahaja
Yoga works on awakening of primordial energy within us called Kundalini. When
the Kundalini rises and crosses the sixth energy centre, it brings us into a
state of thoughtless-awareness (no distracting thoughts from future or past are
bombarding the mind). All conflicts residing in the mind that create stress,
evaporate. We enter into a state of peace within, remaining completely in the
present and aware of everything around us.
Medical Research on effects of Sahaja Yoga on
Hypertension
Medical Research conducted by physiology department of the Lady
Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi, India and Sucheta Kripalani Hospital on
varied groups of individual Sahaja Yoga meditators has revealed that the
practice of Sahaja Yoga is accompanied by a decrease in tension, stress,
anxiety, depression and hypertension.
These studies were conducted upon
10 people in the age group of 35 to 50. They were from the department of
Physiology and had no previous training in any form of yoga or meditation. They
were given two days training by a qualified Sahaja Yoga teacher in the
physiology department. Thereafter they practiced it 20 minutes daily, for a few
weeks, under the watchful eyes of the tutor.
At fixed intervals doctors
studied the effect of Sahaja Yoga on the heart rate, blood pressure, the level
of the blood lactic acid, VMA in urine, which indicates secretion of adrenalin
by the body and the galvanic skin resistance (GSR), which shows whether the
patients were tensed or relaxed. All 10 were patients of hypertension; some of
them were on drugs. As the Sahaja Yoga practice progressed, the medicines were
reduced and finally stopped. In the 12 weeks the diastolic blood pressure
dropped from the 100 to 80 and the adrenalin flow, also dropped. The GSR in the
group changed from 43.9 kohms to 164.7 kohms; Mean level being 103.9 kohms.
Many people practicing Sahaja Yoga regularly had already reported
empirically what has now been confirmed by medical research. The outcomes of the
research have shown that practice of Sahaja yoga has had various healing effects
on the mind and body leading to improvements in quality of life. Various other
benefits of Sahaja yoga on all living things including plant growth, etc., are
being considerably researched around the globe.
Man is the
culmination of evolutionary process that has been at work for thousand of years,
and has been given extraordinary powers compared to other living organisms, to
regulate and control the environment around him. But the ultimate frontier, and
one which acts as the source and suffers as the receptor of stress, is the human
mind. Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi has given the mankind a unique gift in form of
her discovery of Sahaja Yoga, which should be utilized fully by the being for
achieving peace and harmony in his/her daily life while remaining free from
stress and tensions.
